Event Details
7:00 – 9:00p.m. Tuesday, August 10th
Buffalo Billiards, 6th and Brazos
RSVP on Facebook (it’s not required, you’re always welcome)
We have two excellent topics this month, encompassing the experience – both in terms of understanding your users and developing ways to encourage them to participate. This should be a great evening for all of our members, whether you’re design-oriented, technical, business-driven, all of the above or just curious about how humans interact.
Better Web Experience through Anthropology
Presented by Chris Bailey of Bailey WorkPlay
Building outstanding websites and web applications is more than just great code. It’s about developing and delivering an experience that meets the needs of your users. I’ll introduce some of the basic tools anthropologists use to understand their subjects and show you how to apply them to your work. By the end of the presentation, you’ll know how to ask the right questions; listen for what’s said, and more importantly, what’s not said; and assess the impact of your designs on the overall experience of the user.
Trophy 2.0: Achievement Systems and the Social Web
Presented by Mattt Thompson of Gowalla
Pins, badges, stamps, points, and feats: achievement systems are an increasingly important design pattern for the social web. This talk will trace the history of achievements from their roots in videogames through the present day, including a survey of how today’s most visited sites are leveraging them in new and interesting ways. From there, we’ll dive into the psychology of what makes achievement systems so addictive, as well as some theory behind best practices for building them into your own application.