12.5.08
BayChi is hosting another exciting event soon. Details as follows:

Tuesday, December 9, 2008
"Designing Google Chrome"
PARC, Palo Alto
More info

7.8.08
'Stop designing products. Start designing experiences' - an underlying message of an engaging talk by Peter Merholz of Adaptive Path, given at Xerox PARC office. Peter's new highly acclaimed book by Adaptive Path "Subject to Change" is now on sale. Some key excerpts from the talk:

• Embrace design as an activity
• Deliver the Long Wow - unfold great experience over time, develop loyalty
• Experience is a product
• Design process: a. Iterations b. Prototyping c. Deep/wide collaboration
• Designers are facilitators, engaging cross-functioning teams
• Engage closely with customers. Understand customers as people
• Understand customer's behavior, motivation, context, and emotion
• Focus on customer experience

6.25.08
'Do I need an MBA?' This is the question that has been on more than a few designers' minds at least once in their career. IxDA SF invited Jess McMullin, Nathan Shedroff, Rajan Dev, and Brandon Schauer to speak at Adobe Systems and address this specific question. The men shared their experience, provided feedback, and suggested various MBA programs catered to designer's needs.

6.03.08
Google generously hosted another BayChi Usability Engineering event on June 3rd. Margret Schmidt and Elissa Lee of TiVo passionately shared their step-by-step process of redesign of the TiVo corporate website. With all the recent work done at CNET to improve the site interface (see sneak preview), it was a lot of fun to listen to the very similar challenges and innovative solutions of the process. Through fearless experimentation, solid planning, teamwork, extensive user testing, and round the clock work ethic, the old TiVo got a shining, much improved, new look. With such legends in the audience as Jacob Nielsen, the Q&A session was as captivating as the presentation.

5.27.08
Check out the fruits of hard labor of my friend at Wired.com - the new and shiny Webmonkey - "the web developer's resource".

5.15.08
CNET has been in the news as CBS announced the $1.8 billion acquisition. Here are some tidbits of discussion on the topic from New York Times blog.

4.21.08
Web 2.0 Expo is going on at San Francisco's Moscone Center. Don't miss!

3.5.08
BayChi held a lecture by Jared Spool at the Yahoo! campus on March 5th. Through entertaining talk, he touched upon many design issues and industry challenges. How entertaining? Just read the title of this picture that was part of the talk.

1.16.08
Macworld 2008 was a spectacular event. Great attendance, great exhibitions, and of course.. the unveiling of MacBook Air by Apple. Playing with MacBook Air was fun. It was light, beautifully shaped, and compact. A terrific laptop for a travelling businessman or a student on the go.

10.25.07
Yelp founders Jeremy Stoppelman and Russel Simmons stopped by at Commonwealth Club of San Francisco (check out their new site redesign) to share their story and answer questions. The guys talked about their days at PayPal, Harvard Business school, the idea of Yelp, who came up with the name, and the future of the website going global. The talk was followed by a tasty reception. Keep on yelping!

10.23.07
The Voices That Matter Conference kicked off successfully, having one of the free events at the San Francisco Apple Store. And, a dream come true - personally meeting Kelly Goto. Kelly brilliantly communicated the key points and the process of designing for mobile interface, specifically for iPhone. She emphasized the importance of mobile industry in the future and the design integration, while introducing to the fact the the US teen population is the largest financially contributing focus group. Kelly touched on building apps for the iPhone, the future of apps and widget development, and gave a demo of an app gotomedia has built. The underlying theme of the evening was the importance of building for the human beings and their lifestyle, the importance of the growing mobile market, and the importance of user research and testing of design. The presentation can be found at http://www.gotomedia.com/goto/lifestyle/

10.18.07
CNET hosted an incredible evening for IxDA. There were three superb presentations by world renown design companies: Cooper, frogdesign, and IDEO.

10.17.07
WebGuild of Silicon Valley has hosted another successful event at Google campus. The evening's topic was "Next Generation of Social Networking". The panel consisted of three speakers: Jonathan Abrams of Socializr, jia Chen of Rock You!, and Sundeep Ahuja of Appfuels. The dynamic conversation touched on the current issues of social networking, the influence of MySpace and Facebook, the business value of social networking, and the presumed future of the web. Suprisingly, video was not admitted to be important for current social networking websites.

10.09.07
Next AIGA studio tour was at frog design. A friendly panel of "frogs" discussed the history and vision of this pioneer design company (guess who designed the first Apple Mac?) in their cool office space on Brannan Street. Their process mantra is Discover, Design, Deliver. We got to hear about their latest design projects like Yahoo!Messenger interface, Wallop website, Tivo packaging and TurboChef Speedcook Oven. The lucky attendies were then ushered to the third floor of the studio to see the oven prototype in real life (among other cool things). Is this a place every designer dreams of? Yes!

10.05.07
It was surreal to have finally see Jeffrey Zeldman in person. Not on a cover of a book or in a headshot (or a crop of one) on a site. For years, I'd follow his website religiously, scavaging for new code break-through or tutorial. He is the ultimate guru of the new CSS world. The name synonymous with web standards.

An Event Apart (for people who make websites) was hosted at the Palace Hotel on New Montgomery Street, an unforgettable setting in itself. Little time permitting, I got a few minutes of Kimberly Blessing's presentation on web standards ("..use 'must' or 'never', not 'should always' in instructions" ). Catching the end of Zeldman's presentation, I got to learn a few tricks on how to present design to clients, how to "sell the design", how to respond to criticism, and how to steer a meeting into a productive focus rather than veering into "this button is too big" or "that color is ugly".

Wish this were a weekly event..

9.19.07
Terrific lecture by BayChi at Yahoo! Sunnyvale campus. Presentation by Nate Fortin, Cooper on the topic "Where Usability Meets Desireability". The talk covered visual design and interactive design process, the two different roles of these designers, branding, creating a style guide, and suggestions for a better work process for design teams. The talk was very informative and inspirational. Contact me for this lecture's notes in pdf format.

Great read: Journal of Design

7.18.07
Yet another great presentation at Apple Store San Francisco. AIGA SF presented Christian Haas, of Goodby, Silverstein, and Partners. Christian talked highly of Goodby, and the projects he was involved in. He showed clips of advertisements for Sprint, HP (to which the audience enthusiastically applauded), Comcast, Saturn, Budlight. The projects push the boundaries of new media, bring out of the box solutions, and are tremendously entertaining.

7.15.07
iPhone is finally here. Although I am one of those cautious frugal people waiting for others to test out the beta version, I have to admit I am drooling over one when I spot someone watching their favorite show or checking restaurant locations or talking to a family member on their freshly bought iPhone.

I was at the Apple San Francisco store 5 minutes before the doors were opened. The crowd was going wild. Raising right hand with a cell phone taking pictures of the crowd. I got bad rep for taking out my MotoQ. "Competition.." - someone muttered. Some joked: "It's just a phone!". People were hysterical. As the time came close to 6pm, someone began the countdown: "Ten, nine, eight, seven..". When the doors opened, everyone started clapping. It was very exciting and entertaining.

6.18.07
The San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of ACM SIGCHI, BayCHI, hosted an incredible evening in Palo Alto Reasearch Center (PARC). The speakers were Jeremy Ashley and Luke Kowalski of Oracle Corporation, and the famous Christina Wodtke of Public Square.

The Oracle folks talked about Web 2.0 and what the users want with it and how much misunderstanding circulates around Web 2.0 (or is it 3.0 now?), as well as the influence on the industry, and last but not least, when to consider using the Web 2.0 technology. Both Mr. Ashley and Kowalski were great speakers. As a footnote, I whiffed the aura of Oracle and nostalgia set in. Only less than a year I was jogging and biking around the Oracle campus, or looking at the glass towers from the window of my room. The air around the campus has an intellectual electricity present, I have to admit.

Christina Wodtke has given a passionate talk about becoming an enterpreneur. Basically, she recommended against it. No, actually she painted a really scary but satisfying picture of working for yourself. Read her website boxes and arrows and elegant hack. The presentation from the evening can be found in June 12 blog post.

BayChi

6.10.07
Artwork SF hosted a reception on June 7 for the June Photo Exhibit "Rubberneck", displaying the power and concept of documentary photography. Friends Petia and her husband Blake Farrington were kind to invite me. Blake's amazing work is part of the show - his photographs capture ex-Yugoslavia at a transitioning time.
The show runs until June 23rd at 49 Geary St. Suite 215.
www.artworksf.com

5.29.07
On May 24, 2007, Social Media Club presented Second Life and real world business value potential of virtual worlds at the Adobe's SOMA headquaters.
Second Life
Linden Labs
Millions of Us

A fresh voice in the blogosphere: Seth Godin

5.23.07
Not to be missed Firefox Add-ons for web designers:

Palette Grabber
View Formatted Source
Hyperwords
Save Complete
Lori
Screengrab!

5.17.07
News about social networks: Mashable.com
456 Berea St: www.456bereastreet.com

5.15.07
My daily inspiration:
Duoh!   SimpleBits   Flickr   Apple

5.15.07
What makes web pages "sticky"? What makes the user stay on the page or within the site? How would one decrease user abandonment?

• Decrease download, optimize for minimium plug-in requests, optimize for fairly old versions of players, have mirror sites.
• Provide THE CONTENT. Cater to the user. Expand and educate. Provide details, up-to-date relevant information. Find out what the user is looking for in your site, and have it front and center.
• Optimize search. If the user can't find it, stop him from going back to the generic search, provide your own.
• Create social portal. Create atmosphere of inclusion. Provide interaction, sharing, comments. Make the site productively interactive.
• Customize. Focus on each individual. Can they change the page to make it their own for future use?

4.11.07
Build your own workstation. Apple introduces Intel Xeon-based Mac Pro.

4.1.07
Apple San Francisco hosted Adobe CS3 Demo on March 28, 2007. Colin Fleming, Adobe's Solution Engineer, Media & Publishing, demonstrated the new features. Here's a partial list of the impressive changes:

Photoshop
- New interface with retractable panels which turn into icons, non-destructive smart filters, Quick Select tool improvement, improved Bridge, Refine Edge option, Automatic layer alignment

Flash
- Seamless import in layers from Photoshop, ActionScript 3.0

Dreamweaver
- Automatic image creation from Photoshop; AJAX options; complete CS3 support

Device Central
- Emulates phone interface

And much much more!

CS3 is shipping in April
Visit www.adobe.com for more details.
http://theflashblog.com/icons.html

To comment, ask a question, or just say hello, you can reach Anya via: abosina (at) yahoo (dot) com