Who would we like to hear from – and what about?

Gehl Architects, Urban Quality Consultants

Gehl were involved in the rebuilding of New Road in Brighton. They’ve helped transform a car clogged rat-run into an area used primarily by pedestrians. They’ve done this by removing the street furniture that is associated with cars – a kerb that defines the boundary of road and pavement, street signs, road markings etc. This changes the look of the street, to the point that drivers either don’t use the street because they think they shouldn’t, or else are so inhibited that they drive very slowly and cautiously. The partnership is now due to start a similar process in the Black Lion area. I’d like to hear about the process and ethos behind this approach, how it’s being used elsewhere and how success is measured.

Heathrow, T5

It’d be good to hear from anyone involved in planning the launch – if they’re not in hiding. I’d like to understand what went wrong in terms of a ’soft launch’ strategy and QA.

Matt Jones

Launched BBC News Online, was head of experience at Nokia and launched Dopplr. Top blogger and all round good egg.

Seymour Powell

Product designers who state: ‘Design is about making things better.’ Love ‘em!

Harry Brignull and Pete Gale (shamelessly self nominated)

Harry and Pete have volunteered to double-up and give a presentation on Out of Box Experience Design. They’ve both had recent experience doing OOBE UX research and consultancy in different contexts, so some interesting contrasts and similarities should emerge. Topics will include:

• Who and what’s involved in designing anOOBE?
• Why are OOBEs normally such epic failures?
• What’s normally done wrong?
• What’s an effective design process for OOBEoptimization?

Chris Douce (also shamelessly self-nominated!)

One idea is to have a rapid overview of a whole course: Fundamentals of Interaction Design, and then to have a discussion about if these the techiques within the courseare used by members of the UxBri group and the extent to which professional practice may differ. Also it might be interesting to link the ID course to other subject areas (such as psychology and social science).

Dr Lyn Pemberton and Richard N Griffiths

Lyn coordinates the Interactive Technologies group in the Universitiy of Brighton and Richard is Course leader for the Postgraduate Programme in Interactive Technologies. They have offered to give us an overview of the MSc in Interactive Technology Design followed by a discussion on the possibility of replacing it with a MSc in User Experience Design. What course content would you expect to find in such a course? Should the course be on ‘User Experience Design ‘ or the broader practice of ‘Experiential Design’?