UX Confidential

cd2: Chicago Designers & Developers User Group

Announcing the launch of a new user group in the Chicago area called: cd2 - Chicago Designers & Developers User Group.

cd2 is a focused on nurturing collaboration between designers & developers and the importance of user-centered design. If you're interested in rich platforms and pairing functionality with creativity to provide better experiences for users, cd2 is for you. We intend to provide a healthy mix of developer and designer focused presentations and discussions, and will meet once every month with our first meeting taking place in June 2008.

We are currently asking for those interested to visit our website at http://www.cd2ug.org. Let us know who you are and what you would like to see from the group. We are in the process of organizing the inaugural meeting we will post additional details as they develop.

Back-to-Back UX Presentations

Designer & developer Corey Miller and I will be speaking at the Technology Executives Club in downtown Chicago next Wednesday, May 14th at 1PM. Our presentation, "How User Experience is Changing Application Development in the Enterprise", will be recored for those that can't attend in person. Information on the event can be found here.

In addition, we will offer an expanded version of the presentation via webinar on Thursday, May 15th at 1pm. The webinar is sponsored by Magenic and you can register to participate here.

Microsoft Expression Studio 2 Ships!

In case you missed it, Microsoft Expression Studio 2 shipped on May 1st. The suite offers new versions of Expression Web, Blend and Design as well as updated versions of Expression Media and Encoder. New features include Blend support for asp.net 3.5 and better integration with Visual Studio. In addition Expression Encoder is now a core offering of the suite.

If you're like me, you've probably been using the Expression 2 betas since last year, so getting these final upgrades are a no-brainer.