As a part of the Wufoo team, Kevin Hale is no stranger to creating wonderful web apps. In his presentation, Kevin will be showing how to focus on user interaction in order to create an experience that users will love.

UPDATE: Join us from 5:30 on for pre-meeting cocktails at Versailles (located next to 101 Restaurant & Lounge, directly across from the Challenger Learning Center).

Thursday, May 27th
7:00 – 8:30 PM
The Challenger Learning Center
200 South Duval Street
Tallahassee, FL 32301
Cost: FREE

About Our Speaker:
Kevin Hale is the co-founder of Infinity Box, Inc., a company seeded by Y Combinator. He is responsible for safe guarding the user experience of the Wufoo application and designing every pixel of its interface. As much as Kevin likes keeping things clean and reliable, he loves innovation. He writes about interface design issues for the web development blog, Particletree and served as editor-in-chief of the web development magazine, Treehouse. As a child, Kevin was the kid in class who ate a box of crayons for a dollar.

And a Word of Appreciation
Special thanks to Alan Hanstein at Paragon New Media and Darren Allen at White Dog Design Group for helping sponsor and coordinate our meeting!

How to Design Web Apps People Love (13.4 MB)

The mind behind UXBooth.com uses Photoshop to deconstruct some of the most common UI effects from scratch to add greater depth and realism to your work.

Tuesday, March 30th
7:00 – 8:30 PM
Room 249 (a 100-seat auditorium), FSU Fine Arts Building
530 W. Call Street St.
Tallahassee, FL 32301

About Andrew: Hailing from the great city of Atlanta, GA, Andrew Maier designs interactions and user experiences for a variety of clients. He writes, speaks, and teaches about design and its intersection with the internet. In addition he serves as the editor–in–chief of the user experience blog, UX Booth. When he’s not crazy busy, Andrew likes singing, practicing yoga and drinking coffee, like a good little hippie should.

People often talk about usability and learnability when discussing web and application development. Things have to be intuitive and familiar to increase conversions and trial… blah blah blah. All of this is really important. But what does it really boil down to?

It’s all a matter of trust. Trust between the user and the developer. Between the user and the designer. Ultimately trust is allowing yourself to become vulnerable based on a positive expectation. So how do you build trust? And how do you avoid breaking it? It’s about the promises you make in subtle and obvious ways.

In his presentation Carl will break down key steps to understanding, building and keeping trust with your users. More than that you’ll get to hear from real users what they think when you break that trust. Ouch!

Special Thanks to Alan Hanstein of Paragon New Media for the generous event sponsorship! Also, thanks also to Eric Thomas and the folks at Zimmerman for their continued support and hosting our event! Lastly, if you haven’t already done so, please help us plan by letting me know if you plan to attend! You can shoot me an email or give me a call at 850-212-4044.

Over the past 19 years, Michael has worked on virtually every communications medium imaginable in both English and Spanish languages. From direct mail and online for General Motors, Discovery Channel Latin America, and SOL Sotheby’s to print and television for Nextel and NorthernLight.com, he has helped clients craft their unique brand voice, and helped make their message stick. Michael’s work has been awarded locally, nationally, and internationally at Addys, Hatch, CMYK, Print Magazine, One Show, and the Webbys.

If you haven’t already done so, please help us plan by letting me know if you plan to attend! You can shoot me an email or give me a call at 850-212-4044. I want to make sure we have enough seats, snacks, and such. The office is located at 3033 Powell Road, Tallahassee, FL 32301 (The pin on the Google Map is a little off. It’s the last driveway as you head south on Powell, just before turning left onto Eliza Road. The office is in the building located in the back right corner.)

Friday, September 25 at 6 PM and 8 PM
Sunday, September 27 at 5 PM
$7 general admission, $5 TFS members, $5 students with ID
All Saints Cinema, 918 1/2 Railroad Avenue
386-4404 for more info
www.tallahasseefilms.com

I was able to attend the inaugural Front-end Design Conference this past Friday down in St. Pete. For the most part, the presentations were excellent, and I highly recommend adding it to your calendar for next year – especially if the price stays at $99. In the meantime, PDF files of the presentations have been added to the conference site.

Rather than one large presentation, we’ve decided to have three shortened presentations. Each presentation will cover one of the three aspects of our focus. Marc Ray will cover the development area with an intro to Drupal. We will all be invited to weigh in on the design piece with the ideas conversation. Finally, the business bit will be covered by Mark Marsiglio with an overview on cloud hosting. I think it’ll be a great evening!

Once again, if you haven’t already done so, please send an RSVP to help us plan for space (and beverages). Thanks!

The topic for the evening will be Jazz & Agile. Additionally, there should be plenty of time to take the conversation in other directions.

Feel free to spread the word, but if you haven’t already done so, send us an email if you plan to attend. Space is limited, and we’ve already got a good-sized crowd interested in joining.

Special Thanks to The Zimmerman Agency for hosting our event, and to Paragon New Media for their generous support towards making sure our guests have a nice place to sleep. Here is the map to the Zimmerman office with access to directions.

Here are the details for our upcoming meeting:

Location:
The Zimmerman Agency
1821 Miccosukee Commons
Tallahassee, FL 32308
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Date & Time:
Thursday, August 14
6:30 – 8:00 PM