Fred Beecher

User Experience Designer, The Nerdery

Fred Beecher has been working in User Experience for 15 years. In that time he’s seen UX mature from a field struggling to prove its value to one driving an explosion of innovation and economic growth. To help feed the ever-increasing demand this explosion has sparked, Fred designed and implemented the UX apprenticeship program at The Nerdery in Minneapolis, MN.

Fred is also known for being an outspoken advocate for iterative design methods, especially prototyping. In 2007, he authored the first official Axure training program, which he ran until 2012. He has written numerous articles and blog posts on prototyping and iterative design, and he has spoken on these topics at design conferences worldwide.

For more, keep up with Fred on Twitter as @fred_beecher.

Jared Spool

Founder, User Interface Engineering, & Co-founder, Centre Center

Jared Spool is the founder of User Interface Engineering (UIE), the largest usability research organization of its kind in the world. If you’ve ever seen Jared speak about usability, you know that he’s probably the most effective and knowledgeable communicator on the subject today. He’s been working in the field of usability and design since 1978, before the term “usability” was ever associated with computers.

For more, keep up with Jared at uie.com or on Twitter as @jmspool.

Jen Myers

Curriculum Director of Software Developer Content, Pluralsight

Jen Myers is a technologist, speaker and educator, and currently a Curriculum Director of Software Developer Content at Pluralsight. She has been involved with Girl Develop It, an organization that provides introductory programming classes for women, as a chapter leader, instructor and advisor since 2011 and founded a series of mother/daughter coding workshops called Code and Cupcakes Chicago. She has spoken widely about design, development and diversity, and focuses on finding new ways to make both technology and technology education accessible to everyone.

For more, keep up with Jen at jenmyers.net or on Twitter as @antiheroine.

Adventures in Prototyping: How To Make Simple, Solid HTML/CSS Prototypes

You need a prototype and you need it fast. Chances are, you’d also like it to look nice, be built on solid code and represent both the functionality and feel of the final intended product. With a good foundational knowledge of cutting-edge markup practices, design principles and readily available tools, it is in fact possible. This presentation will provide a look at the static site generators and style frameworks available, how to pick the right ones for your projects, and the process of using them to create quick, beautiful, representative prototypes.

Mari Luangrath

CEO & Founder, Foiled Inc.

Mari Luangrath is best known for her dynamic speaking style, in which she shares stories about starting and growing Chicago’s Foiled Cupcakes. Starting the company using social media as its only form of advertising, Mari grew the business to revenue numbers 600 percent higher than originally projected.

Even without a traditional storefront, Foiled Cupcakes is Chicago’s most buzzed about cupcake operation. By marketing via Twitter and Facebook (totally by accident), Foiled is now Chicago’s cupcake darling, comfortably positioning themselves as the corporate go-to for sweet treats thanks to social media.

A sought-after international speaker and featured on national media outlets (Investors Business Daily, Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur Magazine, Business Week, to name a few), Mari’s authenticity and passion towards business strategy and networking has resulted in an impressive client list, including over 100 Fortune 500 companies.

Prototyping Cupcakes: Taking Delicious from Local to National

Now shipping their sweets nationally, Foiled has undertaken their biggest challenge to date–sending delicious cupcakes in a box, while keeping the product and brand experience rich and unique… and still remaining competitive from a cost perspective. Mari and her team have successfully navigated this space, using pastry experience, customer data, trial and error, storymapping, and a strategic partnership with one of the biggest pharmaceutical shipping companies in the world–in order to do so profitably.

Max Temkin

Co-Creator, Cards Against Humanity

Max Temkin is a designer from Chicago, Il. He’s worked for good causes like Obama for America and the Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation, and makes the games Cards Against Humanity, Humans vs. Zombies, and Werewolf. The Chicago Sun Times said that his business has “the sophistication of a lemonade stand.” Max has a degree in philosophy from Goucher College.

For more, keep up with Max at maxistentialism.com or on Twitter as @maxtemkin.

Todd Zaki Warfel

Executive Coach

As an executive coach, Todd Zaki Warfel works with individuals and companies who are interested in personal growth, leadership development, and organisational transformation. Having held leadership roles at Twitter, Cisco, and Workday, he’s learned a lot about building teams, developing purpose-driven leaders, and navigating the seas of change.

For more, keep up with Todd at zakiwarfel.com or on Twitter as @zakiwarfel.

Dave Kiss

Designer/Developer, Greyscalegorilla

Dave Kiss branches from the designer/developer model and is interested in shifting the paradigm that learning always has to be from the top down. He currently writes code and love-emails at Greyscalegorilla. In his free-time, Dave works on making stuff that he and other people use. He enjoys bitter beers, hiking amongst cedar trees, and writing biographies in third person.

For more, keep up with Dave at davekiss.com or on Twitter as @davekiss.

Build Stuff That You’d Use

As a designer or developer, keeping up with and growing your skillset can be challenging. However, figuring out what to do with those skills once you have them can be even more difficult. In this presentation, we’ll explore ways to come up with ideas that can lead to enhancing your work and workflow, shipping those ideas even when they aren’t perfect, and creating things that other people might even pay to use.

Jason Cranford Teague

Sr. Creative Director, Capital One

Jason combines creative and technical know-how to help people communicate online. He has worked with businesses and organizations including USA TODAY, Marriott International, AOL, Virgin, Bank of America, The Aspen Institute, The Solar Energy Industry Association, and The USDA. Jason is a long standing leader in the Web design community, well know for being able to explain complex technical concepts to non-technical audiences. His most recent book is CSS3 Visual Quickstart Guide available in finer bookstores everywhere.

For more, keep up with Jason at geekdad.com or on Twitter as @JasonSpeaking.

Interactive Prototyping: Avoiding the Fidelity Cliff

Interactive Prototyping is the next big Ux skill, but many designers may avoid embracing it. Prototyping can become needlessly complex, requiring designers to know when they’ve designed enough, and it’s time to start building. In this session, Jason will explain some of the most common pitfalls with interactive prototyping, how they can be avoided, and why it’s never been more important for designers to learn how to create working prototypes.

Philip Likens

Principal UX Designer, Sabre Labs

Philip Likens is the Principal UX Designer for Sabre Labs, a travel-focused emerging technology incubator. He is the creator of iHeartColor for iPhone and runs Crosstrain Camps: Events for Coders and Creatives in Dallas, Texas. Philip believes design, innovation, and entrepreneurship can produce human flourishing.

For more, keep up with Philip at deptof.com or on Twitter as @philiplikens.

Deciding What to Build Without Killing Each Other

Deciding what to build is hard. Making the decision as a team is even tougher. Team members often have differing views on which portions of the prototype are most important and what functionality to include. Tensions from the decision-making process can drive teams apart. In our labs group we have adopted a framework for making prototyping and project decisions. This presentation outlines the framework we use in Sabre Labs, as well as some examples of times we’ve gotten it right, and other times we haven’t.

Smith Schwartz

Interaction Designer, Say Media

Smith Schwartz is a digital nomad who cascades with style around U.S. and the globe while working as a front-end developer and designer. She also writes about her adventures at Schwartzography.com as well as in the column ‘Well-Designed Travel’ at Apartment Therapy where she explores the intersection of travel and design on the road.

For more, keep up with Smith on Twitter as @smithschwartz.

Well-Designed Travel

About two years ago, my partner and I left behind our Chicago home and nearly everything we owned to pursue a fanciful life of nomadic travel. We had flexible jobs where working from home was considered normal, so we wondered why couldn’t home be anywhere we want it to be? This lifestyle (though not without its challenges), has enabled us to visit new places, learn new languages, skip winters and spend time with the friends and family that we rarely got to see in our formerly stationary lives.

The way we go about our day-to-day life on the road has been informed and made better by many of the development practices we already had, particularly in terms of prototyping. We continually strive for tight feedback loops so that we are free to try new things and quickly adapt. In our case we work for continual incremental improvement in our skills, our experiences, and our ability to connect with others to arrive at the most intentional and rewarding life that we know how to live.

Gabby Hon

User Experience Lead

With 20+ years experience in UX, and having worked with Fortune 100 companies and top agencies, Gabby has seen things you people wouldn’t believe.

She’s chosen making enterprise software less of a nightmare as her professional focus.

In her free time, Gabby is an internet spaceship mogul, and enjoys talking to nerds about how what you learn in a game can translate to real life.

For more, keep up with Gabby at http://outsidecontextproblem.org/ or on Twitter as @gabbyhon.

Co-Designing with the Client: Using Axure to Bring Requirements to Life

Axure is a great tool to use to help move from a high-level list of requirements into functional concepting. Gabby will present an actual case study of how she used Axure to winnow down a 5-page list of requirements into a working prototype by co-designing with her client. Moving from whiteboard and pencil sketches into Axure, and refining on the go, we were able to get to a pretty decent prototype that gave visual designers the room to be creative, while adhering to the functional goals of the site.

Gail Swanson

Director of Strategy, 18F

Finding a better way, a happier way to do something is in Gail’s DNA. She couldn’t stop if she wanted to. She guides teams to look deeper, and learn about the people they serve to create technology that helps.

Gail has applied her strategy focused approach to design in a wide range of industries; molding technology into usable systems for humans. She is currently serving her country as Director of Strategy at 18F.

For more, keep up with Gail at practicallyux.com or on Twitter as @practicallyUX.

The Right Type of Prototype

How do you know what to prototype? What details are important to get right? What level of interactivity is necessary to get valid feedback?

Prototypes are very effective tools for playing out ideas, testing concepts and getting feedback. But they are often left out of the design and development cycles due to their disposable nature. It can be tough to justify the effort to make something for the purpose of experiment. Finding the right prototype medium and minimum level of detail required is essential. Without it, how will you get the stakeholder buy-in and funding?

Learn how to match your prototype fidelity to the information you need to gather. Understand the range of prototype techniques and match them to your situation. Get maximum value and minimize your project risk.

Scott Sullivan

Applied Designer, Adaptive Path

Scott Sullivan is an applied designer at Adaptive Path in San Francisco. He has a background in theater, modern dance, creative technology, interactive performance art, and visual design. He is happiest getting his hands dirty building things that may or may not have a purpose.

Before joining Adaptive Path, Scott was a digital product designer at Involution Studios, and was heavily involved in launching and evolving startups. He has experience in many problem spaces—Education, Energy, Finance, Social Media and Digital Publishing.

For more, keep up with Scott at scottis.me or on Twitter as @scotsullivan.

Prototyping Sensor Networks!

This is an introduction to building connected environments. I’ll go over the main building blocks of what you need for a wireless sensor network, and show you how to get started making each “block.” This talk is intended for designers with little or no engineering ability who would like to start prototyping smart interactive environment-based experiences. I’ll give real world examples from a sensor network project I currently have deployed in a public space, and show exactly how data and feedback from the prototype has influenced the evolution of the system.

Victoria Pater

Collaborator, Co-founder, Designer, Quite Strong

Victoria Pater is a digitally-focused creative in Chicago. She currently works as a senior mobile designer at Orbitz Worldwide. As a co-founder of Quite Strong, a female collaborative made up of five women, she is a dedicated advocate for diversity in the design and tech communities. When she’s not designing, you’ll find her teaching typography at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago or traveling the world in search of hoppy beers and tasty tacos.

For more, keep up with Victoria on Twitter as @typeis4lovers.

Designing for Mobile in InDesign

Working in an agile setting has changed my approach to mobile design. I’ve let go of the pixel perfect final product and learned to iterate along the way in primarily one piece of software. I can flesh out everything from wireframes to final screens for my developers–all using Adobe InDesign. I’ll share how my files are set-up for efficiency and talk through the main reasons this works for designers who want to create better products that are constantly evolving.

Andy Hullinger

Program Chair, Harrington College of Design

Andy Hullinger is a design professor and the Program Chair for Web Design and Development at Harrington College of Design. His “***coding for creatives***” curriculum is helping to change the way designers work with creative technologies.

Creator of the award winning children’s book App Dragon Brush Andy has been exploring, teaching, and designing on the iPad right from its start. A former creative director, he consults with Chicago ad agencies to evolve their print campaigns for digital magazines. As a visiting professor at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, he pioneered the Magazine Innovation Project’s efforts with tablet publishing. Andy lives in Evanston, Illinois with his wife, daughter, and son in a house full of good books and happy animals.

From Idea to App (in about an hour): Learn to Use the CoronaSDK for Rapid, Native App Prototyping

You’ll be surprised just how simple and quick it can be to craft your next prototype with this true mobile development framework. Join App developer and Harrington professor Andy Hullinger in the school’s iMac lab for a hands-on micro-class in using the CoronaSDK and programming with the high-performance Lua language. You do not need prior app development experience to learn how to use this elegant, efficient, and freely available software development kit as we walk step-by-step through the creation and coding of an animated, touch driven, multi-page iPhone App.

• Discover tips and tricks for designing a functional mobile prototype presentation
• Learn the simple syntax behind programming animation to enhance UI design
• Understand the creation and optimization of images for mobile display
• Experience the engineering cycle of native App development

Why learn CoronaSDK? In addition to being the #1 cross-platform mobile development framework you’ll find it easy to continue pursuing your curiosity. The Chicago CoronaSDK Developers Group Meetup is now hosted at Harrington and Andy currently serves as a Corona Ambassador advocating for the value of good design (both visual and functional) in App development and promoting the addition of Art education to Science, Tech, Engineering, and Math curriculum to put STEAM into S.T.E.M.

Kaitlin Yapchaian & Marc Maleh

R/GA

Kaitlin Yapchaian is the Executive Producer of R/GA’s Prototype Studio where she manages the day-to-day prototyping practice. Having worked across technology, marketing and publishing for nearly a decade, she has devised, managed and executed products and campaigns for a multitude of global brands including Google, Vogue and Nike. Kaitlin holds a B.A. in Studio Art from the University of Richmond in Virginia and currently lives in New York City.

As a group director at R/GA, Marc is responsible for the Data Visualization capability as well as the Rapid Prototype Studio. In this role, he works in partnership with the creative team to grow the data visualization capability by collaborating with clients on visual solutions for data-derived insights and is actively defining best practices for implementing prototyping as a key first step in multiplatform design across R/GA’s global network.

Marc has over 10 years of experience in interactive and new media technology. Prior to being named Group Director, Maleh served as Director of Interactive Production at Wieden+Kennedy NY, where he helped grow a team of producers, technologists, and creatives within a new structure designed to strengthen their integrated digital capabilities. Before moving to Wieden+Kennedy, Marc served for more than five years as an executive producer at R/GA, managing an integrated team of producers, creative directors, designers, and programmers for multiple Nike projects including Nike Running and Nike Football. Marc has also managed international design and technology teams in New York and Shanghai for Screampoint, working with clients that included Apple, AIG, World Trade Center Development, and Jamba Juice.

Marc received his BA from Lehigh University and his Masters from NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program.

Creation as Concept: The Maker Culture of R/GA’s Prototype Studio

From Google Glass apps to Tweeting E-Cigarettes, R/GA’s Prototype Studio is actively exploring innovative ways to use new technologies. Join Marc Maleh and Kaitlin Yapchaian to learn best practices for creating smart, swift, and effective prototypes.