SJSU Human Factors and Ergonomics Society

A quick reminder, tomorrow evening (Tuesday the 10th at 7:30 PM) is the monthly BayCHI meeting. Meetings are at PARC in Palo Alto and are open to the public (membership is not required). From the program guide:

Getting People to Talk to an Animal: Lessons Learned Designing Aardvark

Rob Spiro, The Mechanical Zoo

For the past year Rob and the team at The Mechanical Zoo have been designing Aardvark, a new Social Search product primarily used through IM and email. Rob will talk about some of the challenges faced and lessons learned during the past year of product design, including:

• Heuristics for a successful conversational interface.
• Sensitivities to different channels (web, IM, email and mMobile) and unifying a multi-channel experience.
• Obstacles faced in introducing a new search user experience.
• Strengths and weaknesses of various research methods.
• Incorporating user-centered design into an agile engineering process.

More information, directions, etc are available on the BayCHI website: http://www.baychi.org/program/