Focus on User Experience

October 27, 2010

Sharyn

I was lucky enough to attend the Usability Professionals’ Association (DC Metro Chapter) User Focus conference on October 15, 2010. First, I must give myself a pat on the back. After 13 years in Baltimore, I finally went out on a limb and took the MARC train from Baltimore’s Penn Station to DC’s Union Station. Besides a few smirks when I told the attendants that I needed help, it was really a great experience and I will NEVER drive to DC or a DC metro station again if I can avoid it. But, onto more important subjects…the conference!

The conference was amazing! In my wildest dreams, I never expected to learn as much as I did in one day.

  • Photo Credit: Social Media Blogster

    I was inspired in the morning by Steve Krug, keynote speaker and author of Don’t Make Me Think. His 45 minute enjoyable talk and question/answer session about usability testing made me rethink some of our internal process for web mapping projects.

  • I was asked to “consider the human” during Marti Hearst’s keynote presentation. The information in her presentation encouraged us to plan for users by considering feeling, language, memory aids, and socialibility. A side note – you can read her book, Search User Interfaces, online for FREE!
  • I was thrilled with the session content. Topics ranged from mobile design and evaluation to aligning business goals with user needs. I learned how to trick senior management into understanding the benefits of user experience and how to excite users about services they might not necessarily be interested in by using psychology to engage them in the content.

Besides the presentations during the conference, it was great to see familiar faces from the Baltimore area. I ran into a few former classmates and even a former TU colleague. In the morning Steve Krug commented that there are only 10,000 usability professionals in the world who have a job title that truly falls into that category. With the Web growing day by day, and technology and presentation methods evolving constantly, there is a need for this growing profession to stay on top of their game by continuing to improve best practices. This conference was just what I needed to help with continuing to learn more and more about user experience.

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Posted by Sharyn Kuczka

Getting in the Integrated Marketing Game

September 15, 2010

Sharyn

In recent months, DECO began to offer a new and exciting set of services. The Integrated Marketing Team (IMT) was formed to provide comprehensive solutions for communications and media challenges. Social media strategy and web site analysis and development are the focus of the team.

Just last week, the IMT completed a project where tactics, management strategies, and website integration approaches for implementing a Social Media Marketing Strategy were provided to six start-up businesses. Months were spent analyzing the companies and their industries. In turn, the IMT was able to provide a comprehensive strategy that included:

  • An overview of the social media landscape and how Web 2.0 has impacted the way consumers and businesses interact with one another.

    Click here for a one page reference sheet about the IMT services.

  • Specific social media tools that will work most effectively for each company.  Management and measurement strategies were suggested to ensure that implementing these tools are both time efficient and quantifiable.
  • Website analysis that includes improvement recommendations on navigation and functionality.  Also, social media tool integration recommendations were provided.
  • Tactical outreach, blogging, and search engine optimization (SEO) strategies provided additional advice on how to implement the suggested social media approaches effectively.

  • A Tool Kit provided summaries of each of our favorite social media tools.  The summary includes costs, usefulness, key features, step-by-step guide to get started, and helpful resources.

If social media is a marketing avenue your company would like to explore, don’t hesitate to contact me (I am one of the Project Managers for the IMT) for the guidance your business needs to take a strategy and run with it!

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Posted by Sharyn Kuczka

Cool Ideas + Planning = Efficiency

August 3, 2010

Sharyn

In case I didn’t mention this before, I took a course on Information Architecture (IA) this past spring. The course was useful and gave me the opportunity to put some IA best practices to work on class projects for some real life clients. Since then, I’ve been reminding colleagues around the division about the importance of IA and some steps we can take to be more efficient when it comes to designing a better user experience for our clients and their audiences.

5 IA steps that will definitely pay off!

  1. Complete a content inventory – if there is a site or application in place already, evaluate what’s going to the chopping block and what aspects are going to stick around. This ties right into the next step and you’ll see why in a second. If it’s a brand new project, this step can get skipped and you can jump to step 2.
  2. Gather requirements – Sounds so basic, but this is the step that can keep a project on track or let it spiral out of control. Meet with your stake holders to discuss what the needs are for the site and what’s actually doable. The time frame of the project might restrict how extensive the functionality can be. In the end, you’ll be happy you have this document to refer to and you can always reign the scope of the project back in as new ideas are presented.
  3. Organize a site map – Now, take your content inventory and your requirements document and create a site map. Personally, I like to use index cards (post-its work good too!) and create piles of things that will go together. Another approach is to create something that looks like a family tree to represent how all the pages and content will be organized.
  4. Lay out wireframes – Wireframing helps with laying out the basic framework of a site, but it also can show functionality. When I say functionality I and referring to how pages interact with one another and various designs to accommodate the various features that need to be incorporated into the design. Keep this simple. If you start to add too much color or design you stake holders will get too caught up in those elements oppose to the functionality, which is what you want them to focus on at this point.
  5. Create screen designs – Your wireframes are signed off on, now the part you’ve been dying to start – the actual design of the pages. This is where the graphic designer gets to go to town on applying the aesthetic look and feel to the basic wireframe.

So, why do all this. You will save time…I promise. Your programmers will be happy they have a concrete document to work from. Your clients will be happy to be a part of the process, opposed to a getting a big surprise when the whole thing is complete. And, your project managers will be happy with the efficiencies that came out of the process.

Try it, let me know how it works out for you!

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Posted by Sharyn Kuczka

Magazines….My Early Inspiration

June 15, 2010

Sharyn

I enjoyed reading about Clay and Jeremy’s early career influences and I was reminded of experiences I had during high school that set me on my path to become a graphic designer. Although my story is a bit geeky, I’m thrilled to share it. When I was a high school sophomore, a good friend who was a year above me was on the yearbook staff. I was so envious because it sounded like such a fun way to spend class time…picking out photos, making typographic choices about headlines and body copy and some writing.

She and I took our excitement for page layout to a whole new level. During the “Blizzard of ‘96” I managed to get snowed in at her house and we came up with the idea to design the cover of a magazine. We went as far as to create a bizarre name for our magazine that was the combination of our two last names.

We cut out letters from magazines, some old favorites like Seventeen and Teen, of fonts that we really liked, to create the logo for our magazine. And then we found the perfect cover image for our magazine. In the end, we managed to make it look like a real magazine cover. Over the next few months, we created a few of these covers with headlines that usually revolved around what was interesting in our life at the time.

The next year I joined the yearbook staff and as I expected, I completely fell in love with “real” page layout using a computer. My senior year I was asked to be the yearbook editor and at some point during this time frame, I knew that this was what I wanted to pursue.

I feel fortunate that I have had a passion for what I do every day for a long time. I’m inspired every time I open a magazine and quite often go back to my sophomore year thinking about my early inspiration and am thankful for those bursts of creatively that shaped my experiences today.

My Senior Yearbook Class

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Posted by Sharyn Kuczka

A Day in My Life

May 3, 2010

Sharyn

On an early, gloomy Saturday morning, I made my way to the Brown Center on the campus of MICA for the first inaugural “A Day in the Life Baltimore Design Conference.”  My spirits were instantly lifted as I spotted the orange and green balloons that signified the location of the event. I guess that first cup of coffee didn’t hurt either! Anyway, here are my personal highlights of the day…

  • This is a little thing, but the conference bag was filled with useful, thoughtful, and fun goodies. Useful – a desk guide that included reference that are great to have on hand. my favorite part of the guide is the fractions to decimals guide. Seems like that would be every designer’s best friend. Thoughtful – a pack of gum. Let’s face it, who doesn’t love a stick of gum after that morning cup of coffee or lunch. And fun – a super squishy green stress ball that now has a home right in front of me at work.
  • The first session I attended, “Typography More than Words”, was led by Ellen Lupton who provided a review in typography basics, but then explored some topics that I was not as familiar with. I was fascinated by something that she described as “sprinting.” Her graduate students are experimenting with this process where they take a design problem, and they work through the problem in several 20 minutes sessions where they explore different solutions for the same problem. Sounds like a great way to free the creative juices and encourage experimentation.

Bridget Sullivan moderates the panel "The Value of Great Design"

  • And, the afternoon wrapped up with an enjoyable panel moderated by Towson University’s own Bridget Sullivan! The panel featured four local creatives who have found success in their own business pursuits. Each of the panelists provided a different point of view because of their varying business size, length in business and overall point of view on how to approach projects, and particularly branding.

That afternoon I left the conference feeling energized and a new sense of inspiration towards the business of design. “A Day in the Life” really did make my day, maybe even my weekend.

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Posted by Sharyn Kuczka

What do you DO all day?

March 9, 2010

Sharyn

A few of my fellow bloggers (Raquel, Lisa, and Jimmy) here on TUoutreach have touched on what they “do all day” and now it’s my turn. My title is multimedia supervisor. Most people wouldn’t even dare to guess what that means so I’ll provide you with some background and then dive into the type of work I’m doing now.

When I first started working at the Center for GIS, my title was graphic design specialist. My primary job responsibilities included

  • supporting the design requests associated with the development of web mapping applications and
  • promoting an annual event that required the creation of a theme based logo, and several printed pieces to encourage proposal submission, exhibitor commitment, registration, and a program for the event, as well as other design related tasks.

Over the years, my role has expanded quite a bit! This is due to the creation of our division (DECO) and the increase in graphic design support requested. I still support CGIS projects needs, but I also support requests that include:

  • maintenance of the DECO web site
  • creation of print materials to promote new initiatives
  • e-marketing campaigns for events or programs
  • blog and social media application oversight (with Bobbie)
  • event planning support
  • deco client design requests

So, you’re still wondering what all this means? Let me provide you with a couple of examples of two projects I really enjoyed working on.

  • Coalition of Urban and Metropolitan Universities (CUMU) web site – CUMU’s international headquarters are housed at TU. In 2006, I was approached about designing their site and provide continued maintenance. The really fun part about this web site is that each year they host an annual conference and I have the opportunity to work with the conference host on designing the site for the year’s event. CUMU is planning to add an enhancement to the site in the next six months that will provide a library of best practice resources to their members. We’re excited about the opportunity to implement this for them.
  • Mapping Solutions Microsite – As part of Towson’s “Thinking Outside” campaign, mapping solutions CGIS has created were highlighted. Many of you may have seen the commercial while watching Raven’s games in 2008. When you caught the commercial and wanted more information about what you just saw, you would have visited the microsite to find out more. The site was a team effort where I worked with several people across campus to get the site up. It was an exciting project because of variety of content that was incorporated and the impact it would have on the university.

Every day is different when I enter my office which is the main reason I do love my job. I may be working on a web site for an upcoming event, designing a survey tool for a project, or creating a logo for a new initiative, but whatever it is, I’m always on my toes and ready for the next challenge.

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Posted by Sharyn Kuczka

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