DESIGNING *for humans

IIT Design Research Conference for 2007

The conference formerly known as "About, With & For" is now appropriately renamed as the Design Research Conference.

From the conference coordinators:

"Please join the IIT Institute of Design Friday, September 21 - Saturday, September 22, 2007, for our sixth annual Design Research Conference (formerly: 'about, with & for'). We are delighted to announce that the new home of the conference will be Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art, a wonderfully appropriate venue for the engaging nature of the work presented.

The Institute of Design has long been a visionary in driving the advancement of user-centered design practice. This conference will provide a forum to feature the applied design research in some of the world?s most forward-thinking corporations and academic institutions. It will emphasize the importance industry and academia share in generating value and advancing the role design research plays in the development of future generations of products and services. A compelling facet of our new direction is to share insight about challenges to implementation within organizations.

Early registration opens May 17th. We will begin to announce our speakers in about two weeks."

For more information visit: http://www.id.iit.edu/events/drc/2007/

FYI - The IDSA Human Factors web log covered last year's conference here and here.

Product Design Group Newsletter

Download pdtg_summer_07_newsletter_print_12_pages_web.pdf

The spring 2007 newsletter of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society's Product Design Techincal Group is now available.  The issue features:

• General/background info about the purpose and goals of the group
• Call for nominations for the upcoming User-Centered Product Design Award
• Information about last year's award winners

and can be downloaded (PDF) -

Download pdtg_spring_2007_newsletter.pdf

"The Product Design Technical Group (PDTG) is dedicated to developing productsthat are useful, usable, safe, and desirable by applying the methods of human factors, consumer/user research,and industrial design. Members of the group are concerned with creating an appealing total user experience forconsumer, commercial, medical, andindustrial products and systems. Their work focuses on both physical and cognitive user interactions."

Call for Articles

The IDSA Human Factors professional interest section is looking for article submissions for this blog.   These can be short (500-1500 words) pieces on topics related to user research, human factors, usability, ethnography or other related topics.   Focus should be on methods, case studies and other instructional content. Submissions should be focused on industrial or product design, rather than on related topics such as interaction design.

In terms of format, the Boxes and Arrows site (focusing on information architecture) is a good model of tone and length.  See for example, a recent article on stakeholder interviews.

If interested, please send a brief summary or outline of your article idea to [email protected]

Eye Tracking For Product Design Research

As a follow-up to the research presentations at the IDSA Northeast District conference, I am posting a PDF version of the slide sets related to my presentation on Eye Tracking: 

Download tannen_eye_tracking_for_product_design.pdf (PDF presentation)

Download audio_panel.avi  (example video, AVI format)

Sample of  other  information sources about eye tracking:

Electronic Ink Eye Tracking Information (basic description and examples)

Rochester Institute of Technology - Visual Perception Lab (mobile eye tracker)

Research on Mobile Phone Design Preference

- Rob Tannen