When: Saturday, October 23, 2004
Where: BCIT Downtown (555 Seymour at Dunsmuir), Room 820

Agenda:
0900 - 1000: Registration
1000 - 1200: Information Design (Thom Quine)
1200 - 1300: Lunch (this is provided)
1300 - 1430: Usability Testing (Ben Skelton)
1430 - 1600: Follow up with a look at the CWC STC website and a mock usability test.

Fees:
Member - $55, Non member - $65, Student/unemployed - $45. Lunch is included in the registration fee.

Session Descriptions:

Information Design
What is information design? For that matter, what is information? And why do we have to design it?
During this session you will learn:

  * How to make certain your design serves your audience
  * How to build usability into your web site, intranet or extranet

About the instructor
Thomas Quine has spent more than 20 years in instructional design, technical documentation and web site development, and has managed projects for AT&T Canada, Bell Canada, BellSouth, Ameritech, Cox Communications, Nortel, Infowave, and NCompass Labs. He currently teaches Analysis for Information Design at the University of British Columbia, and Project Management for Technical Writers at Malaspina College, an elearning course on the WebCT platform. His company, Documen (http://www.documen.com) designs and builds information delivery systems.

Usability Testing
Learn how to create a simple usability testing program to improve the design and information architecture of your website.
At the end of the session, you will know how to:

  * Recruit the right testers.
  * Create an effective usability test script.
  * Conduct a guerrilla usability test (low cost, easy set-up).
  * Make changes based on the results of the test.

About the instructor
Ben M. Skelton, Creative Director at Habanero Consulting Group, is responsible for providing art direction and design leadership for websites and web-based applications. His extensive knowledge and experience in information and interaction design, usability engineering, and the development of user interfaces and navigation schemes that support the end-user experience has established him as Habanero’s user experience subject matter expert.
Ben has led user experience projects for Bentall Corporation, CAA Canescape, CHIP Hospitality, Credential Group, Credit Union Central of BC, Goalies.com, ICBC, Mountain Equipment Co-Op, Phillips Hager & North, Selkirk Financial, Stockwatch, Teekay Shipping, Teldon International, Terasen, and Wajax Limited.
Ben speaks at many events and also teaches a two-day seminar “Designing a Better User Experience” for the Software Productivity Centre, where he has taught students from companies such as Accenture, Creo, IBM, ICBC, and Sierra Systems. In addition, Ben is a co-founder of the Vancouver User Experience Group (VanUE).