This post also could have been titled “why you should come to ignite waterloo 5″. I’m hoping that I will convince you to do so by retelling a few of the presentations I saw at Ignite Waterloo.

First of all, you may be asking what is Ignite? Ignite conferences are a series of 5 minute talks on anything, accompanied by slide shows that auto advance every 15 seconds. Their mantra is “enlighten us but make it quick”. Sound interesting? Keep reading.

There have been three Ignite Events in Waterloo  (aptly labelled Ignite Waterloo 1-3). I had tickets to the last one, but I ended up bailing the day of due to illness. I now wish I’d just sucked it up and gone anyways.

I showed up around 6 o’clock when doors opened, and got a chance to chat with Mark Connolly who is one of two the co-creators of uxWaterloo. About an hour later I grabbed some seats for my good friends Jon and Tyler, and started snapping pictures of the crowd. At 7:30 my friends had arrived and the presentations started! I’m not going to highlight them all (the full list is available here), but once the videos get uploaded to YouTube by Philip Bast (the volunteer videographer for the event), I’ll update this post with links!

Mike Shanks: Combining Passions

Mike (twitter: @mikepgww) gave a talk on comining passions. In his case, he wanted to combine his passion for running, with his passion for drinking beer. Apparently, there are like minded individuals who participate in something called the beer mile. This involves chugging a beer, then running a quarter-mile, chugging another beer, then running another quarter-mile, a beer, a quarter-mile, abeeraquartermile and you’re done. Mike walked us through this process, including such descriptive phrases as “Shit! Beer is carbonated”, “burpin’ around the corner”, and “Shit! Beer is still carbonated!”

Sean Puckett: The Smart Camera

Sean (web: http://photi.ca) presented us with the evolution of the camera from a dumb instrument – one that does only what its user asks of it – to a device combined with the power of 1/10th of a super computer, and a connection to the internet. Turns out 1/10th of a super computer is a whole hell of a lot, and a connection to the internet affords you “the whole of human knowledge”, allowing you to do crazy things like live translation of text written in one alphabet to another, or take a picture of someone and find out who they are, or overlay information about whatever you’re looking (folks in the biz call this augmented reality, I’m told).

Cari Howard: Garbage In, Nothing Out: It Doesn’t Go Away!

Cari (twitter: @ariesamazon) informed us of the fact that the Waterloo region’s land fills have about 20 years left. 20 years. Thats not a lot of time. After that, where are we going to put our garbage? She implored us to reduce and reuse before recycling. Turns out that even though recycling is a good thing, its not nearly as efficient as reducing or reusing your goods. Also interesting, was some details she shared on future technologies to deal with waste disposal. The short version is they use something called a plasma torch to shoot a bolt of lightning into the garbage. This apparently produces no harmful waste except some gases, which can fortunately be collected and used to charge your next bolt of lightning! Very cool.

Linda Carson: Art: WTF?

Linda Carson (twitter: @lccarson) went to art school so we didn’t have to. This amazingly titled presentation began with a picture of Damien Hirst’s For the Love of God. This, as Linda told us is a type of art called a vanitas. A vanitas is, as I understand it, a piece of art meant to remind us of our mortality. It started out with depictions of skulls, then depiction of skulls in ways that you can only see them from a certain angle. Then partially butchered animal carcasses, then partially butchered human carcasses. Then, in 1987 (I was totally born that year!) Canadian artist Jana Sterbak created a vanitas of a woman wearing a dress made of meat. Sound familiar? Yep. Lady Gaga was not just being strange, she was referencing years of art history. At the very end of her talk, she told us what I told you at the start: Linda Carson went to art school so we didn’t have to.

Oh God There Were More?

Yes, and they were all good. In fact, the ones I’ve covered here are only a sampling from the first half of the presentations! I’ll try and get more reviews up here, but this post is long enough for now. Stay tuned for part 2!

Update [2010-11-23]: Part 2 has been posted, and is available for your reading pleasure here.

Update [2010-11-24]: The videos have been posted! Find ‘em here. Thanks again to Philip Bast!

Tonight was first of the two uxWaterloo events scheduled for November.

It was a very interesting talk – which I may get into in more detail in another blog post – but my interest was piqued on another topic before our guest speaker even took the stage. While waiting for everyone to take their seats I was socializing with a few of the other attendees. In advance, if either of the two ladies I was speaking to tonight end up reading this – I’m very sorry I forgot your names!

During some light conversation about our interests in user experience related fields – one of these ladies (we’ll call her Alice) wanted to add the other (we’ll call her Brenda) to LinkedIn. Alice asked Brenda if she was on LinkedIn, and after Brenda said yes, Alice proceeded to pull out her BlackBerry to look Brenda up.

It was at this point that I asked them “won’t it be interesting when your phone will have opened up LinkedIn and already searched for Brenda because it heard our conversation?”. We all kind of laughed, and commented on how that technology was not quite ready for that yet with big smiles. Phones reacting to your conversations? Sorcery I say!

However ridiculous this concept sounds, we might not be that far off.

Technologies such as Microsoft’s Xbox 360 Kinect have (as I’ve heard) very intelligent voice detection – to the point where it knows the difference between the voices of the users in the room. It’s not a stretch to imagine Microsoft putting similar technology into their newly launched Windows Phone 7 to enable this very sort of thing. It would be a very interesting shift in user experience design for applications to know what you want to do before you’ve decided to do it.

As a new graduate, I’ve had to step up my wardrobe a bit to accommodate looking like a professional damn good on a more regular basis. To do so, I’ve made many trips to many different clothing shops in the Kitchener-Waterloo area. Though each shop I visited had it’s ups and downs, the one thing that consistently affected my perception of the establishment was it’s change rooms.

In my opinion, the change room is the most important part because that’s where I ultimately decide if I am going to spend money at the shop or not. Shops whose change rooms made this process easier got more of my money – unless their products were complete crap of course.

What struck me as interesting is that without knowing it, I’d been conducting a usability study on the user experience of shoppers – where in this case the user was the customer at a particular shop. As a result of this impromptu study I put together a list of qualities a good change room should have based on my own experiences hopping around from shop to shop.

The list is as follows:

Have mirrors in each change room.

This is such an easy one. Your want to see how they look, but they might not want everyone else in the store or change room area to see.

Have an change room area separate from the rest of the store.

Lots of people come to clothes stores with a friend, or in groups. When a shopper does decide to come out of the change room to get opinions, they probably only want them from their entourage – not the rest of the store.

Have mirrors in the change room area.

Sometimes what you’re trying on looks great in the change room, but once you see it out in the open or a member of your entourage points out a problem, it’s nice to have a mirror to double check. Additionally, it provides a clear point of congregation for shoppers and their entourage. Placed carefully, change room area mirrors can direct traffic so people aren’t standing around in awkward spots in the area looking at each other.

Have seating in your change room area.

It can be a pain when you’re waiting around for your fellow shopper to come out and show you the items they’re trying on. Especially when they have a bunch to try on. Providing seating for the members of a shopper’s entourage is a courtesy that I thoroughly enjoy when I get dragged out to shop with other people.

Have a place to hang clothes.

When you come into a change room with multiple items, it’s nice to have a hook to hang all the  items so you can look at them one by one. Having multiple hooks helps the shopper keep track of the items they like and don’t like as well.

Have a place to set the clothes down.

I’ve been in far too many change rooms where they do provide a spot to hang clothes, but what’s all you get. A bench provides a nice place to set things  because lets face it, putting clothes on the ground in these rooms feels a bit bad. Also, it can be pain to re-hang everything, especially those items you’re not even going to buy. Don’t want them? Toss ‘em on the bench.

This list is not at all exhaustive,  but the best change rooms – and by extension the best stores – I’ve been in have implemented most or all of these ideas, and are the ones I continue to shop at. Just remember, even the best change room can’t make up for crappy products!