Thursday, March 19, 2009

MIX Day 2 Keynote

Today brings another full room of web developers (and designers). Two main topics held the stage: The release of IE 8 and a talk on User Experience.

Internet Explorer 8 is shipping and it is safer and faster than previous versions (at least according to the people that make it). IE8 is more standards compliant and contains a many features including slices and accelerators. IE8 – go get it now – unless you are on a Mac. :(

Deborah Adler in her address titled “Changing Behavior by Design” has a great story to tell http://pressroom.target.com/pr/news/health-wellness/clearrx/bio.aspx. Her speaking skills can fortunately by compensated for by her academic prowess. While attending the School of Visual Arts in New York she created a packaging and labeling system for prescription drugs as her Master’s thesis. US doctors write 3 billion medical prescriptions per year and for a population of 300 million, that’s pretty steep! At MIX she spoke of creating an experience for the customer and employing design to make that experience comfortable. You must understand your customer. That is the secret to great user experience design.

Based on her research, Deborah pointed out that a good concept of primary and secondary information is where there is a clear and intuitive hierarchy. When communicating, select up to five points of primary information and keep this in an obvious location. The secondary information can be pushed down out of the way until the user needs to access it. More information on these concepts can be found at: http://nymag.com/nymetro/health/features/11700/ and http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/adlerd.html.

Stay tuned for more information out of MIX!

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