May’s Refresh Detroit meeting will be on the 21st, from 6:30 to 8:30 at the downtown Ann Arbor District library in Ann Arbor. Map to the location.
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We will be having a few quick presentations by members of our great group, and general discussion on the latest news, challenges, projects, and ideas that the group members have encountered in their web related occupations/hobbies/activities.

The event like always is free to anyone who is interested.

The current speakers will be

Nick DeNardis

Designer of the Wayne State University Library and Information Science website. He will discuss the latest release of the website, their goals, process and challenges.

Brian Kerr

Information architecture, user experience, and django development guru. Exact topic details to come…

Paul Tarjan - Yahoo! SearchMonkey

The fine folks at Yahoo! are sponsoring this event and promise to bring lots of swag as well as give a short presentation on their new open source semantic web search in your own applications and websites. This new product they are releasing is called “Search Monkey” and you can read more at:

http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000523.html
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/24/yahoo-open-search…
http://searchengineland.com/080424-113600.php

Where: Ann Arbor District Library, 343 South Fifth Avenue, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104 (map). Parking is available in the library parking lot. We’re meeting in the conference room on the third floor. At the third floor stairs lobby, go through the double doors, turn right, and look for the first door on the right to enter the conference room.

When: Wednesday, April 23, 2008 6:30PM-8PM

Join us for demo night on April 23, 2008 at the Ann Arbor Public Library, as meeting participants will demo their latest websites, designs, applications, tools, and products. Each person has five minutes to present and answer questions.

Demo night is a great opportunity to share your work, see what others have been working on, and get feedback on works in progress.

Interested in demoing your work? RSVP by commenting below with your name and application/design/tool/product, so we have an idea of how many people will be presenting.

As of April 15, 2008, the following people are planning to present their work:

• Julie Van De Water
• Nick DeNardis
• Vince Chmielewski
• Kevin Dangoor
• Noel Jackson
• John Paul Narowski
• Brian Kerr
• Christina Wallace

Where: Ann Arbor District Library, 343 South Fifth Avenue, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104 (map). Parking is available in the library parking lot. We’re meeting in the conference room on the third floor. At the third floor stairs lobby, go through the double doors, turn right, and look for the first door on the right to enter the conference room.

When: Wednesday, March 19, 2008 6:30PM-8PM

Speaker: Barb Hernandez, User Experience Manager at TechSmith, Lansing, Michigan

Abstract

What can you do when conversion rate is flat? TechSmith is a trialware company by nature, so measuring how many people download, try and actually purchase our software is the best measure of conversion and success.

We know that the thousands – dare I say millions of users who own SnagIt can’t live without it and tell us how it has changed the way they communicate with people. So what were we missing, why were we not getting the conversion rate we wanted? Learn about how we focused on the user experience, what we did, and how the changes impacted the conversion rate.

Barb Hernandez Biography

Ms. Hernandez specializes in using User Centered Design techniques to drive the user experience for technology products. She has led the user centered design efforts for cross-functional teams and has been involved in all stages of product development, including investigation and analysis, defining detailed requirements, creating prototypes, running usability tests and conducting usability evaluations.

She has worked on the design and usability testing of graphical user interfaces, content Web sites, Web-based applications, and interfaces for hand-held devices including cells phones and PDAs. At TechSmith, Barb focuses on helping teams make design decisions grounded in user intelligence.

We had a great meetup tonight as about 20 people attended our February meeting at the Ann Arbor District Library. Almost half the people attended for the first time, many referred by the a2b3 group (thanks for sharing the news about Refresh Detroit!).

Brian Reindel of Niche Retail spoke about JavaScript namespacing, constructors, and callback functions. We had a lively discussion about the various popular libraries, as well as the potential for developers and designers to use JavaScript without consideration for the user experience and accessibility issues involved.

Thanks again to Brian for speaking to our group; I really enjoyed the presentation. For those people at the meeting who asked about the slides and code samples, Brian kindly provided his presentation in PDF format for download (PDF: 103K).

Join us at the fourth annual Internet User Experience (IUE 2008) at Washtenaw Community College in Ann Arbor, Michigan the week of March 31, 2008-April 3, 2008. Organized by the Michigan Usabiity Professionals Association in collaboration with Washtenaw Community College’s Internet Professional Program, the User Experience Network (UXnet), Refresh Detroit, and other sponsors, the conference promises four days of presentations, panels, training sessions, and workshops on optimizing web sites so they are effective, compelling, and profitable for businesses.

I attended the event the first two years and can tell you I had a great time! Wonderful sessions, excellent panels, and the opportunity to network with other web professionals involved in designing and improving the user experience was, in the words of MasterCard, “priceless”.

The conference is invaluable for

• company web site managers and stakeholders
• product managers
• marketing professionals
• advertising professionals
• web developers
• user experience professionals
• information architects
• professional communicators
• students in any of the programs

Experts in search engine optimization, online communities, and user experience management will lead sessions at the conference. Tutorials and training are also available to attendees with 1/2 day and full-day workshops before and after the main conference days.

Discounts are available for Usability Professionals Association members and several other organizations, as well as full-time non-working students.

The event will be held at the Morris Lawrence Auditorium at Washtenaw Community Colllege (map).

For more information and details on registration, visit Michigan Usability Professionals Association or the conference website.

Just heard from Refresh-Detroit co-founder Dennis about another opportunity in warm California at Yodlee, the company that Dennis works at. As a point of reference, today in Michigan, the wind chill has the temperature hovering at 0 degrees Farenheit. Good to hear from you Dennis!

Yodlee is looking for a Product Manager - Personal Finance. Responsible for assisting in the development/maintenance of the strategic product direction and supporting tactical roadmaps for assigned products under the direction of management. Responsible for developing knowledge of industry trends, potential market opportunities in order to ensure appropriate convergence within the Yodlee PersonalFinance solution. For more info, check out the job description.

Has anyone used NVDA? If yes, I would like to know your thoughts on it, vs. JAWS or Window Eyes.

NVDA (Non Visual Desktop Access) is a screen reader (free and open source) for Windows XP/Vista. I heard about NVDA from Steve Faulkner’s article, and wondered if others have used it. I installed it, found it easy to use, and used it to test a few of my client sites with Firefox under Windows XP.

Learn how the principles of human factors engineering are making equipment and medical devices safer at hospitals. Join the Michigan Usability Professionals Association and the University of Michigan student chapter of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society on Tuesday, February 12, 2008 for the presentation “Making Hospitals Safer” at the VA National Center for Patient Safety (map )from 6PM-8:30PM in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Food and networking begin at 6PM, the program begins at 7PM.

Linda Williams, member of the team at VA National Center for Patient Safety. will talk about how human factors engineering guides the NCPS approach to patient safety and will lead a tour through the hands-on collection.

The event is free, but reservations are requested.

Where: The Ann Arbor Public Library, in downtown Ann Arbor. We will be meeting in the library’s free space, located on the third floor.

When: Wednesday, February 27th 2008, 6:30 - 8:00

Speaker: Brian Reindel, Software Engineer at Niche Retail.

Abstract

The advent and popularity of JavaScript libraries has caused front-end programming paradigms to change drastically. Design patterns are emerging, object-oriented concepts are common place, and the line between client-side scripting and server-side scripting is beginning to blur.

Brian will be reviewing some of the techniques inherent to these libraries so that you can better understand how to build custom functionality of your own, while taking into account best practices. Some of the sub-topics to be included will be namespacing, anonymous function execution, the dollar sign selector, variable arguments, callback functions and shorthand.

Brian Reindel’s Biography

Brian Reindel is a software engineer, currently employed with Niche Retail, LLC, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He graduated from Oakland University in 1999 with a BA, Journalism, and has been toying professionally with Web development technologies for almost a decade.

Brian’s language of choice is Java, but he gets dirty on occasion with Ruby on Rails and LAMP as a solution stack. The majority of his career, however, has been spent on the front-end, developing Web pages with XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Although he still dreams of writing full-time in the future, Brian is immersed in the world of software development, and enjoys the challenge of learning new technologies.