Today's blog post is the first in a series of “guest interviews” conducted by Summit Conference Chair Chris Hester. Chris will be speaking with many of the presenters scheduled for the Summit about their sessions and what attendees can look forward to.
Staying competitive as technical communicators often means wearing more than one hat. Stuart Bender’s preconference workshop, Usability and User Experience—Maintaining Your Creative Edge, is a component of our Responsive Design and Development certificate bundle in addition to being available as a workshop. In this workshop, you'll learn how to perform usability tests, how to organize evaluation sessions, and how to tap hidden resources for solutions and innovations which might otherwise be overlooked.
Tell me about your background and how you came to be involved with usability and user experience.
As an artist who has exhibited for more than 20 years, my work has included painting, drawing, dance, animation, music, video, and live performance, but it was designing interactive environments that required a deeper appreciation of user experience, and how it affects audience perceptions. And this has been especially true while designing works in museums where I’ve had to consider what kind of experience the audience would have when they walk through the environment I was creating. For example, on one hand visitors may be excited or curious to walk through a series of darkening corridors leading to the actual work, but others might avoid that same experience because they can’t see as well and may be afraid of falling. At that point, accessibility becomes a factor in how to design the environment to engage a broader audience.
On the technical side, in 1993, as a university professor I started creating interactive training I could distribute digitally, and in 1996 that segued into designing interactive training in a corporate setting. In 2000, usability testing was added to my responsibilities, focusing on software interface design, training, and other customer-facing materials, and now one of the several hats I wear is usability evangelist for CCC Information Services Inc.
What prompted you to come up with this session idea?
This session is based on a series of usability and user experience articles I wrote for our company Technical Support newsletter. Based on those articles, I put together a presentation for the eLearning Guild in 2011, and that grew into a full-blown workshop where people go beyond the concepts and actually practice the skills. I’ve conducted this workshop for various organizations, including the STC Orange County Chapter.
Complete this sentence: “You should absolutely attend this workshop if you…”
You should attend this workshop if you are interested in learning about the fields of user experience and usability, in learning how they integrate with your work, and if you want to discover the remarkable connection between James Bond and real world user experience. But also, you should also attend this workshop if you want hands-on experience with creating heuristic reviews, testing usability, and designing personas.
In the session evaluations, we ask attendees, “What is the best idea you heard in this session that you plan to use?” What do you expect the top answer to be?
Brainstorming techniques for design solutions and creating new experiences for the user.
What are you looking forward to most in Phoenix?
I’m looking forward to STC. There’s such a sense of sharing and non-competitiveness with this group of people.
Stuart Bender is a senior applications engineer in the Communications Services department at CCC Information Services Inc. (the industry leader in collision repair estimating and shop management software), where he specializes in evaluating and testing software usability, designing user education and assistance tools, and enhancing user experience. He is also an exhibiting artist and educator whose live performances, installations, and music/video works have been exhibited internationally for over two decades, including the Prix Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria; the Worldwide Video Festival in the Netherlands; the New York Film and Video Festival at Lincoln Center; and the Directors Guild of America in Los Angeles, CA. Find Stuart on Lanyrd.