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Hi there, my name's Jeff Steffgen.
And I work for a company called SuperConnect and I'm
the User Experience and Designer Director there.
Hi, I'm Will Hacker.
I am with Cars.com, and I'm a User Experience Architect.
Hi, I'm Mark Meeker.
I'm the Principle UI Engineer at Orbitz.com.
I actually came from more of a graphic and visual design
background.
UX is interesting to me because of all the different
places people come from in to UX.
So me being graphic design, I know a lot of developers end
up in graphic design, and also psychology.
So it's like all these different kind of things
coming together and I'm actually
interested in all of them.
So for me, UX is kind of like about simplifying people's
experiences, and making them enjoyable, and engaging.
So what's great about user experience is it's the real
differentiator in your product.
Technology can pretty much level any playing field today,
but the user experience is really the game changer.
And it is, it's a mix of everything from technology to
content, to design.
It's wonderful.
I'm actually a developer but I think that focusing on user
experience can really be that huge differentiator.
And I think one of the interesting things about it
is, you get so many different people with so many different
ideas, and coming from different backgrounds, and
that can really end up building some great sites, and
some great things with it.
UX is kind of coming to the forefront, a lot of people are
taking notice of it.
And I think a lot of that has to do with sort
of the mobile paradigm.
Things are looking prettier and the experiences that they
get from mobile are easier, and
simpler, like I said before.
So people really like that, and I think as sort of the old
generation of the corporation leaders kind of go, and you
get newer younger people that are into the technology, they
kind of sense that something might be missing if they don't
get that experience.
Yeah and what I think is really great about this
particular conference is it's pulling
all from local sources.
So it's not the same people that you see at conferences
around the country, you're kind of seeing what's your
local peers are up to.
And it's really insightful to see how many people are
wrestling with so many different problems right in
your backyard.
I like that too, it's kind of nice.
Hyper local.
I think the cool part to is, we're all in kind
of different groups.
Like I'm doing like the enterprise stuff and then you
get the people that they are the enterprise, and their sort
of doing the consumer stuff.
But it's funny how we all run into the same challenges.
So it's kind of nice to hear those stories and listen to
their methodologies for how they deal with that.
You get people from different size companies.
So you might have somebody who's a six person company
with just a few developers, one UX person for the entire
company, to places with 400-500, 600 people, and see
how different people are tackling things.
And sometimes there's a lot of similarities even if you are
different sizes.
And you're seeing people that are coming from different
types of companies, so you've places like Cars.com that are
online only, and then you've got Walgreen's which is this
multichannel giant, and they're joining all these
different channels together in the mobile space.
So it's really fascinating to see how different businesses
are approaching these things.
Keep it simple.
I just think that the more you simplify things, the more
people can do things quickly.
People do things fast and it's like you get that pleasurable
experience, and you can get it done quickly.
That's mine.
I would say it's to be curious.
And I think Shay Howe said it best, if you approach
criticism with curiosity, you're
going to learn something.
I think it's probably pay attention to your users.
If your users can't accomplish something on your site or with
your product, you're pretty much nowhere.
So that's really a big thing.
No.