I am posting this a day late, since I didn't make it in till late last night and opted to sleep instead of blog.


Yesterdays events started off with Does Design Matter? by Jeffery Zeldman, Jason Santa Maria, Joe Clark and Kelly Goto. The session talked about design and how it matters on the web in terms of success, the users experience, and traditional design. It was a very good panel with some great speakers that all offered different perspectives on the topic at hand. The final conclusion was that design does matter, imagine that, and that design for the web needs to cater to our users, their experience, the brand, and the business goals of the client.

Following that I sat in on How to Inform Design: Set Your Pants on Fire. Here Nick Finck, Jeffery Veen, and Kit Seeborg talked about the relationship between quantitative and qualitative data gathering, when/how we should use them and why they are important to the UCD process. They talked on the importance of understanding and talking to your audience to accomplish the business goals of both your client and your user. That by not knowing the tasks or needs your user is trying to get out of your website the clients goals will not be meet and your site will not be a success.

After some down home Texas BBQ, I headed back to the Keynote presentation by Ana Marie Cox. Ana talked on Blogging and Journalism and the benefits of both. It was an interesting panel but not quite what I expected.

The next panel was Creative Subplot: The Underbelly of Creativity by Ness Higson, Tim Nolan, Patrick O'Brien, and Jason McVearry. I basically showed up to this panel to meet Ness, over the past few months we have been in contact and are hoping to collaborate on a project in the near future. Other then that I was severally disappointed in this panel. It had a few laughs, showcased some great work, but provide very little real knowledge to walk away with.

I came in late to Design Eye for the Idea Guy, by Andrie Herasimchuk, Cameron Moll, Keith Robinson, Ryan Sims, and Paul Nixon, due to an interesting talk I was having in the hallway. But from what I saw this panel was very good and revealed Dirk Knemeyer's new site, which looks GREAT!

After that it was off to dinner and the after events for more food, fun, networking, and of course drinking!

I will post the happenings of todays events once I get back this evening and have all my stuff packed up for the trip home tomorrow.