Thursday, Dec 4, 2008
6:30 - 8:00pm
Steve Champeon and Matt Henry of Hesketh.com will give a brief overview of Progressive Enhancement and then will bring us up to date on how it’s being affected/transformed by Web 2.0 and interactive Web applications.
Location:
Pilot Mill Building
1101 Haynes Street
Suite 109
Raleigh, NC 27604
When: 6pm - 9pm — Thursday, November 13th 2008
Where: Ruvane Auditorium at GSK
Cost: Free to all! Food and drink will be served! Please sign up so we have an idea of how big the crowd will be.
How: Register at http://triupa.org/2008WorldUsability (if you’re a TriUPA member, be sure to click “Login to Register” once you get to the RSVP page)
About the event:
TriUPA will celebrate World Usability Day this year on Thursday, November 13th, at GSK. We have created a program that centers around UPA’s theme of transportation. We are fortunate to have three speakers who have worked in the transportation field and can enlighten us about the usablity challenges in products and services in that area. We have organized a Design Challenge, in which three teams are applying user-centered design to transportation problems. The teams will be presenting their results at WUD. You cannot afford to miss this year’s WUD, so please sign up now!
6 pm - 6:45 pm: Dinner and socializing
Make sure to check out our UX trading card game. Everyone who builds a complete set of cards will be eligible for a raffle!
6:45 pm - 7:45 pm: Transportation and Usability
* Talk by Graham James, Professional Transportation Planner
* Talk by Beth Mcgough, Human Factors Engineer, JCI, Michigan
* Talk by Alex Hussain, Design Engineer, HumanCentric
7:45 pm - 8 pm: Break and dessert
8 pm - 9 pm: Presentations by teams competing in the Design Challenge
* Modular design system for bus stops
* Wayfinding and information displays for bus travel
* And one more… (topic TBD)
Presentation of prizes for UX Card game winner and Design Challenge winners.
Thanks to TriUPA’s sponsors for making our World Usability Day celebration possible:
* Lulu
* GSK
* BlueCross BlueShield
* Insight
* Lenovo
* Hesketh.com
* Capstrat
* User-View
* SAS
FA is looking for an intern or part-time programmer to join our web team. You’ll need to be a strong communicator with skills in Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP and AJAX, as well as producing standards compliant XHTML and CSS. Working Knowledge of OOP (object oriented programming) and Agile development principles and experience with e-commerce and content management solutions is important. Background knowledge of Information Architecture, Flash/Actionscript and other development platforms (Java, Ruby on Rails, .NET) would be a bonus. You’ll need to be passionate about problem solving, user centered design and usability, and capable of leading complex development projects from spec to launch.
Customize existing templates displaying community based content.
Interface with senior developer to ensure proper customization of the established tools.
Work with in house designers to establish website deployment.
Demonstrate the ability to assess the functional project requirements and translate that information into the technical development of the website.
Perform maintenance and updates to existing websites.
Proactively initiate, develop, and maintain effective working relationships with team members.
JOB REQUIREMENTS:
Knowledge of Flash, Actionscript 2&3.
Strong knowledge of XHTML, CSS, PHP, and MySQL is required.
Working Knowledge of AJAX, Joomla and XML is preferred.
Bachelor’s degree in computer science or related field preferred.
Must be a self-motivated, quick learner with enthusiasm for web development and new technologies.
Along with your resume, please include a link to projects you have worked on, with details describing your involvement.
Compensation is commensurate with experience.
Contact Fabrik Agency at:
resumes@fabrikagency.com
Thursday, Oct 23, 2008
6:30 - 8:00pm
Clinton Nixon, senior developer at Viget Labs, will present and facilitate this talk about how to avoid trivial, repetitive tasks and increase your productivity with your computer. We’ll cover both software you already have, and free/cheap software you might not. If you’ve got a tip of your own, bring it! We’ll have some free time to share at the end.
Location:
Carrboro Creative Coworking
205 Lloyd Street, Suite 101
Carrboro, NC 27510
Job Description: Web Producer / Developer
Company:
Merge Records, founded in 1989, is an independent music label based in downtown Durham. We release approximately 30 albums (in LP, CD, and digital formats) each year, representing artists from the U.S., Canada, and Europe
Description:
The Web Producer / Developer is solely responsible for the ongoing maintenance, updating, and coding of mergerecords.com, including the ecommerce portion of the site. In this capacity, he/she supports company-wide marketing campaigns and goals, coordinating with the marketing, press, and digital promotions departments. The Web Producer / Developer is also responsible for working with third-party developers as needed. This position reports to the Art Director.
Responsibilities include:
• ensuring timely updates and producing content for mergerecords.com
• maintaining email marketing campaign strategies, tools, and basic analytics
• site testing and troubleshooting
• ensuring a consistent user interface and appearance
• maintaining and enforcing a site-wide style guide
• ensuring copy and photo editing for news and newsletters
• building and maintaining digital press kits
• planning and executing promotional programs for the online store
• analyzing site metrics and revenue streams and reporting to marketing department
Ideally, this person can also provide basic IT support for our small office, which includes 15 computers (Macs and PCs), as well as a server. As such, he/she will act as the first contact for all IT issues, and coordinate with external IT personnel when necessary.
Skills & Abilities:
• Experience in developing standards-compliant HTML, CSS and Javascript.
• Experience with PHP/MYSQL and Javascript libraries (such as JQuery), AJAX.
• Preferred: Working knowledge of Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Fireworks; experience working with typography.
• Experience administering client PCs and Macs in a networked environment, Windows Small Business Server administration; maintaining company backup software.
Contact:
Please submit letter of interest and PDF of resumé to maggie at merge records dot com. No phone calls.
We are excited to announced the second event in TriUPA’s new training series! These events will provide cutting-edge, industrial-strength, knock-your-socks-off UX training in TriUPA’s four focus areas: usability testing, user research, interaction design, and information architecture. This 1-day course is aimed at anyone (developers, user interface designers, usability engineers, information architects, graphic designers, software end-users and end-user managers, marketers, trainers, etc.) who has an interest in helping their organization achieve end user productivity (i.e., efficiency) through the design of software tools. Find out more.
Thursday, Sep 25, 2008
6:30 - 8:00pm
Simon Brown has been a software developer for more years than he cares to admit, currently specializing in the development of large scale web applications. He will discuss the new, open, and inexpensive encryption hardware Yubikey. We’ll look at ways it can be combined with open source or your own software to put a new twist on the problems of authentication. Come along and learn how to integrate encrypted one-time-passwords into your next software project. Simon promises not to go too deeply into hardware or cryptography details ... unless someone asks.
Location:
Viget Labs
202 Rigsbee Ave, 2nd Floor
Durham, NC 27701
Last night’s Refresh on Social Design Patterns was both informative and thought-provoking. Jackson shared some brief but valuable history on design patterns in general, and then led us through some of the current thinking and examples surrounding social design patterns. One which raised a number of eyebrows was the “fake follow”, which looks to now be a reality rather than a discussion. Anti-Patterns were also a hot topic, and the follow-up discussion centered largely around many of the bad patterns that have been identified. There will be more resources to follow when Jackson is able to connect us to his slides, but in the meantime, check out Yahoo’s design pattern library or Chris Messina’s flickr collection of design patterns as general design pattern resources.
Thanks again to Jackson for preparing such an engaging presentation, and to Jeff and Calvert Holdings for being such amazing hosts and showing us such a good time.
The Refresh site made it into Function’s post from a month or so ago on 32 Examples of Websites with a Brave Colour Scheme. Some cool examples in the article, check it out.
August 28, 2008
6:30-8:00PM
Calvert Holdings, Inc.
1225 Crescent Green, Suite 115
Cary, North Carolina 27518
Jackson Fox, user experience designer at Viget Labs, shares:
These days it seems like every new site, and even venerable old sites, are embracing social features. We have dozens of friends lists, more inboxes than we can count, libraries of avatars, and everything can be shared with anyone. In the process we’ve had to struggle with loss of privacy, new security challenges, and new forms of online etiquette.
As social software evolves, we’re starting to see emerging patterns of behavior and design. We’ll take a look at some of these emerging social design patterns, both good and bad, and look ahead at the patterns that we still need to create.
This month’s Refresh the Triangle 009 was our quarterly show-and-tell meetup, where we geek out on some of the share interesting news, valuable secrets, hot tips, neat tools, or whatever else happens to pop into our heads.
Clinton Nixon kicked things off with a really-fast recap of OSCON 2008 where he gave a tutorial on building Rails plugins. He also recommended Douglas Crockford’s new book Javascript: The Good Parts.
Mindy Wagner shared two new sites she’s been using — PatternTap is a collection of web interface patterns and examples, and ScrnShots is a site for sharing and tagging screenshots. Both are great resources when you’re looking for some design inspiration, or if you’re interested in building out your own library of inspiring designs.
Casey was recently introduced to the prototyping tool Axure and gave us a tour of the kind of wireframes he’s been building with it. Axure lets you build interactive prototypes in a GUI designer, and then export those prototypes to HTML.
Casey also recommended SpringLoops, hosted Subversion service with some nice tools for deploying web apps and connecting to Basecamp, and IE Tester, a tool for running multiple IE versions. IE Testing lets you show versions side-by-side, but seems to be a bit rough around the edges still.
I attempted to demo the slick new user testing tool Silverback from Clearleft, but the projector refused to cooperate. Instead, I talked about using Ethnio and UserVue for remote usability testing, and demoed Balsamiq, a flash-based wireframing tool.
Following up on our Silverback discussion, Nathan talked about his new favorite screencasting tool - Screenflow. Screenflow does all the standard recording tricks, but also includes a decent video editor with effects for panning, zooming, and highlighting user actions.
Lastly, Michale Kimsal was nice enough to start our very own Refresh the Triangle room on FriendFeed.
Thanks everyone who came out and shared with us! You can check out photos from Refresh 009 on Flickr.
Ironworks is still growing! We are looking for a Web Strategist who can work closely with our creative and technical teams while leading the delivery of client-specific work.
This individual will participate in the delivery and sales process of User Experience consulting engagements. Engagements broadly fall within the category of:
• Web and E-Commerce Strategy
• Web Site and Intranet Design & Development (including CMS and Portal solutions)
• Usability Testing
• Online Marketing
Engagement work is diverse, often including strategy, primary and secondary research, competitive analyses, customer profiles, site optimization, and more. Project management responsibilities are also required on occasion. Core Duties/Responsibilities include the following:
• Scopes and participates in the selling of consulting engagements
• Consults with and delivers results to clients within tight time constraints that consistently meet or exceed client expectations
• Collaborates with clients and internal teams to identify solutions that enable clients to achieve business and marketing objectives
• Interviews and interacts with senior level client executives and sponsors, linking these key stakeholders’ objectives to project efforts
• Works closely with Creative, Technology and Project Management groups to provide input and ensure business objectives are met
• Leads the delivery of client-specific deliverables such as: Target Audience Analyses, Competitive Analyses, Expert Site Reviews, Web Strategies, Implementation Plans
• Works with clients to develop sites that attract, engage, and retain customers
• Facilitates and coordinates primary research, including focus groups, usability testing and surveys
• Contributes to the growth of the User Experience team by identifying opportunities and new service areas
Required Skills & Experience
• Strong understanding of the Web, the role of User Experience and the relationship between User Experience and Technology
• Familiarity with online business and what makes sites successful
• Familiarity with marketing and branding principles
• Ability to develop fact-based strategic insights that effectively communicate the value of ideas and approach to both clients and prospects
• Grasp industry and competitor information and integrate that knowledge into recommendations and approach
• Solid writing and interpersonal communication skills in both raising questions and describing and clarifying findings
• Demonstrated experience in developing and leading presentations at multiple levels of management
• Strong client services and client engagement skills
• Strong project management and time management skills
• College degree required
• 5+ years relevant work experience
• Experience working for an Interactive Agency or Ad Agency is helpful.
Ironworks is a consulting services firm that doesn’t believe in big-bang approaches or seemingly endless sales pitches. We provide the flexibility and dedication of a smaller firm combined with the broad experience and deep expertise of a large consultancy. Ironworks hires smart, honest people who measure personal success through the success of our clients. Our mission is simple: never fail a client. Learn more about who we are and what we do at www.ironworks.com. Apply online at http://www.ironworks.com/company/careers.htm, or send resume to cnicolls@ironworks.com for immediate consideration!
Durham, NC — Mon, Sept 15, 2008, 9:00AM-5:00PM
Are you interested in making prototyping a key part of your design process? Or do you currently practice prototyping and need some fresh ideas?
This highly detailed, practical, and hands on workshop will provide a framework for creating and testing prototypes. We’ll discuss what prototyping is, when to use it, when to use other methods, and what to expect.
This is the first event in TriUPA’s new training series.
Hello all:
I’ve got a friend who needs some one-off work doing some wordpress upgrades, itunes/podcast tweaking, and a few other housekeeping chores.
I don’t think I have the time to handle this and am wondering if someone else in the area can help. He’s in the Raleigh area, and though I think this might be able to be all done remotely, meeting face to face once might help both of you get a handle on what’s needed faster.
Email me at mgkimsal@gmail.com if you’re available to help.
Thanks.
215 William Penn Plaza, Durham 27704 — Thurs, Jul 31, 2008, 6:30-8:00PM
As we’re trying to do once each quarter, we’ll take a break from the formal presentations this month to have a group share. We’ll take 30-45 minutes to geek out on some of the latest web industry news and share some personal favorites, valuable secrets, tips, tools, or whatever you feel could benefit the group.
Come ready to share anything you’d like — a headline or news item, a site, a tool, a snippet of code, a device, a book excerpt — anything large or small that you feel is current and elevates our web knowledge. And don’t think it has to be entirely unique (as in no one else knows about it already), it’ll kill the vibe. Just come with something that you know has been valuable/noteworthy to you, and don’t over-think it. It can be as quick as sharing a URL and a sentence about why we should visit the site. Or it can be as long as 5 minutes in a text editor demonstrating a few lines of code.
So stop for a few minutes before you head out and think of something to share. Do that, come relaxed, and the results will be sweet. See you there.
Independence Park Apartments
(mini-movie theater!)
215 William Penn Plaza
Durham NC, 27704