An Event Worth Choosing

At UIE we recently released the web site for our annual User Interface Conference, a one-of-a-kind event focused on giving web designers and developers a chance to learn from the world’s best.

As part of this year’s great speaker lineup, we are lucky enough to have Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice, give the plenary!

I mentioned Barry in my talk Web 2.0: Leveraging the Network. Barry really understands and articulately explains the problem of having too much to choose, and I’m psyched that he’ll be speaking this year.

In addition, we’ve also got several guys who will be talking about topics right up my alley.

Luke Wroblewski from Functioning Form (and Yahoo) is giving a full-day presentation on communicating successfully with visual design, which I’m anxious to attend. What I like about Luke is that he’s not your usual “artist wannabe” designer. He understands that design really has nothing to do with the designer, and all about communicating ideas directly to the people using the site.

Also, I’m anxious to see David Heller give his full-day session about creating powerful web apps with Ajax. This is currently a white-hot topic in web design, and as I use Ajax more in my own projects I’m seeing how great it can be when used judiciously. What I like about David is that he’s got a common sense view of things, and doesn’t let buzzwords get in the way of a good experience.

Finally, we have Jeff Patton talking about Bringing User-centered design practices into Agile Development projects. I’m new to Agile Development myself, so I’m excited to learn why frameworks like Ruby on Rails and Cake are really embracing these ideas and implementing them.

But those are only 3 of the 8 full-day sessions. Check out the conference web site for all the details.