Introduction to Usability: An Interactive Discussion

Wednesday October 22, 2008

Steelcase Learning Center in Grand Rapids

If you are interested in learning the basics and benefits of user centered design and how to introduce it into your organization, then Introduction to User Centered Design is your chance! Dave Mitropoulos-Rundus, Director of User Experience at Perficient, and Mike Beasley, the president of the Michigan UPA, will lead a
discussion that gives you the opportunity to pose your questions to a couple of user experience experts. You can learn about such things as:

  • What IS Usability?  Can you touch it? Can you measure it?
  • How can you incorporate it into your organization?
  • “Usability,” “User Experience,” “Human Factors,” “Information Architecture?” What’s the deal with all these names?
  • What can my website analytics tell me about the usability of my site?
  • How you can use user tasks and goals to organize your website.

After an introduction to the basics of usability, they will open the floor to questions. You will set the agenda for this discussion through the questions you bring, so come prepared!

Dave Mitropoulos-Rundus is a Director of User Experience at Perficient, Inc. He has designed user interfaces for hand-helds and kiosks and web sites and production machines, and has conducted evaluations in the lab, on the web, in the field, and in the homes of consumers. Dave has held usability consulting, sales, and management positions in both company product development and in consulting groups. He has led corporate initiatives to standardize user interfaces, improve usability, and achieve Section 508 compliance. He has also focused on dramatically improving usability and conversion rates on Business-to-Consumer websites and on achieving usable and useful IT software.

Mike Beasley is the User Experiologist at Pure Visibility. Mike is committed to improving the world, one user interface at a time. He has worked on websites and computer software, has done usability testing, heuristic evaluations, user research, and has had a strong interest in figuring out why people do the things that they do. Before joining Pure Visibility, Mike was a usability engineer at Compuware and at Thomson Gale. Mike is currently president of the Michigan chapter of the Usability Professionals’ Organization and Associate Content Editor for UX Magazine.

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