Midwest UX

The 3rd Midwest UX conference, back in October in Grand Rapids, MI, was great! Below are links to recaps and slides and other things, to help people who were there to get more out of the event afterwards, and for people who were not even there.

Conference resources

• Conference web site
• Lanyrd coverage
• Photos by MidwestUX and by the group

Conference recaps

• Making Places: Key Ideas from Midwest UX 2013 by Jessica Duverneay
• How Design Changes The World – Thoughts on Midwest UX 2013 by Matt Edwards
• FG Trip (In The Name of UX)
• Midwest UX in Grand Rapids by Megan Schwartz
• Midwest UX 2013 – Recap by Rich Lee
• Midwest UX 2013 Redux: Part one, workshops by Robert Bastian
• Midwest UX Day 1 (pt 1 & 2), Day 2, Day 3 by Abby Anderson Jones
• Midwest UX 2013 – Grand Rapids is Amazing by Christian Manzella

Session & speakers, with link to slides and other resources

Keynote: Making Sense of Place
Abby Covert

• Sketchnotes by Jason Alderman

It's Not You, It's Your Anti-Pattern
Edward Stojakovic, Fran Diamond

Boats, Trains & Shopping Malls: Testing the Usability of Products in their Natural Habitat
Kathi Kaiser

• Sketchnotes by Jason Alderman
• Storify recap by Deborah Edwards-Onoro

Dude, Who Stole My Community?
Charles Erdman

Everyone is a Designer, Whether You Like it or Not
Kyle Murphy

Hey, You Got Your Map In My Territory!: The Role of Language in Placemaking
Andrew Hinton

After Orientation: Making Room for a Novice UX Designer
Megan Schwarz

• Sketchnotes by Jason Alderman

Keynote: Places Make Us
Christina Wodtke

• Sketchnotes by Jason Alderman

Panel by Design West Michigan
Christina Wodtke, Chris Hoyt, Jeff Reuschel, Ritu Bajaj

Narrative Spaces
Christian Eckels

The Essence of Experience
Kaleem Khan

The Programmable World
Matt Nish-Lapidus

Field Manual: UX Lessons From The Military Profession
Jason Alderman

• MWUX 2013 Highlights, Part 2 (Jason Alderman) by Chris Hooke

Defining our Place in Emerging Technologies
Erik Dahl

Resistance is Futile: Google Glass and the Cyborg Workforce of the Future
Donna Lichaw

Pecha Kucha:

• Laura Colton
• Christian Saylor
• Alaina Kraus
• Bethany Stolle
• Kevin Buddleman

Turn About is Fair Play: How We Employed UX to Transform Our Workplaces and Rethink Our Business
Seth Starner

The Place You’re In Is More Than The Place You’re At
Phillip Hunter

Social Smarts for Small Screens
Sonia Koesterer

Distant Land, Different Life
Kerry-Anne Gilowey

Scratch Your Own Itch: Simple, Designer-driven Apps
Simon King

The Four Mobile Traps: How To Avoid the Most Common Mistakes Plaguing The Mobile Space
Michael Mace

• Free report
• MWUX 2013 Highlights, Part 3 (Michael Mace) by Chris Hooker

Keynote: Data is the Experience
Karl Fast

• Sketchnotes by Jason Alderman

I am at the Midwest UX conference.

I am just hanging out today. Tomorrow I will be the emcee in the Gallery Theatre. (It is hard to find, so if you are going to a session there, be sure to follow the signs to the 2nd floor and then the additional signs to the theatre.) If you are here and want to find me, your best bet is to come to the theatre.

Here are the sessions in the theatre that I will be attending: (links to slide decks added as they are posted)

• Designing the Election Experience
• On "Shrink It And Pink It": Designing Experiences For Women
• Bridging The Mobile Design Gap
• Extreme Design: The Secrets To Successful Design Pairing
• Building A Responsive Design Process

A great set of sessions! You can follow along with these sessions, and the rest of the conference, with the Twitter hashtag MWUX12. And since I cannot make it on Saturday, I will be following Day 2 virtually myself.

I am going to the 2012 Midwest UX conference (May 31 - June 2) in Columbus and I'd like others from the Toledo region to join me.

Last year was the first year for Midwest UX, and it was a great conference, with content rivaling events that are much farther away. If you are interested in user experience and in the Toledo region, I highly recommend you go to Midwest UX (and/or Internet User Experience, in Ann Arbor, slated for July 16-18 - follow @internetUX for info).

To encourage people from the region to attend, I am running a little contest. The winner gets $100 off their Midwest UX registration. To enter, send me an email (to midwestux at instone dot org) with why you think you should win, in 100 words or less. I will pick my favorite on April 15th and send you a promotional code so you can go off and register and save $100. $350 is already a bargain: $250 is a steal.

There is only 1 thing I ask of the winner: write up a summary of your experience at the conference on Saturday, June 2. I will be missing that day (my daughter's high school graduation is then). Post your summary publicly (anywhere you want) so that I can see some of what I missed, and others can benefit from my $100 contribution. You can write up more than just what you learned on Saturday, of course.

Contest only open to people who live in the Toledo region (loosely defined) and have not already registered for Midwest UX. You cannot use it for workshop registration, only a regular conference pass.

Midwest UX was 3 weeks ago. I am still trying to review the presentations and the reports about the conference. My list....

Summaries, recaps and other things about the conference

• Twitter: #midwestux, @midwestux, Twubs archive.
• Johnny Holland reports: Day 1, Day 2.
• Photos and sketch notes: By Binaebi Akah, in general, Twitpics.
• Recaps by: David Farkas, David Paul Andre, Diego Pulido, Christian Manzella, Marc Sexton, Digital Life.
• Rate the speakers
• List of slides: Deborah Edwards-Onoro.
• Other things: Lanyard, Facebook group.

Slides and presentation material

• The Secret Lives of Links. Jared Spool (keynote)
• Interaction Design for Social/Mobile Innovation. Haig Armen, Chris Stone (workshop)
• ¿Dónde Está? (Where Is It?). Oscar Fernandez
• Creating Data Driven Dashboards for Web Applications. Des Traynor
• Flip This Lab! Retro-fitting An Older House As a User Experience Lab. Jackie Martinsen
• Little People, Big Challenges: UX with Kids. Carol Smith
• UX Research in the Real World: Stories from Rwanda. Veronica Erb
• Cooking UX with Cultural Leftovers. Erik Dahl
• From Cancer to Bankruptcy (recap). Brad Nunnally
• Empowering Teens through Design Education. Larissa Itomlenskis
• Lean UX: Getting Out of the Deliverables Business. Jeff Gothelf (working lunch session)
• What UX Designers Can Learn From Going Out To Eat. Jimmy Chandler (workshop)
• From Mega Website to Mobile Experience. Edward Stull & Marty Vian
• Adaptive Mobile UX Design (slide transcript). Jen Matson
• Mobile Design, Thinking Beyond Apple. Brad Colbow
• Don't Watch TV - Experience It. Brian Stone
• 10 Truths and a Lie: Answers You Need to Understand Web Analytics. Erin Jo Richey
• The Mystical Power of Descriptive Statistics. Wendy Stengel
• Fast-Track Content Strategy with Mental Models. Eric Wiley & Vince Frantz
• Creativity Through Play. Kimberly Callery
• Design for Life. Marc Rettig (keynote)
• All You Really Need To Know About Users You Learned in High School (More or Less). Dan Willis (keynote with Get down)
• MacGyver Prototyping (PDF). John Wayne Hill, Chris Basham, Wes Michaels (workshop)
• Agile's Secret Step: Discovery. Lis Hubert
• Influencing Business Using a Wall of Knowledge. Heidi Munc, Derren Hermann
• Taming the Nine-Headed Stakeholder Monster. Geoff Alday
• Winning Big in UX: Changing the Problem-Solving Culture in Organizations. Jay Morgan
• UX with Bill Hicks. Ian Fenn
• Beyond Frustration: Three Levels of Happy Design. Dana Chisnell
• Reputation Modeling to Build Smarter Objects. Bryce Glass
• Defining the User Experience of Emotion and Content. Jason Wishard
• Every UX Person Needs a Portfolio. Abby Covert (working lunch session)
• Practical Accessibility. Chris Merkel (workshop)
• "This Product Sucks!" A Sampler of Product Design Issues. Darren Kall
• The Nature of Information Architecture. Dan Klyn
• Thinking with Your Hands. Karl Fast
• Destroying the Box: Experience Design Inspiration from Frank Lloyd Wright. Joe Sokohl
• Mobile UX is a Business Decision. Bill Litfin (panel)
• Leading a Successful UX Project. Derren Hermann & Christina York (panel)
• Untitled. Jesse James Garrett (keynote)

Let me know if I missed something.

I will be at the Midwest User Experience conference on the weekend of April 9th (in downtown Columbus, Ohio). It is great to have another conference nearby that I can participate in without having to get on a plane. (Or miss any work - that sounds like a bug, not a feature.)

In just a few short months, the awesome team of mostly IxDA Columbus and COUPA volunteers have done an amazing job of getting fantastic keynotes, along with a great mix of local and "international" speakers for the rest of the program. I am helping them out, glad that I can contribute in my small way.

It is already sold out. Sorry if I sent you email in the past, got you excited about it, but you were not quick enough to get in. If you are attending from the Toledo region (or passing thru on your way from Ann Arbor, perhaps) then contact me to see if we can arrange a car pool.

If you are lucky enough to have a ticket, be sure to list yourself at Lanyard and/or Facebook so others know you are coming and you can connect with them.

There are still ways your company can be a Sponsor. So please consider that - it will be worth it.

I may organize a group excursion to the final Blue Jackets regular season home game (Saturday, April 9, 7pm). If you are interested in hanging out with your user experience colleagues at an NHL game, contact me.

Finally, if you really like the concept of a top-notch user experience conference here in this part of the world, I am interested in proposing Toledo as a future host city. Lots to figure out, but let me know if you want to try to make that happen.