Refresh Boston
another refreshing city
What is Refresh?
Refresh is a community of designers and developers working to refresh the creative, technical, & professional culture of New Media endeavors in the Boston area while promoting design, technology, usability, and standards.
Refresh News
Summer means warmer weather (or really hot weather this year), vacations, and tougher scheduling for tech events. So we're skipping a July event this year in order to loosen up the schedule and work on the rest of our 2010 gatherings instead. We've already lined up a late August event and we're working on the coming months as well.
Our Next Event
Our August event features CEO and Founding Principal of Perfetti Media, Christine Perfetti, who will present Quick and Dirty User Research Techniques.
- What
- Quick and Dirty User Research Techniques
- When
- Thursday, August 26th at 6:30PM
- Where
- Microsoft NERD Center
- Who
- Christine Perfetti of Perfetti Media
- RSVP on the Upcoming event page
Quick and Dirty User Research Techniques
There are those that believe that user research must be a complex and scientific process that takes lots of time, money, and resources. However, in the real world, most designers and engineers don't have the luxury to spend weeks and months on their user research. That's where guerrilla research techniques come into play.
It's possible to get useful results without the time-consuming expense of traditional user research methods. In this presentation, Perfetti Media's Christine Perfetti will share quick and dirty techniques for collecting user research data. You'll learn how to answer essential design questions using methods that take only a day - and sometimes only 10 minutes! Christine will discuss user research techniques, including:
- 5-Second Tests: A popular low-tech method to collect quick feedback on whether a screen or page's purpose is clear to the user
- Task Cataloging Questionnaire: A quick survey to learn more about the most important and frequent activities users perform with your product
- Comprehension Tests: A simple user research method to assess whether users understand your content
- Catalog-based Tests: Perfect for organizations migrating offline content to the web. A catalog-based test will help determine if key messages were lost during the translation
- The First Click Method: A usability test to help identify how well your design helps navigate users to the information they are looking for
- Trade Show Tests: An easy method for gathering feedback from dozens of users in a very short time
- Remote Research: If you can't conduct your user research in person, you'll learn what options you have for remote studies
In this presentation, Christine will share Perfetti Media's experience with these techniques and discuss how you can perform them yourself.
About Christine
Christine Perfetti is CEO and Founding Principal of Perfetti Media. For more than a decade, she has taught and consulted with hundreds of design and development teams on product strategy and user experience techniques.
With her extensive knowledge of human factors and user research techniques, Christine has been a top-rated presenter at the User Interface Conference, the Internet Marketing Conference, CHI, and the Usability Professionals' Association Conference. Before launching Perfetti Media, Christine was VP & Managing Director at User Interface Engineering, a leading user research, training, and consulting firm.
Our Sponsors
Once again, we need to thank Microsoft for providing us a wonderful space, bringing us pizza for attendees, and allowing us access to numerous beverages in the coolers on the 10th floor.
We're also happy to announce that Morgan Kaufmann will be donating a few UX books to raffle off to attendees as well. They offer Refresh Boston members 30% off any title in their HCI/UX catalog using discount code REFRESH.
We're currently exploring options for sponsorship for future events. If you'd like to help with either a monetary donation or by providing giveaways, please get in touch.
Send us an email if you'd like to support Refresh Boston.
Refresh Boston Elsewhere
Keep up to date with Refresh Boston and collaborate with other fellow Bostonians through our multiple channels, including:
Other Local Groups
There are plenty of other great web & tech communities in the Boston area, including:
- Build Guild
- A monthly event in Salem, MA for geeks of all kinds to meet, drink and show off their mustaches.
- North Shore Web Geeks
- For those North Shore folks who can't make it to Boston, this monthly group meets in Newburyport, MA.
- UX Book Club Boston
- Local club focusing on books about user experience design & development.
- BostonCHI
- The Boston area chapter of ACM's Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction that holds monthly meetings open to everyone.
Sponsors
- The NERD Center is Microsoft's research & innovation campus in Cambridge, and host to many groups & events, including Refresh Boston.
- Morgan Kaufmann offers Refresh Boston members 30% off any of the titles in its UX/HCI catalog, using discount code REFRESH.
- Freshview's Campaign Monitor makes it easy to send out beautiful, effective email campaigns and track the results as you go.
- O'Reilly User Group members save 35% on all titles. Enter discount code: DSUG
- Refresh Boston is organized by Hanerino, a design studio that specializes in attractive, accessible interfaces for websites & mobile.
To see all our sponsors, past & present, or to offer some help of your own, check out our support page.