Should Designers and Developers Do Usability?

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox for June 25 is now online at:
  > http://www.useit.com/alertbox/own-usability.html
		
Summary:
Having a specialized usability person is best, but
smaller design teams can still benefit when designers do
their own user testing and other usability work.
		
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Announcing the User Experience 2007 conference

  > Barcelona, November 4-9
  > Las Vegas, December 2-7

31 full-day tutorials and 2 keynote presentations:
  > http://www.nngroup.com/events

I am excited to announce our first conference in Spain. The usability
field in Spain is growing ferociously and I am happy that we can support
our Spanish friends and colleagues by bringing them a large number of
world-class speakers for the first time.

I am also pleased to be back in Las Vegas, where we will be at Caesar's
Palace for the second time. This hotel is a wonderfully gaudy place in the
best Vegas tradition, with staff dressed up as the "Roman Army" and
"Cleopatra." While being fun, it's a luxurious place to stay and the
meeting facilities are top-notch and completely serious: one of the most
modern venues we have ever rented.

As always, the conference covers many important topics that everybody
should know about, such as user testing, information architecture,
personas, metrics and analytics, design patterns, visual design, and
writing for the Web.

We go into more detail about APPLICATION DESIGN than we did last year,
with a special track of 4 full days covering application usability (2
days, because there are so many guidelines), complex applications, and an
in-depth case study of the design of an enterprise application.

We have also expanded the MANAGEMENT and strategy track with more material
for senior professionals.

There are several new days about SEARCH, as befits the growing importance
of this topic: we have separate tutorials on intranet search and search
for product-focused websites, since these two types of search differ
substantially from the "standard" search you know from Google. There's
also a full day on search analytics.

The conference ends with a new seminar, the "42-point website check-up,"
which converts the week's take-home lessons into an action plan for
increasing the business value of your site.

In total, 31 full-day, in-depth courses: two more than last year - the
field keeps expanding.

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INTRANET DESIGN ANNUAL – CALL FOR ENTRIES

Think you have a good intranet? Enter it for the annual award competition
to identify the year's 10 best intranets.

Deadline: July 9

Info on what we need and where to send it:
  > http://www.nngroup.com/reports/intranet/2008

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