Recent posts in my London IA Category

October 23, 2012

London IA announcement

If you follow the London IA twitter account, have recently visited the website, or are a fan of the Facebook page, you’ll have seen this message: “London IA is still on its holidays. As of now no plans to come back to work. So. ‘On Holiday until Further Notice’”

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May 24, 2012

“Designing the mobile wallet” - Tim Caynes at London IA

Last week we had the latest London IA evening, featuring a packed programme with an IA Summit theme, as Tim Caynes and Johanna Kollmann reprised their talks from New Orleans, and Giles Colborne provided an overview of the event. Here are my notes from Tim Caynes’ talk about designing the mobile wallet.

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May 23, 2012

“Making sense of messy problems” - Johanna Kollmann at London IA

Last week we had the latest London IA evening, featuring a packed programme with an IA Summit theme, as Tim Caynes and Johanna Kollmann reprised their talks from New Orleans, and Giles Colborne provided an overview of the event. As ever, Sense Worldwide were our hosts, and Zebra People our sponsors. I’ve already published my notes on Giles’ redux of the IA Summit, and here is what I made of Johanna’s talk.

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May 22, 2012

“It’s all about content. It’s not about content” - Giles Colborne’s IA Summit Redux at London IA

Last week we had the latest London IA evening, featuring a packed programme with an IA Summit theme, as Tim Caynes and Johanna Kollmann reprised their talks from New Orleans, and Giles Colborne provided an overview of the event. As ever, Sense Worldwide were our hosts, and Zebra People our sponsors. Here are my notes from Giles’ talk.

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March 28, 2012

“Products & products: how web and manufacturing collaborate” - Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino

Last week we held the latest London IA evening, hosted by Sense Worldwide and sponsored by Zebra People. The talks were from Warren Hutchinson and Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino. Here are my notes from Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino talking about “Products & products: how the web and manufacturing collaborate”.

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March 27, 2012

“Brand with a little b, Design with a Big D” - Warren Hutchinson at London IA

Last week we held the latest London IA evening, hosted by Sense Worldwide and sponsored by Zebra People. The talks were from Warren Hutchinson and Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino. Here are my notes from Warren Hutchinson’s talk about “Brand with a little b, Design with a Big D”

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February 10, 2012

Putting Lean UX into action

I wasn’t able to be at this month’s London IA event, which is possibly the first time I’ve ever missed it. Unavoidable, but a real shame because I had been looking forward to seeing Jeff Gothelf talk about Lean UX, and hear the debate that was sure to follow. But instead of hearing about it, I was putting it into action.

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January 25, 2012

“Verbs. Zombies. UX.” - Mary Hamilton at London IA

We don’t really do “headline” slots at London IA, but at January’s meet-up, we’d kind of figured that it would be hard for anybody to top the gun-wielding zombie antics of Mary Hamilton. “Verbs. Zombies. UX.” was her tale of running Zombie LARP, which, for the uninitiated, involves paying for the privilege of running around a deserted shopping mall trying to survive a zombie attack. Her talk explained how they try and create a real-world user experience using just a few verbs.

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January 24, 2012

“In Praise of Side Projects” - Alexander Baxevanis at London IA

Alexander Baxevanis started his talk at January’s London IA with a confession - “I’m addicted to side projects”. He went on to outline some of the benefits of having side projects, and five rules for making them work.

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January 23, 2012

“Designing the design process: Rem Koolhaas and OMA” - Sjors Timmers at London IA

Here are my notes from Sjors Timmer’s talk at January’s London IA, about the design process of OMA and OMA founder Rem Koolhaus.

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January 17, 2012

London IA and Hacks/Hackers London on 18 January

There are two great free events going on in London tomorrow if, like me, you are interested in either UX or journalism. Or the UX of journalism.

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January 5, 2012

Forthcoming events and talks

Some dates for your diary if you’d like to see me talking

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December 20, 2011

“Digital memorials for mass graves” - Jim Kosem at London IA

Last week we had the last London IA night of the year, as ever in the Sense Loft and kindly sponsored by Zebra People. Joe Muggs and Jim Kosem were speaking. Yesterday I blogged Joe’s talk. Today, here are my notes from Jim’s rather harrowing tale of designing digital monuments for mass graves.

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December 19, 2011

“Architecture to dance to” - Joe Muggs at London IA

Last week we had the last London IA night of the year, as ever in the Sense Loft and kindly sponsored by Zebra People. Joe Muggs and Jim Kosem were speaking. Here are my notes from Joe’s talk.

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November 21, 2011

Want to speak at London IA?

We are planning to kick of 2012 with a different format for January’s London IA event - we’d like an evening of four talks, no more than fifteen minutes each, on a varied diet of topics.

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Mags Hanley and Vanessa Harden at London IA

Last week we held November’s London IA evening at the Sense Loft, sponsored by Zebra People and CX Partners. Mags Hanley and Vanessa Harden were talking.

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November 4, 2011

“Arrogance in design” - Jonty Sharples at London IA

A couple of weeks back we held the latest of our London IA evenings. I’ve already blogged about Ben Bashford’s talk on “connected things”, and today I’m posting my notes from Jonty Sharple’s talk about arrogance in design.

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October 25, 2011

“Interaction design for connected things” - Ben Bashford at London IA

Last week we had the latest London IA evening, and here are my notes from Ben Bashford’s talk about “Interaction design for connected things”.

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October 4, 2011

“Doing UX for a start-up” - Tom Coombs at London IA

Tom Coombs spoke at least week’s London IA event about his experience of working on the UX for a start-up that had managed to raise a lot of cash before they had really settled on their product vision. Here are my notes from his talk.

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October 3, 2011

“Serendipity: The Hope and the Myth” - Oli Shaw at London IA

At London IA last week, Oli Shaw was reprising his EuroIA talk about serendipity. It is, he said, a lovely word on the tongue, but has been rated as one of the hardest English words to translate into another language. Here are my notes from his talk.

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June 7, 2011

"Urbicomp & the new new media" - Chris Heathcote at London IA

Just because I wasn’t blogging at the time doesn’t mean I wasn’t taking notes at events, and so I thought this week I’d post some write-ups of events I went to in April and May. This post is about Chris Heathcote’s talk at April’s London IA. It was about “urbicomp”, and the increasing pervasiveness of computing in our lives.

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June 6, 2011

"Designing for doubt" - Michael Blastland at London IA

Whilst I was taking a break from actively blogging I was still taking notes at the events I was attending, so I thought this week I’d whizz through some of the things I went to in April and May. One of the speakers at April’s London IA event was Michael Blastland. It was the second opportunity I’ve had this year to see him speak, having attended a panel session he spoke at about reporting crime statistics. For London IA, his theme was “designing for doubt”.

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April 13, 2011

"UX Communities: Starting from the beginning (slight return)"

The main reason for going over to Denver for the IA Summit was that Matthew Solle, Eric Reiss, Joe Sokohl and I were doing a very informal panel session on “UX communities: Starting from the beginning”. Matthew has blogged his round-up of the main points, and here is mine.

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April 1, 2011

"UX Communities: Starting from the beginning": #7 - Physical spaces and 'outsiders'

In preparation for today’s panel session at the IA Summit about UX communities, Matthew Solle and I have been blogging our thoughts about London IA, and what has made it a success, and what has been a failure. The final two themes I wanted to address were the idea of physical spaces and community, and the necessary role of “outsiders”.

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March 25, 2011

"UX Communities: Starting from the beginning": #6 - Professional development

Matthew Solle and I are making up half of a panel at the IA Summit in Denver. We’ll be joined on the day by Joe Sokohl and Eric Reiss. To prepare, we’ve been debating on our blogs the topic of the panel: “blah”. This is the sixth installment, looking at the role of professional development in a UX community.

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March 21, 2011

"Wireframing the city": Andrew Travers at London IA

Andrew opened by pointing out that when Matthew Solle had asked him to speak at London IA, he was pretty certain that he wanted to talk about the “Cognitive Cities” conference he had yet to attend, so it was lucky that it turned out to be good. Andrew’s talk was part-redux of things he’d seen in Berlin, and part musing on what it meant for us as UX people.

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March 18, 2011

"Strategic UX" by Leisa Reichelt at London IA

I was going to start this blog post off with a quote from Leisa Reichelt’s recent London IA talk, but she came out with so many pithy one liners that it was impossible to pick one. Leisa’s basic premise was that if you read some of the very best books about management strategy and techniques, they sound awfully familiar to anyone who has ever read a UX book. For example, they have a focus on businesses being successful by serving customers needs - a criteria for design success that we are all familiar with.

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March 14, 2011

"UX Communities: Starting from the beginning": #4 - Scarcity

Matthew Solle, Joe Sokohl, Eric Reiss and I are running a discussion panel at IA Summit 2011 called “UX Communities: Starting from the beginning”. Matthew and I have been preparing by having an online debate about what makes up a community, and how you go about forming them. Matthew kicked off part one and I responded on currybetdotnet. On Thursday Matthew added part three, and this is part four.

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March 8, 2011

"UX Communities: Starting from the beginning": A debate - part two

Matthew Solle, Joe Sokohl, Eric Reiss and I are running a discussion panel at IA Summit 2011. It’s called “UX Communities: Starting from the beginning”. Before heading to Denver, Matthew and I wanted to prepare by having a debate about what makes up a community, and how you go about forming them. Part one of this discussion can be found on Matthew’s You The User blog.

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February 17, 2011

"Change, work with, ignore, fail?" - Dan Lockton at London IA

Last Wednesday we held the latest of our London IA events. As ever it was curated and organised brilliantly by Matthew Solle. I've already posted my handwritten notes from Relly Annett-Baker's talk - she banned the use of technology whilst speaking - and today I've got a rather more conventional blog post about Dan Lockton's talk.

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February 10, 2011

My notes on Relly Annett-Baker talking at London IA - literally...

On Wednesday we held the latest London IA event and our first talk was by Relly Annett-Baker. In her second slide she issued an edict for no chewing, no running in the corridors, and no fiddling with electronic gadgets. That was my cue to do something I've been meaning to do for a while - a blog post that (almost) entirely consists of my hand-written notes.

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January 17, 2011

"Jason Mesut: Interaction Design inspired by Music Technology" at London IA

Last week at London IA, as well as Mark Plant's talk about agile and UX, Jason Mesut brought along a sneak peek into his "grotto of geek", as he showed us what user experience designers could learn from music software and hardware. Here are my notes on his talk.

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January 14, 2011

Sometimes complexity is good...

This week at London IA, Jason Mesut was talking about the way that music software and hardware design might influence UX professionals. In one of the conversations I had after his talk, I discussed how many of these interfaces would fail our classic user testing methods.

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January 13, 2011

"Mark Plant: Experiments and experience from the UX/Agile divide" at London IA

On Tuesday night we held the first London IA event of the year, and here are my notes from Mark Plant's talk explaining why wireframes are dead - "Experiments and experience from the UX/Agile divide"

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November 23, 2010

Nic Price: "Using analogy in the digital design process" at London IA

At our last London IA night, Nic Price gave an inspiring talk on how analogy could be used during the digital design process, specifically talking about how the refurbishment of London's South Bank Centre resembled the rebuilding of an intranet.

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November 18, 2010

Giles Colborne: "Writing a book about user experience" at London IA

Pretty much every time I finished a freelance contract between 2006 and 2008, I'd return to my adopted Greek home and tell my wife, "Right, now I'm going to start writing my book". I never did. Which in some ways is just as well, because having listened to Giles Colborne talk at London IA on Tuesday night, I realise that I was in no way prepared for how much work it would be.

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November 17, 2010

Managing attendee & waiting lists for IA/UX events

We had, I thought, a really good London IA evening on Tuesday. It was a good turn-out with faces old and new in the crowd, and I thought there was a good vibe about the evening. In the run-up to the night we had been a bit more strident than usual about people letting us know if they couldn't make it. Here are some thoughts on why we did that.

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July 23, 2010

"The story for complexity": Tyler Tate at London IA

At the last London IA evening, one of our speakers was Tyler Tate. He was addressing the issue of complexity in user interfaces, and making a forceful argument that neither simple nor complex were inherently or morally good or bad, but that the key to a usable UX was having the right level of complexity for the task at hand.

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July 19, 2010

"Visual note-taking": Eva-Lotta Lamm at London IA

At the last London IA mini-conference, Eva-Lotta Lamm reprised her fantastic talk about visual note-taking, complete with tea-stain sketch drawing exercises and a figure drawing lesson.

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June 7, 2010

Old and resistant to change? Why embeddable fonts make me nervous...

For some reason, the idea of embeddable fonts being available on demand as a web service gives me the heebie-jeebies. In a presentation at The Guardian last week I tried to explain why. But it is probably just because I am old and resistant to change...

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April 14, 2010

"The cult of innovation" - Andy Budd at London IA

Andy Budd finished off our recent London IA evening with an energetic and provocative talk entitled "The cult of innovation", where he argued that businesses who pursue a strategy of 'innovating' are deluding themselves that this will be the solution to their problems.

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April 13, 2010

"Psychology Of Creativity" - Claire Rowland at London IA

At the last London IA event, Claire Rowland gave a talk on the "Psychology Of Creativity", examining whether we value the right types of creativity, and including some tips on how you can help improve your own creative abilities.

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April 9, 2010

“Re-using data people have left around the web” - Glenn Jones at London IA

Glenn Jones from Madgex gave a presentation at the last London IA evening looking at "Re-using data people have left around the web". In it he showed a demo of his Ident Engine project, which uses fragments of information about your digital identity to construct a whole profile.

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April 8, 2010

"The future of web typography" - Richard Rutter at London IA

At last week's London IA gathering, Richard Rutter gave an overview of the future of typography on the web, and introduced Fontdeck as a way of delivering that experience.

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November 26, 2009

London IA Mini 4: Max Gadney - "Information isn't beautiful"

On November 11th we held the latest in our series of London IA Mini conference evenings. The hosts were EMC Conchango and our kind sponsors were Zebra People. We had a top selection of speakers - Max Gadney, Richard Sedley, Jason Mesut and Oliver Reichenstein. Today I wanted to post some of my notes and a video clip of the talk from Max. Max Gadney His talk had been billed as a 'challenge' to "much of current practice in data...
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November 9, 2009

London IA Mini IV on Wednesday night

After last month's "London IA in a pub + talks" experiment, on Wednesday we are back to having one of our regular London IA Mini events, this time hosted by EMC Conchango near London Bridge. We've got a great line-up of speakers. Richard Sedley, director of the cScape Customer Engagement Unit will be giving a debrief from the Design of Persuasion conference in Brussels, and talking about "some of the more common uses of social psychology in website design and...
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October 2, 2009

UX London redux video: Tom Coombs on Jared Spool - part 3

This is the final video clip of a series I've been publishing over the last couple of weeks. They were made at the London IA mini evening where we held a redux of the UX London conference organised by Clearleft. This bit of video is the conclusion of Tom Coombs providing a redux of Jared Spool's sessions Tom Coombs on Jared Spool The last section of Tom's talk looks at three things that Jared talked about at UX London....
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October 1, 2009

UX London redux video: Tom Coombs on Jared Spool - part 2

During August the London IA Mini event was a redux evening that concentrated on providing a distilled version of the recent UX London conference. I've been posting some video clip of the night, including Tom Coombs presenting a redux of the workshop by Donna Spencer. In his talk, Tom also covered the UX London workshop from Jared Spool. Tom Coombs on Jared Spool This clip shows Tom talking about the use of 'cute links' which don't describe their destination,...
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September 30, 2009

UX London redux video: Tom Coombs on Jared Spool - part 1

At the recent London IA redux of the UX London conference, Tom Coombs ran a session where he summarised the highlights of workshops by Donna Spencer and Jared Spool. This is the first of three video clips of him talking about Jared. Tom Coombs on Jared Spool In the course of this clip Tom explains a little about Jared's view on using the correct language for the audience, and examines some of the themes in the 'Why good content...
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September 25, 2009

UX London redux video: Tom Coombs on Donna Spencer

Back in the August the London IA mini event was a redux session of the UX London conference. As part of the evening's presentations, Tom Coombs was attempting to distill hours of workshops by Donna Spencer and Jared Spool into a 15 minute session. This video clip includes highlights some of what Tom said about Donna. Tom Coombs on Donna Spencer Tom's overview of Donna's workshop explained how she used physiological factors like the way the human eye works,...
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September 24, 2009

UX London redux video: Chris Petzny on Dan Saffer

In August the London IA mini event was a redux evening featuring cut-down versions of talks and workshops from the UX London conference. Chris Petzny gave the first redux talk of the evening, attempting to distill Dan Saffer's conference presentations into 15 minutes. Chris Petzny on Dan Saffer In this clip, Chris explains how Dan Saffer challenged the UX London audience to design a product for the blind and deaf, and used that as the springboard to explore his...
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September 16, 2009

UX London redux video: Frances Eida on sketching

Update: I mentioned Frances Eida as an inspiration for my own sketching in my talk at EuroIA 2010 in Paris. The other sketchers I mentioned as inspiring were Eva-Lotta Lamm and Anna Lena Schiller. I've been publishing a series of videos of the UX London redux evening put on in August by the London IA group. The last clip I posted was of Jane Austin and Chris Neale talking about sketching. This next excerpt features the third person from IG...
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UX London redux video: Jane Austin & Chris Neale on sketching

Last week I started publishing some video clips I made at the recent London IA event that presented a redux of the UX London conference. Amongst them I posted several excerpts from James Box's "Wireframes 2.0" session, which covered sketching and building interactive prototypes amongst other things. Today I wanted to continue the sketching theme, with a clip from the evening's final presentation by Jane Austin, Chris Neale and Frances Eida from IG Index. Jane Austin & Chris Neale on...
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September 10, 2009

UX London redux video: James Box on Wireframes 2.0 - part 5

This is the last video clip from James Box's "Wireframes 2.0" presentation at the UX London redux evening put on by the London IA group during August. James Box on Wireframes 2.0 Following James' presentation there was a Q&A session. These excerpts show his responses to questions about getting clients to "sign-off" on interactive prototypes, and contributions to the debate from Jason Mesut and Andy Budd. UX London redux video: James Box on Wireframes 2.0 - part 5 from Martin...
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September 9, 2009

UX London redux video: James Box on Wireframes 2.0 - part 4

During August the London IA Mini event was a redux evening that concentrated on providing a distilled version of the recent UX London conference. I made some video clips of the evening, and over the last couple of days I have been posting excerpts from James Box's "Wireframes 2.0" talk. James Box on Wireframes 2.0 In the last section of this redux presentation from James Box, he examines ways of documenting rich interactions like AJAX interfaces. He illustrates this...
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September 8, 2009

UX London redux video: James Box on Wireframes 2.0 - part 3

I've been posting a series of short video excerpts from the London IA redux event covering the UX London conference. This clip is the third part of the excellent "Wireframes 2.0" presentation by Clearleft's James Box. James Box on Wireframes 2.0 This clip moves Wireframes 2.0 on from sketching with pencil and paper, to making interactive prototypes. James looks at the situations where you may want or need to do this. For UX London, Clearleft made available a set...
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UX London redux video: James Box on Wireframes 2.0 - part 2

The UX London conference was the subject of a 'redux' in our most recent London IA Mini series. I've been publishing a series of video clips I made of the evening, including Andy Budd's introduction. Today I'm continuing with excerpts from "Wireframes 2.0" presented by James Box of Clearleft. James Box on Wireframes 2.0 In this part of his UX London redux talk, James looks at sketching, with some real examples from project work at Clearleft. As well as...
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September 7, 2009

UX London redux video: James Box on Wireframes 2.0 - part 1

The most recent London IA Mini evening event was a redux of the UX London conference. I've started posting some video clips I made of the evening. One of the most engaging and useful presentations was by James Box, and this is the first of a series of excerpts from his "Wireframes 2.0" redux. James Box on Wireframes 2.0 In this clip, James introduces the Wireframes 2.0 workshop that he presented with colleague Richard Rutter, and discusses how, in writing...
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UX London redux video: Andy Budd on UX London

A couple of weeks ago The Team hosted London IA Mini 3 near London Bridge. The night, kindly sponsored by Zebra People, was given over to 'redux' presentations of the recent UX London conference organised by Clearleft. As well as posting a blog-redux-of-the-redux myself, I also filmed the majority of the evening, and over the next few days I'll be posting clips including Chris Petzny, Tom Coombs, Chris Neale, Francis Eida, Jane Austin and James Box. I wanted to start...
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September 3, 2009

London IA Mini Conference III: UX London Redux

It seems an age since it took place, but a couple of weeks ago we held the third London IA Mini Conference. This time the venue was a space near London Bridge donated by The Team, and the theme of the evening was a redux of the UX London conference organised by Clearleft. The event was kindly sponsored by Zebra People. Andy Budd on the future of UX London Andy Budd of Clearleft opened the evening, talking about how UX...
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