Win Forms

I can see the light -- Silverlight 2.0

Chip Lemmon — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 20:31:57 GMT

Silverlight 2.Oh My God! Shawn Burke posted about his endeavors with Silverlight 2.0 and he says one very important thing... "I'm having fun!" Man that is what it should be about. Programming should be fun and not a hassle. I am expecting some instant gratification from Silverlight 2.0.

Shawn also points to Scott Gu's blog. If you aren't watching that blog like a hawk already you really need to subscribe. Not to be overly dramatic, but coming from a thick client background, Silverlight 2.0 is going to change my world!!!!

--chaz

NJUX Re-cap

Chip Lemmon — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 15:01:00 GMT

The NJUX meeting was a great event. Thanks to everyone who turned out! A big lesson learned is that South Orange may not be the most ideal location to get to. We'll need to figure out a new location when the time is right.

There was some really meaningful dialog about just what a "User Experience" group should focus on. The consensus seemed to be that User Experience (especially in the Enterprise) is still in its infancy. So that will bring some challenges to the group. Some of the ideas that came from the meeting follow;

The group must engage the designer & developer communities. Presenters will be challenged to address both communities.

The presentations (at least for the first year) should be at Level 200 (aka introductory).

WE NEED TO BE VENDOR NUTRAL. I will always evangelize Microsoft technologies because that is my background and how I have made a living for countless years. But, when it comes to the User Experience there are vendors like Adobe that cannot be overlooked!

There will be a lot of UX news coming out of the upcoming Mix '07 Conference in May. This will give us plenty to cover as we kick off the group in a more formal meeting location. KEEP AN EYE OUT FOR MIX, IT IS GOING TO ROCK!

The overarching message for the group will focus on designers and developers working closely together. Similar to Agile's paired programming I think we have to realize that the User Experience isn't a singular responsibility. Better User Experiences will come from collaborative work between the developer and designer. A major challenge for us is to figure out how to get the designer community to come out and join the group. If anybody has any recommendations please post them here or e-mail me through this blog.

A really great discussion we had Thursday night is about how to make the User Experience relevant in back office Enterprise applications. The challenge for the design & development community is to show stake holders that a significant ROI may be appreciated by well designed back office applications as well as customer facing ones. And as someone had pointed out just putting a pretty UI on a terrible application will not make the application any better. So as User Experience creators we need to challenge ourselves not to masquerade crappy architectural practices with pretty UIs.

NJUX will take a pause while we watch for the news from Mix 07 and watch Adobe’s Apollo mature (still in Alpha release). Then we will plan and collaborate to put together some great content that will get folks excited about UX technologies.

Who knows, we may even look to host some sort of kick-off event to show off some of the best stuff from Mix. The event will embody the true spirit and purpose of NJUX.

Keep watching this blog for more on NJUX!

--chaz

NJUX Meeting TONIGHT!

Chip Lemmon — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 13:31:00 GMT

NJUX Meeting 3-22-2007

Chip Lemmon — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 17:33:00 GMT

Just a reminder that the kick off NJUX meeting will be tomorrow at the GasLight Brewery on South Orange Avenue in South Orange New Jersey. I hope to see you there!!!!

--Chaz

NJUX Meeting

Chip Lemmon — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 16:13:00 GMT

HEY JERSEY (especially New York City commuters)!

I've talked and talked about it. Well here it is and it will be in an unlikely location!

WHAT: New Jersey User eXperience Group kick off meeting

WHERE: GasLight Brewery,

15 S Orange Avenue
South Orange, NJ 07079

WHEN: Thursday March 22nd @ 6:30 PM

WHY: This will be the organizing meeting for NJUX. We will determine our mission statement & goals and set up a regular meeting schedule, determine speakers(topics) and final location city/town.

I picked the GasLight in South Orange because SO is far enough up the train line that I think we can draw more attendees. I also think that SO is a bit more accessible by car than Berkeley Heights (my original meeting site). But based on group feedback we will make a final decision.

So come on out and make this thing happen! Many of the usual NJ suspects may be there depending on availability.

Oh and against the advice of my good friend Don, in lieu of swag I will purchase the first round for each attendee (offer expires at 7PM sharp!).

http://www.gaslightbrewery.com/

Please post this on your blogs!

--chaz

NJUX - New Jersey User eXperience Group

Chip Lemmon — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 11:22:00 GMT

NJUX - New Jersey User eXperience

NJUX will focus on UI based topics from design to architecture to tools and trends. Inspired by WPF, Vista, CAB, Mobile devices and the like this topic is just perfect for a North/Central New Jersey user group. We will be testing the waters soon with an organizational meeting.

This group will differ from other New Jersey groups because we will focus specifically on the aspects of making the user experience better. There will be a good balance between proper visual design, software architecture and usability.

I am looking for speakers now. If anybody that is passionate about user experience/user interface design is interested in presenting please contact me via my blog.

Keep watching this blog for further announcements on NJUX.

--chaz