WUD’s Up?

The annual World Usability Day (WUD) is on November 8, 2012. WUD is a collection of events streamed live around the globe (for more information, go to http://www.worldusabilityday.org/). Microsoft and the University of Washington’s Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering are proud to continue our tradition of co-hosting the Puget Sound WUD event.

Join us to get inspired by talks about groundbreaking UX research, plus network with old and new friends. This year, the topic is centered around what we as consumers and businesses need from financial systems and other systems requiring a trustworthy experience. We rely so much on services, applications and devices to be reliable, secure, and accessible. As a member of the Trustworthy Computing Accessibility group, I’m especially excited about the presentations diving into inclusive research and design.

Program

We have an amazing lineup of speakers from Microsoft, the University of Washington, and the local User Experience community. The event will be in the Microsoft Conference Center in the McKinley room. For details and late-breaking changes, go to our event’s WUD site.

10:30   Registration
11:00   Event welcome
11:05   Keynote address – Mike Ehrenberg, Microsoft Technical Fellow and Chief Technology Officer for Microsoft Business Solutions
11:30   Lightning Talks
– Putting Customer Focus Front-and-Center for a Technology-Focused Team – Susan Mings & Ken Coleman, Microsoft
– Chasing the True Number: The Financial Analyst Experience in the Corporate Environment – Rajesh Kalidindi & Eric Brown, Microsoft
– Cloud Computing Adoption for High-Performance Computing Financial Software – Ryan Baker, Microsoft
12:15   Lunch
12:30   Lightning Talks
-Thinking Outside of the Label – Jenny Lay-Flurrie, Microsoft
-Agile UX Design and Research – Robert Graf, Microsoft
-Top 10 accessibility Obstacles in Web-based Applications & How to Avoid Them! – Candace Soderston, User Experience Consultant
-Exploring UX Opportunities before User Evaluation is Possible – Katie Derthick, University of Washington
1:30     Poster Break
1:45     Lightning Talks
-Visualizing Sustainable Growth – Aaron Louie, UX Ninja
-It Doesn’t Matter Until It’s Real – Cindy Alvarez, Microsoft
-Going to Where the Users Are: Evaluating the Mobile Experience – Emma Rose, AnthroTech
-Tea & Sympathy: Crafting the New User Experience of Wikipedia – Jonathan Morgan, University of Washington / Wikimedia Foundation
-Designing Accessible Elections: Highlights from the Accessible Elections Design Workshop – Jenny Greeve, AnthroTech
3:00     Social mixer & Posters
3:30     Tours of MS UX Labs (including the Inclusive Innovation Showroom)

Participating

Prior to the event, UW Students and non-Microsoft employees register online. During the event, be part of the backchannel discussions on Twitter using #wudms2012.

If you can’t attend in person, you can view the event live. The streaming link will be posted at our event’s WUD site.

-Posted by Annuska Perkins – Senior Program Manager, Accessibility