Love creative problem solving, but need something more practical--something specific to User Experience? Russ and Christina will share with you the exercises they use to solve the REAL problems. You'll flex your critical thinking muscle through a series of jumpstarter activities. Even better, attendees will be encouraged to participate, if not embarrass themselves in front of a room full of their peers as they challenge themselves to see past the first, obvious--and often incorrect--answers, and start to flip problems on their heads to see solutions from a different view.
Christina is currently at Zynga, doing something new and exciting. Previously, she was at Myspace as General Manager of Social, and before that Linkedin where she ran the stream and the communication products. She is also a serial founder, and has founded two companies, a product company dedicated to collaborative blogging, and a consulting company dedicated to making business humane; as well as Boxes and Arrows, an online magazine of design and the Institute for Information Architecture. She is a passionate information disseminator, writing the best selling Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web; and speaking on the topic of the human experience in information spaces at conferences worldwide.
Russ Unger is a User Experience Director for Happy Cog, a web design firm in New York City, Philadelphia and San Francisco. He is co-author of the book “A Project Guide to UX Design” for Peachpit Press (Voices That Matter) and is co-authoring a book on guerrilla research methods with Todd Zaki Warfel due out in 2011.
Russ has been working on websites since 1993—when there was only Notepad to code with and Mosaic was the only browser around. That was when he found his interest in User Experience Design and Information Architecture began to thrive. Since then, he has worked with a variety of companies--from start-ups to everyday household brands--helping them infuse User Experience strategies and tactics into their designs.
