Presentations & Events

VanUE Event: User Experience in an Agile World

Vancouver, BC — January 18, 2007

 
Venue: Vancouver Film School Digital Design campus, Theatre 1 — 420 Homer St. (between Pender & W. Hastings) Enter through the side door on the east side of Homer St.
Time: Presentation — 5:30-7:00 p.m., networking — 5:00-5:30 p.m.

Session Overview

Many organizations are adopting agile software development techniques when developing large-scale websites, web applications, or desktop applications. How do you design an exceptional user experience in a project that utilizes true agile processes? How do traditional user-centered design activities fit into agile development, without lengthy, up-front IA and UI discovery and design processes?

In this session Ben Skelton, Director, User Experience for Habañero Consulting Group, will propose one approach for incorporating user experience design into large-scale agile projects. After the presentation we encourage everyone to join in a moderated discussion of techniques and tools that have worked for them and those that haven’t.

About the Speaker

As Habañero's Director, User Experience, Ben Skelton manages both the user experience practice and team and provides UE leadership for all projects. He has extensive knowledge and experience in corporate visioning and strategy, information and interaction design, user interface design, and usability engineering. An advocate of 'unselfish' design, Ben believes that good user interface design is not about the designer, but the person who ultimately interacts with the design: the user. Ben's primary goal for all projects is to deliver real business value to clients and deepen their relationships with customers.

In addition to client work, Ben teaches a two-day seminar entitled "Designing a Better Web User Experience" for the Software Productivity Centre and has taught students from Accenture, Creo, IBM, ICBC, and Sierra Systems, among others. He is a co-founder of the Vancouver User Experience Group (VanUE) and has presented to numerous groups including the International Internet Marketing Association, COMDEX, and the Calgary Portal User's Group.