On Behalf Of Brad Einarsen
Sent: May-13-08 10:55 AM
To: UXIrregulars
Subject: [UXIrregulars] Re: Toronto workshop on UX+IA workshop: An initial
call for participation

All,

For what it's worth... here are my suggested topics...

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Data-Driven Personas

How do we create personas that truly reflect the target audience? Cut-
and-paste personas imagined by the UX professional do not cut it any
more. What are best practices in gathering target market data and how
do we communicate this deep data in a way that presents an accurate,
quickly understood manner that facilitates drilling down to the
underlying data?

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Task-Based vs. Exploratory Usability Testing

For corporate websites, is it better to have a strict set of tasks to
test? Or better to have an open-ended discussion with participants?

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Generating Trust in an Untrustworthy Environment

The Internet is full of "dark side" activities including: drive-by
downloads, Trojans, viruses, and simple spam. This great commons is
also home to many fringe individuals and groups with motivations
different from the audience (axe to grind, hatred and resentment,
undue optimism, fame seeking, etc.).

As users learn about (through stories or first hand) the untrustworthy
nature of much of the content on the Internet they become "hardened"
to legitimate messages.

As IAs, how can we use the latest in trust research to ensure the
legitimate messages cut through the clutter while reinforcing the
defenses that user's develop against harmful information?

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Managing the Power of Wireframes

The most potent tool we have in our UX toolkit has to be the
wireframe. Clients will anchor onto the wireframes like no other
document because they are often highly visual and quick to understand.

With this power, however, comes a high expectation on the fidelity of
the wireframe experience. Where do we draw the line on content vs.
Lorem Ipsum? We have to use some content to expose the taxonomy of the
site but clients will sometimes ask to see the full site rendered in
wireframes which is simply not feasible inside most UX budgets.

What tactics have practitioners found that help manage this with
clients?