You, too, can plan, design and develop websites and applications that fit your organizational objectives and technical capabilities while meeting the needs of the end user. Working with the same user-centered design methods used in Normal Modes' client engagements, we'll teach you how in this 2-day workshop.

By the end of the workshop, you’ll be able to:

• Incorporate user-centered design into your organization
• Identify the characteristics of your users — their needs, fears and motivations
• Organize content into intuitive navigation structures
• Develop intuitive user experiences by recognizing and avoiding common pitfalls
• Evaluate user interface (UI) designs with research-based metrics
• Calculate the ROI of user experience (UX) 

We emphasize practice over theory by using one of your team's existing websites or applications as the platform for your workshop. Led by expert UX practitioners with teaching experience, this workshop will include lively discussions and fully-documented take-away materials. Limited seating means you’ll get close interaction with the instructor and your peers.

Who Should Attend

This two-day workshop is a fast-paced, hands-on UX boot camp specifically designed for team members who are NOT experienced UX designers: website and application back-end developers, visual designers without UX training, project managers, product managers and related stakeholders.

Agenda

Day One: Putting Your Company on the Right Path

Thursday, Nov. 10 | 8:30 a.m. - 5 p.m.

How much difference will user-oriented design make to your company or organization? It can make a huge difference — if you understand and incorporate the fundamentals of UX strategy. On day one, we’ll analyze your organization, its goals and its customers. Then we’ll spell out how to establish user-centered design in your company, based on your resources. Next we’ll map the end-to-end user experience of your current website or application, as well as how it might look when reevaluated through the UX lens. We’ll develop practical personas for your user and teach you how to target that persona. Finally, we’ll teach you about how usability testing can help collect data about the user experience, how to communicate your test results and how to calculate your return on investment for UX projects. By the end of the day, you’ll know who you’re trying to reach, how best to reach them and how to prove that your efforts are worth the investment.

World Usability Day Happy Hour: Cheers to Making Life Easy!

5:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. T'Afia Restaurant.

Normal Modes is leading the effort to establish the Houston chapter of the Usability Professionals’ Association, and what better day to hold our first event than World Usability Day? Join us at this Normal Modes-sponsored happy hour. Network with your classmates and folks in the Houston UX community as we discuss this year’s themes:

• Designing with Intent: How to spark change in the way people behave and communicate the world over; and
• UX Culture Club: Anticipating cultural differences and how they affect usability

Day Two: Now You’ve Done it

Friday, Nov. 11 | 8:30 a.m. - 5 p.m.

Day two of our adventure builds on what you’ve learned so far by giving you a chance to try your hand at UX design. Along the way, you’ll get tips on ensuring agile UX workflow, using metrics to evaluate designs and identify/avoid common points of failure, understanding information architecture and common navigational points of failure, working with wireframing tools, using interface and interaction design, making use of design patterns, using error messaging without shame and giving and receiving UX design feedback. By the end of day two, you’ll have the experience you need to proceed confidently as a UX superhero.

For more info about Normal Modes training classes, additional training dates

and updates to this course, please visit normalmodes.com/training

Presenters

Ken Penny Ken has led digital marketing teams for more than 15 years in business planning, application development and user experience design at companies with highly-trafficked websites, including American Airlines, Continental Airlines and Qwest Wireless.   In the mid-1990s, Ken pioneered websites and digital marketing experiences in organizations unfamiliar with "new media." He recognized early in his career that the best user experiences were not accidental or casually thrown together, but were the result of informed designers with aptitude in human factors and curiosity for human-computer interactions. This inspired him to champion the need for and value of user experience design and test functions at every company he touched.   He has spoken at many professional conferences where he often discusses ways new technologies and software can help better inform business planners and designers create more engaging customer experiences.   Ken has a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and mathematics from Vanderbilt University as well as an MBA from Rice University.

Angela Schmeidel Randall Angela Schmeidel Randall is the president and founder of Normal Modes, a Houston, Texas-based firm that specializes in user experience design and usability testing.   She has more than 15 years of experience in user interface design, user experience development and usability testing with complex, data-driven websites and applications. Prior to founding Normal Modes, Angela worked with Continental Airlines to redesign and upgrade the airline’s customer-facing systems, including OnePass customer portal, hotel and car online booking engines, voice automated systems (including the first voice automated airline booking engine) and airport gate displays.   Since founding Normal Modes in 2009, Angela has worked on numerous user experience design and usability testing projects for applications including electronic healthcare records, oil trading platforms and eCommerce systems for commercial and government use.   Angela is a member of the Usability Professionals’ Association. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of St. Thomas, and a master’s degree from Rice University.

Refund Guidelines

We try to be as reasonable as possible:

• Sixty (60) days prior to the event, you can request a full refund.*
• Thirty (30) or more days prior to the event, you can request a 50% refund.*
• Thirty (30) or less days prior to the event, there are no refunds available. You can, however, transfer the registration to another Normal Modes workshop within the next year OR transfer the registration to the name of another person from your organization.

* Refunds given will be returned less fees charged by EventBrite for each registration. (Sorry! We can’t take a loss.)