Posted by Steve Baty on Mar 6, 2009 in
Uncategorized So, this should probably have occurred to me sooner, but we now have a group set up on Flickr for UX Book Club – http://www.flickr.com/groups/uxbookclub/
The Flickr account – which is separate – is a nice way for group coordinators to capture photos from each meeting and keep a running visual record of the events. But I also know that a lot of people prefer to keep their photos in their own account.
The group set up should allow everyone to pool their photos in whichever way you want – either through the Flickr account directly, or linked through the group. For the moment membership to the group is moderated – with UX Book Club set up as an admin – but I’m happy to remove this if it’s a pain in the ass for people.
In the meantime, I hope everyone’s enjoying their local events. I’ll be in Memphis for IA Summit in a fortnight, and I hope to meet some of you in person 
Tags: flickr group uxbookclub
Posted by Crispin Reedy on Mar 4, 2009 in
Uncategorized Four of us met at Nerdbooks last Saturday and had a good discussion on Sketching User Experiences. We had an interesting variety of industry experience there: two of us were IA, one a lighting console designer, and one a voice interaction designer.
We decided going forward that we’d:
- Meet every other month due to busy schedules and reading loads.
- Alternate meetings on Saturdays versus Wednesdays so the maximum number of folks could attend.
- Try to move locations around, again, to try and get the most number of folks.
We picked two books and two dates.
“Neuro Web Design: What Makes Them Click” by Susan Weinschenk
Saturday, April 18, 2:00
Location: again at Nerdbooks
“The Creative Habit: Learn it and Use it for Life” by Twyla Tharp (Choice inspired by the Chicago UX book club.)
Wednesday, June 17, at 7:00
Location TBD
It was a promising start and we think that this’ll make a great addition to the UX / usability / design community in Dallas!
Posted by Andrew Boyd on Feb 27, 2009 in
Meeting Notice We’re pleased to announce that the next meeting of UX Book Club Canberra will be on Monday 2 March 2009
Time: 5:30PM-7PM
Place: The Tea Lounge, Hyatt Hotel, Commonwealth Avenue, Yarralumla
The Books: Dan Brown’s Communicating Design (discussion) and Alan Andreasen’s “Marketing Social Change” (review by Jessica Enders)
Please RSVP to Andrew (facibus@gmail.com) ASAP to ensure that we have enough seats for everyone
Cheers, Andrew
Posted by Steve Baty on Feb 18, 2009 in
Uncategorized It seems like forever ago, but back in December I wrote a short article for Boxes and Arrows introducing the UX Book Club and encouraging people to join in. If you’re wondering how you could possibly have missed that, it’s because it never got published. The article was lost in the Christmas/Holiday season and, eventually, picked back up again a few weeks ago.
So, you should hopefully soon see an article in Boxes and Arrows talking about UX Book Club. The article has had to be changed significantly to reflect the fact that a) we’re not “just getting started”; and b) a whole bunch of groups have already had their first (or second!) meetings.
One of the things this gave me an opportunity to do was to elicit feedback from people on what their first event was like, and incorporate that into the article. I found a few comments that people had written on their blogs; and I asked a few people to provide me with their thoughts. From those quotes I had to select just a few sentences that helped tell the story at the heart of the article, but I didn’t want them to go to waste. So I present them here in full.
And I’d love to hear more stories from you. If you’ve attended an event, please post a comment and tell us how it was.
Whitney Hess, talking about UX Book Club NYC:
“About 26 people showed up to the inaugural UX Book Club NYC and it was a really diverse, uncommon crowd. Cindy worked her butt off organizing the event and with help from a few selfless volunteers, put out a beautiful spread for attendees to enjoy. We started off with a few individuals standing up at the front of the room sharing their thoughts about the book — some where more verbose than others, but all in all everyone enjoyed hearing their perspectives and were engaged in discussion with each speaker. Then we broke out into smaller 6-8 person groups for more detailed conversations. The group, as always, had its dominating participants (I’m sure I was one of them), but everyone was respectful of each other’s views and everyone got a chance to speak. I had read the book a while ago and it was nice to take the time to really think through some of the stickier areas and hear the perspective of those who had just finished it, or were even still part way through.
These books really aren’t meant to be read alone — they’re references as well as jumping off points for exploration of the practice. It was great to hear what others thought of both the content and its context in the greater body of work, book-form and otherwise, that our community has produced.
I’m really looking forward to the next event.”
Jonathan S Knoll, also talking about NYC:
“It was fairly incredible how natural — how routine — it felt. I mean, here was a group of people, many of whom had never particpated in any community event, and none of which (to my knowledge) had ever engaged in an extrinsically focused book club. The book became the medium for discussion, though the topic remained entrenched in UX and design.”
Sarah Mitchell, talking about Los Angeles:
I started the book club in LA because, especially in this economic climate, it’s nice to get a chance to think outside the constraints of my day job and to chat about the bigger UX picture with fellow professionals. Also I have been meaning to read many of these books for ages, and I thought book club discussions and deadlines would be a good motivator.Our first meeting actually exceeded my expectations. I know that everyone is busy with limited time for reading, and in LA you can guarantee that most people have a long drive to any meeting place. I thought we might get 10 or so, but we gathered almost 25 dedicated and enthusiastic people. I was particularly gratified to see such a mix of professional titles. Most UX people I know are web interaction designers like me, but the book club drew developers, software UI designers, business strategists, visual designers, and various flavors of agency and in-house IAs and IxDs. Despite some complaints on the email list prior to the meeting about the book being difficult to get through, we had a really engaging discussion on sketching in all of its forms, how it fits into our process, how sketching might or might not overlap with wireframes, whether or not Agile is antithetical to the kind of design process Buxton recommends, and how sketching might inform personas. Conversation never flagged, and at the end everyone seemed glad that there was this forum to come together to continue our professional education and have a quality, small-group conversation with our peers. In short, I thought it was invigorating and awesome, and I’m really looking forward to the next meeting.
A few blogs posts wouldn’t hurt either:
Roz Duffy a.k.a. StellarGirl: my current muse: UX Book Club
Anders Ramsay: Taking UX Book Club to the edge
And the flickr photos: flickr.com/uxbookclub
And if you didn’t see it, here’s what I had to say about the first Sydney event:
The event was structured along the same lines as that used by New York City (thanks to Cindy Chastain) and applied successfully in Los Angeles. We opened with a brief welcome and introduction (from me), and then a volunteer from the group gave a 5-minute overview of the book (in our case Bill Buxton’s Sketching User Experiences). We then broke into two groups (10 & 13 with me floating) and headed to opposite ends of the Lounge to discuss the book in detail. Cindy’s rationale for the smaller groups was that they give everyone a much better opportunity to contribute to the discussion – and this was borne out by the comments I received afterwards.
After a good solid hour or so of group discussion we came back together, had a bit of a recap; thanked everyone for attending; thanked our hosts; and relocated to a nearby pub to carry on. The ‘official’ proceedings kicked off at 6pm and ended just after 8pm. The ‘after-hours’ discussions wound up a couple of hours after that.
The entire event was terribly uncomplicated, and I highly recommend it. Better yet, the discussion highlighted areas of the book I hadn’t really considered important on first reading, but has encouraged me to go back and re-read those parts, armed with some real-world anecdotes to help make it more concrete.
I’m already looking forward to the next one.
You may be noticing a theme in the way these quotes are ending Purely coincidence, and it goes to highlight how much people get out of attending.
Tags: boxes and arrows, out-takes, update, uxbookclub
Posted by Andrew Boyd on Jan 17, 2009 in
About,
Concept Discussion The UX Book Club idea was formed by Steve Baty and others on a couple of mailing lists late in 2008. The idea was that people could get together to talk about their favourite user experience books – and other books of interest to user experience people – and share their views, learning from one another.
A couple of days later the wiki went up, and soon there were dozens of groups sprouting up all over the place, and hundreds of people signing up.
There has been some discussion around the place about what happens next – well, that is what this blog is for. Discussion, ideas, event notifications, you name it. Let’s talk about it
Every UX Book Club group coordinator who wants a publisher account here can have one – it provides a publishing platform with RSS feed so that the information affecting the whole UX Book Club concept can be shared in a way that gets it into people’s feed readers and inboxes.
Oh, and if you want to add or reference video/podcasts of meetings, please be our guest.
Email Andrew Boyd (facibus AT gmail DOT com) or Steve Baty (stevebaty AT gmail DOT com) if you are a group coordinator and want an account.