dConstruct 2007 Podcasts

dConstruct is an affordable, one-day conference aimed at those building the latest generation of web-based applications. The theme for this year's conference is Designing the User Experience.

The 2007 conference was held in September.  This page aggregates recordings of all of the speakers or you can visit the link to download the podcasts.
     
Tom Coates
In this session, Tom will talk about new literacies that designers need to build things that are native to a web of data, the blurring and interplay between designers and developers and what it means to rapidly iterate in small multi-disciplinary teams to find the heart and soul of a new concept.

Matt Webb
Products aren't only their aesthetic form and feature lists in catalogues. We live alongside them, and they open us to experiences. We first spy them across a crowded shop floor (then take them home and unwrap them); we get to know them, are frustrated by them, are pleased by them; we socialise with them and our other friends.

George Oates & Denise Wilton
Denise and George want to talk to you about a few community-based projects they’ve worked on. They’ll delve into strategies and ideas around building a sense of place, and discuss the dynamics they have observed by watching people get comfortable… so comfortable there’s a sense of ownership and possession.

Cameron Moll
It’s easy to poke fun at bad design, but it’s far more challenging and rewarding to discern differences between good design and great design. This session will teach you practical design techniques for tipping the scales of greatness in your favor, using a blend of graphic design theory, human computing principles, and a communication-centric approach. Learn the difference between concepts such as influence vs. inspiration or machine efficiency vs. user efficiency.

Leisa Reichelt
Including an introduction to the principles and practices of Agile Methodologies, this presentation explores the opportunities for UCD in an Agile environment, how designers can shape Agile to better support their work, and what designers can learn from Agile methods.

Peter Merholz
Engage in a deep dive into the importance of experience. In this session Peter will cover the historical perspective; lay out the evolution of product categories; demonstrate the competitive advantage that experience provides; explain the importance of thinking about your products in a systems fashion; and cap it off with a discussion of experience strategies and how they can provide stars to sail your ship by.

Jared Spool
In his usual entertaining and insightful manner, Jared will talk about what it takes to build a design team that meets today’s needs. See how successful experience design integrates the needs of the users with the requirements of the business. See how it is learned, but not available through introspection. Learn how experience design must be invisible to succeed and why it is cultural, multi-disciplinary, and thrives best in an 'educate and administrate' environment.

The Return
After an unintended hiatus, the podcast returns with a look at all the stuff going on around dConstruct 2007.

Last.fm
A late-night chat with Matthew Ogle and Hannah Donovan from Last.fm

Retrospective
dConstruct is back. Before taking a look ahead to this year's event, let's have a listen back to last year's conference and hear how it sets the stage for dConstruct 2007.

Earlier this year, we uploaded a link to AOL's Milissa Tarquini's article in Boxes and Arrows on Blasting the Myth of the Fold (or the scroll).

The is a follow-on podcast with Jeff Parks interviewing Milissa and updating additional information from the original article.

Here is a podcast from PodTech where Amit Pande from Oracle talks about how usability is picking up among Indian companies, what it takes to set up a usability design lab and payscales among other things.  Amit manages Oracle's user experience practice in India. 

Tom Kelley, general manager of the design firm IDEO, wrote a very interesting book on innovation.  During his work with leading companies, he identifed various roles that are important to the innovation process -- Anthropologist, the person who goes into the field to see how customers use and respond to products, to come up with new innovations; the Cross-Pollinator, who mixes and matches ideas, widely disparate people, and technologies to create new ideas that can drive growth; and the Hurdler, who instantly looks for ways to overcome the limits and challenges to any situation. 

Ten Faces will show you how to create a culture of continuous innovation and renewal, and the link takes you to the book's website.

As a bonus, here is a link to a podcast Tom had with Dave Iverson from KQED in San Francisco.

Here is a podcast that was created from Jared Spool's keynote presentation at the User Interface 11 Conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts on October 10, 2006.  In Jared's words, here is what he discussed:  "In the keynote presentation I gave at our User Interface 11 Conference, I highlighted how the most successful experience design teams are thriving in this fast-paced environment. I touched upon techniques, such as personas and design patterns that can dramatically speed up the design process. I’ve received a great deal of positive reaction to my keynote, and hope you enjoy it."

The link provides audio, transcript and presentation slides.

This is an 11 minute interview with Chris Baum by Jeremiah Owyang.  Chris is the editor of popular IA webzine, Boxes and Arrows, and is well-versed in the industry. Chris can be found from his blog eXperience.

This is a 20 minute podcast from the 2007 South By Southwest (SXSW) Conference by Peter Merholz, who is co-founder of Adaptive Path.

"The world of business and product design is changing. In fact, we have seen a number of trends taking shape that we believe are all pointing to the end of "products.' There is a growing realization that we are no longer designing single, stand-alone, centralized, static things, web sites, or systems. As the internet and digital networks in general become more ubiquitous, more distributed, and more integrated in our lives, we're finding that it's hard to find a "product" that is not also, or even mostly, a service. These service design projects generally involve multiple touchpoints or channels (i.e. the web, mobile devices, and physical spaces, etc.), a focus on long-term relationships, and the need for consistent experience across throughout. In fact, consumers expect more variety, more control, more interoperability, more adaptability, and more consistency in experience than ever before. This has serious implications for business, design, and development."

More on Peter is available at this link.