Todd Zaki Warfel and Leah Buley
Abstract
This hands-on workshop is for anyone involved in the design or development of a website, application, or mobile product. If you’re a design, developer, or business stakeholder, you can’t afford to miss this workshop. Come spend a day with us and find out what sketchboards are and how we combine them with prototyping for rapid iterative design. This fun filled, high-energy workshop will use a design studio process common in industrial design and architecture. You’ll sketch, prototype, and learn how to present and critique your designs with your peers. By the end of the day, you’ll have a functioning prototype ready for testing. It’s time to evolve your design process.
Workshop Details
This hands-on workshop will be conducted in a team setting following the design studio format, commonly used in architecture and industrial design. We’ll guide you through the design studio process of generating concepts, presentation, and critique. The workshop will concentrate on two primary methods for concept generation: sketchboards and prototypes.
During the morning session, we’ll walk you through sketchboards, show you how to use them to generate ideas, and use the design studio process to identify and explore the strongest design solutions. And finally, we’ll show you how to select the most important aspects of your design to prototype.
During the afternoon session, we’ll walk you through prototyping, take the sketchboards from the morning session, show you how to create prototypes, and use the design studio process to test and refine your prototypes. By the end of this workshop, you’ll have a working prototype.
Learning Objectives
- How to create faster, higher quality designs
- How to collaborate with design, technology, and business stakeholders
- How to generate and explore ideas without significant investment or attachment
- How to use the design studio process of presentation and critique to identify and refine the strongest design solutions
- How to identify the critical aspects of your design for prototyping
- How to use analog tools like paper to create rich interactive prototypes
How the Seminar Will Be Conducted
9:00-9:15 Introduction to sketching
9:15-9:30 Introduction to presentation and critique
9:30-10:00 Exercise I: Sketching
10:00-10:15 Break
10:15-10:45 Getting started with sketchboards
10:45-11:15 Exercise II: Making your own sketchboards
11:15-12:00 Exercise III: Sketchboards round 2
12:00-12:45 Lunch
12:45-1:00 Introduction to prototyping
1:00-1:15 Exercise IV: Basic prototyping
115-:1:45 Presentation and critique
11:45-2:00 Break
2:00-2:30 Exercise V: Prototyping round 2
2:30-3:00 Presentation and critique
3:00-3:15 Break
3:15-3:45 Advanced prototyping techniques
3:45-4:00 Exercise VI: Prototyping round 3
4:00-4:30 Presentation and critique
4:30-5:00 Wrap-up
Core IA-related Issues
- Collaboration
- Crossing boundaries
- IA/Interaction design
- Prototyping
- Previously Presented
This workshop has been taught in part or all at:
- Agile 2008
- UXWeek 2008
- IxDA 2008
Speaker Details
Todd Zaki Warfel is a Principal Design Researcher and founder of Messagefirst, a
Philadelphia-based design research consulting firm, where he blends research and design to evolve products in innovate and beautiful ways. Todd is a dynamic speaker and storyteller by nature. He’s rarely short on details. He is an active member in a number of industry communities and organizations, including the Information Architecture Institute, IxDA, and UPA.
Todd’s clients have included Albertsons, AT&T Wireless, Bankrate, Bank of America, Citibank, Comcast, Cornell University, IntraLinks, The Hartford, LA Times, Motorla, Palm, and SBC.
Todd currently lives in Philadelphia and blogs at toddwarfel.com. His upcoming book 'Practical Prototyping' will take a hands-on approach, enabling you to develop prototypes with minimal muss and fuss. The book will discuss how prototypes are more than just a design tool by demonstrating how they can help you market a product, gain internal buy-in, and test feasibility with your development team. Anticipated publication is in 2008.
Leah Buley is an Experience Designer for Adaptive Path, a user experience strategy and design firm. She speaks and writes about practical methods for bringing successful user experience design to organizations. Increasingly, this has entailed getting back to basics with pen and paper. In the last few years, Leah has enjoyed re-learning how to draw, and sharing what she’s learned with others.
Leah’s past clients and employers include Barclays Global Investors, Flickr, PBS, Qwest, and Vanguard Financial. Leah belongs to the Information Architecture Institute, the American Society of Information Science and Technology, and the IxDA.
Leah lives in San Francisco, and writes online at adaptivepath.com and ugleah.com.