Refresh the Triangle

Monday, August 09, 2010

Refresh 030 — Rapid Prototyping and Customer Development:  The Hacker’s Guide to Software Design

Durham, NC — Thu, Aug 26, 2010, 6:30-8:00PM

With current technology, it is easy to build too much software, too fast. You can quickly get into a client project without helping them clearly think through their needs and goals. It is also possible to spend so much time planning a project that you never get to the hard work of actually building it.

Rapid prototyping and customer development come to our aid here. The concept is simple. Build the smallest thing possible that is at the core of the business idea and do it in a way that gives a sense of what the whole product will be. Then get it to your clients and encourage them to talk with their customers about it. Then rinse and repeat.

John will give a brief introduction and the describe techniques for putting the concept into practice. In particular, he’ll talk about using wireframes, paper prototypes, HTML prototypes, and dummy applications, as well as some designer to developer work flows.

Speaker:
John W. Long is a software developer and designer. He spends most of his time on the design side, but he can’t get away from dabbling in Ruby and Javascript. He is passionate about user-driven design and helping clients build successful businesses. John is the proprietor of http://wiseheartdesign, the creator of Radiant CMS, and an active contributor to open source.

Location:
Relevance
200 North Mangum Street
Suite 204
Durham, NC 27701

Tuesday, July 06, 2010

Refresh 029 — Focus and Empathy: Two Keys to Designing Great User Experiences

Cary, NC — Thu, Jul 22, 2010, 6:30-8:00PM

OK, so this “user experience” thing is supposed to be really important. From the tiniest start-ups to the mega-corporations, everyone wants to create products and services that are joyful to use, widely adopted, and much-loved by customers. But how do we actually go about creating great experiences for our customers? While design (including interaction, visual, and information design) is a critical component, many design teams fail to take full advantage of strategic thinking and user research to inform their work.

Let’s get up to speed on these critical practices. I’ll discuss strategy as a process of focus, and research as a process of empathy. For each area, I’ll present some key approaches that can help shift your perspective and embrace these modes of thinking. You’ll leave with a set of resources and activities for beginning to explore the use of strategy and research in your work — so you can help make your product or service better.

Speaker:
Abe Crystal, Ph.D., is a principal at MoreBetterLabs, a small but feisty company dedicated to creating a better Web through design. We’re currently developing our first product, ruzuku. Ruzuku helps passionate experts (such as authors, speakers, and coaches) create online learning communities. In addition, we work with clients (such as Duke University, NC State University, and NC LIVE), to improve their user experience. We’ve designed online communities, digital libraries, and ecommerce sites. MoreBetterLabs is also presenting “UX 101”, a 2-day boot camp introduction to user experience methods, in September. See http://morebetterlabs.com/ux101/ for details.

Location:
Railinc
7001 Weston Parkway
Third Floor
Cary, NC 27513

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Refresh 028 — Around “Hello World” in 30 Days

Durham, NC — Thu, Jun 24, 2010, 6:30-8:00PM

Earlier this year, feeling overwhelmed by all the new technology filling the pages of his favorite tech blogs, David decided to commit himself to spending an hour with a new technology every day for a month. In this talk, he’ll share his experiences and explore the nature of motivation and what it takes to stay ahead of the programming curve. You can read about the project at http://techmonth.tumblr.com.

Speaker:
David Eisinger is a senior web developer at Viget Labs. He specializes in Ruby on Rails, javascript, and RESTful web services.

Location:
Rigsbee Hall
208 Rigsbee Ave.
Durham, NC 27701

Monday, May 03, 2010

Refresh 027 — Learn to Speak Interface: Creating Conversations Between Developers and Designers

Raleigh, NC — Thur, May 27, 2010, 6:30-8:00PM

You’re a developer. You write code. But your users don’t see your code. They only see the user interface. We’re going to have a conversation about how to think through your product’s user interface. We’ll focus on a few analytical techniques you can use to analyze your user interface and to communicate with a designer.

Speaker:
Jess’s fascination with rapidly prototyping products led him to building applications for the web where he contributed to several startups. 60% developer, 40% designer, and 100% ninja, he brings a singular focus on the end-user to any product he works on. Jess is a principal at Relevance.

Location:
Fragment Labs
226 Fayetteville Street
Raleigh, NC 27601

Friday, March 05, 2010

Refresh 026 — Delivering a Responsive UI

Durham, NC — Thur, Mar 25, 2010, 6:30-8:00PM

As user interfaces get more complex and browsers become home to more and more application logic, front-end performance becomes a pressing concern. Add mobile to the mix, with its slow connections and brutal cache limitations, and front-end developers have a host of challenges on their hands these days. It’s no longer enough to be able to wrangle HTML and CSS into submission—front-end developers have to understand caching, cache-busting, HTTP response codes, combination and minification of files, lazy loading, and more. At this month’s meeting, we’ll talk about the know-how that today’s front-end developers need to bring to the table to develop rich, performant, scalable web experiences.

Speaker:
Rebecca Murphey is an independent front-end architecture consultant, helping companies understand, manage, and improve the client side of their applications. She is an active member of the jQuery community, a contributor to the upcoming jQuery Cookbook from O’Reilly, and a regular contributor to JSMag, the magazine for JavaScript professionals. She lives in Durham with her partner, two dogs, and two cats.

Location:
Rigsbee Hall
208 Rigsbee Ave.
Durham, NC 27701

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Refresh 025 — The Luxury of Contemplation: Why we owe ourselves time to reflect on our work

Durham, NC — Thur, Feb 25, 2010, 6:30-8:00PM

This is not a talk about sunset meetings or debriefs. It’s a talk about spending sweet, aimless, one-on-one time with your medium. I’ll speak about why I think it’s important to reflect on your work, the tools and systems I use to facilitate “productive” contemplation, and what I’ve found to be most challenging and rewarding in my efforts.

Speaker:

Beck Tench is a simplifier, illustrator, story teller and 
technologist. Formally trained as a graphics designer at the 
University of North Carolina’s School of Journalism and Mass
 Communication, she has spent her career elbow deep in web work of all 
sorts – from the knowledge work of information architecture and design 
to the hands dirty work of writing code and testing user experiences.
 Currently, she serves as Director for Innovation and Digital
 Engagement at the Museum of Life and Science in Durham, NC where she
 studies and experiments with how visitors and staff use technology to
 plan, enhance and share their everyday lives.


Location:
Viget Labs
202 Rigsbee Avenue
Second Floor
Durham, NC 27701

Monday, December 21, 2009

Refresh 024 — HTML 5 Now!

Durham, NC — Thur, Jan 28, 2010, 6:30-8:00PM

HTML 5 provides us with all sorts of new abilities as web designers. We have new tags and attributes, richer form fields, client-side storage, and more. We’ll talk about how you can start using these features today and how to use them in a cross-browser friendly manner.

Speaker:
As the development director of Viget Labs‘ Durham office, Clinton Nixon institutes Agile development methodologies to deliver RoR-based custom solutions to clients. Clinton has more than a decade of experience in the industry and is an enthusiast for test-driven development, esoteric computer languages, and kittens.

Location:
Relevance
200 North Mangum Street
Suite 204
Durham, NC 27701

Thursday, November 05, 2009

Refresh 023 — Delivering a Responsive UI

Durham, NC — Thur, Dec 3, 2009, 6:30-8:00PM

Update (Posted 12/1/2009):

Unfortunately, Rebecca is down for the count with back problems, so we’re going to simply meet up for drinks this month. Join us at City Beverage during the usual Refresh time slot of 6:30-8:00pm. Hope to see you there:

Thanks to iContact for the willingness to host again, and get better quick Rebecca! We’ll look forward to your presentation at a later date:

As user interfaces get more complex and browsers become home to more and more application logic, front-end performance becomes a pressing concern. Add mobile to the mix, with its slow connections and brutal cache limitations, and front-end developers have a host of challenges on their hands these days. It’s no longer enough to be able to wrangle HTML and CSS into submission—front-end developers have to understand caching, cache-busting, HTTP response codes, combination and minification of files, lazy loading, and more. At this month’s meeting, we’ll talk about the know-how that today’s front-end developers need to bring to the table to develop rich, performant, scalable web experiences.

Speaker:
Rebecca Murphey is an independent front-end architecture consultant, helping companies understand, manage, and improve the client side of their applications. She is an active member of the jQuery community, a contributor to the upcoming jQuery Cookbook from O’Reilly, and a regular contributor to JSMag, the magazine for JavaScript professionals. She lives in Durham with her partner, two dogs, and two cats.

Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Refresh 022 — Designing Outside the Browser

Raleigh, NC — Thur, Oct 22, 2009, 6:30-8:00PM

As designers, we’re constantly looking around for sources of inspiration and influence. Spending all day working on the web, it can be tempting to limit one’s gaze to other websites. While many of the challenges we face on the web are unique, in this talk, we’ll look beyond the browser window; at the techniques designers in other disciplines have used to solve their unique design problems and how we can apply those lessons to our own work on the web.

Speaker:
Richard Powell is a freelance web designer working in Chapel Hill. Working solo and as a Terralien crew member, Rich has had the opportunity to design and build sites for saddle pad vendors and underwater photographers, acupuncturists and investment firms, software consultants and massage therapists. He enjoys the challenges of finding just the right arrangement of pixels and tags to fit each client. When the glow of the LCD becomes too much, he loves taking a quick break to play “Hullaballoo” with his wife and 2 year old daughter.

Location:
Capstrat, Inc.
1201 Edwards Mill Road
First Floor
Raleigh, NC 27607

Wednesday, September 09, 2009

Refresh 021 — The Future of Data

Durham, NC — Thur, Sep 24, 2009, 6:30-8:00PM

The future of data is more uncertain than ever – traditional, server-based relational databases are being assaulted from all sides, by document-oriented databases and other forces, and by HTML5 and client-side storage. Come and learn about these attacks on the status quo, and maybe we can all bring peace to the database landscape, together.

Speaker:
At Viget Labs, Ben builds Rails applications for Web 2.0 startups (for the past four years, exclusively in Ruby and Rails). He’s spoken at a number of conferences on Ruby, Rails, and programming in general, and is the author of Practical REST on Rails 2 Projects (from Apress).

Location:
Bronto Software, Inc.
Washington Building
324 Blackwell Street
Suite 410
Durham, NC 27701

Monday, August 03, 2009

Refresh 020 — Profitable Design

Durham, NC — Thur, Aug 27, 2009, 6:30-8:00PM

Web design should be seen as one more way to make your business more profitable, or your organization more successful. Many times when a website isn’t performing, a complete redesign is proposed, but so often that is a long, expensive and ultimately, unrealistic option. The trick is to know where design changes make a big impact, and where they yield only incremental improvement. We’ll look at some concrete examples of design techniques that guide customers into profitable behavior, without sacrificing usability or aesthetics. The goal of the talk is to identify a few areas where small design changes can have big impact, and build a small tool kit of profitable design techniques.

Speaker:
Ferol Vernon is currently the director of product development at ReverbNation, a venture-backed, web start up that provides marketing and distribution services for musicians. A proud geek, Ferol has always had an unhealthy passion for all things web/tech/design.  Ferol graduated from Boston University with a degree in ancient Greek and Roman history, and received his MBA from Duke’s Fuqua School of business with a focus in technology and entrepreneurship.

Location:
The Solution Center
1101 Slater Road, Suite 200
2nd Floor, Brighton Hall
Durham, NC 27703

Friday, June 26, 2009

Refresh 019 — Edward Tufte and Information Design Strategies for the Web

Durham, NC — Thur, Jul 23, 2009, 6:30-8:00PM

“Confusion and clutter are failures of design, not attributes of information. And so the point is to find design strategies that reveal detail and complexity - rather than to fault the data for an excess of complication.” --Edward Tufte.

No matter how sophisticated the technology nor pleasing the design, your Web visitors are really interested in one thing. (No, not that.) They’re after great content like your essay, your photo, your widget, your tutorial. It’s what makes the Web so great: exploring, learning, and sharing what we know. And the task of a designer - whether of user interfaces, graphics, data or type - is to present this information appropriately and elegantly; to remove obstacles to understanding, not introduce them.

In this presentation, Nathan Huening first presents an overview of the work of information design expert Edward Tufte and then discusses concrete applications and examples for applying his principles of analytical design to the Web. Selected themes include: contrast and meaning in design, avoiding “chartjunk” and “computer administrative debris”, clarity and clutter, the value of aesthetics, and simplicity vs. minimalism.

Edward Tufte is Professor Emeritus of statistics, information design, interface design and political economy at Yale University. In addition to his touring workshops, Mr Tufte has written four books on the display of information and analytical design: The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (1983), Envisioning Information (1990), Visual Explanations (1997), and Beautiful Evidence (2006).

Speaker:
Nathan Huening is a principal at Sprocket House, a creative firm based in Chapel Hill that specializes in Web and print design. When he’s not writing client copy or puzzling over UI design, he enjoys making messes in the kitchen and falling off his unicycle to the bemusement of curious onlookers.

Location:
Rigsbee Hall
208 Rigsbee Avenue
Durham, NC 27701

Monday, June 15, 2009

Refresh 018 — Everything You’ve Been Told About Entrepreneurship is Wrong!

Durham, NC — Thur, June 25, 2009, 6:30-8:30PM

We’ll be joining forces with Startup Drinks and North Carolina Startup Blog this month, so you’ll hear a short bit from Marc DeWalle on those efforts. Also, be sure to follow in the Startup Drinks tradition and BYOB. Light snacks will be provided.

For the main presentation, Robbie Allen will share how his experience as an entrepreneur runs counter to much of the conventional wisdom in the startup community. He’ll talk about starting StatSheet and what it has been like to build a web startup from scratch in the Triangle.

Robbie is the sole founder and developer of the StatSheet Network, a collection of websites that do interesting things with sports stats.  He’s authored or co-authored a dozen books with O’Reilly Media on a variety of topics and has degrees from MIT in Information Technology and Engineering Management.

Location:
Viget Labs
202 Rigsbee Avenue
Second Floor
Durham, NC 27701

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Refresh 017 — The Semantic Web

Cary, NC — Thur, May 28, 2009, 6:30-8:00PM

Phillip Rhodes is primary architect of the open-source social-networking platform OpenQabal. His previous experience includes software engineer with Lulu.com and software engineering positions with Ineo USA, Red Hat, IBM and Voice Data Solutions.

The Semantic Web is the World Wide Web Consortium‘s vision of a common framework that allows data to be shared and reused across application, enterprise, and community boundaries. It is a collaborative effort led by W3C with participation from a large number of researchers and industrial partners.  The Semantic Web is about common formats for integration and combination of data drawn from diverse sources, where the original Web mainly concentrated on the interchange of documents.

Location:
The Atrium
11000 Regency Pkwy
Cary, NC 27518

Monday, March 16, 2009

Refresh 016 — Stand-Up Hour

Carrboro, NC — Thur, Mar 26, 2009, 6:30-8:00PM

In true “we’re-being-hosted-by-a-comedy-theater” style, we’ll take a break from the formal presentations this month for some improv web sharing. We’ll take 45-60 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.

Location:
DSI Comedy Theater
200 N. Greensboro Street (at Carr Mill Mall)
Entrance behind Elmo’s Diner and Fleet Feet
Carrboro, NC 27510