[IxDA Discuss] Boston IxDA F2F was a huge success!

[Lisa deBettencourt]

Hi everyone, I just wanted to provide you with a recap of our awesome IxDA
Boston kickoff! =) Thanks to all who attended! Look for more soon!

~Lisa


IxDA Boston Face To Face : Recap
>
> Last Thursday night, IxDA Boston broke ground and celebrated its very
> first Face2Face meeting. IxDA Boston's first meeting took place at Bentley
> College's Adamian Center and was graciously hosted by Bill Gribbons, founder
> of Bentley's Human Factors in Information Design<http://www.bentley.edu/usability/>program.
>
> There was a palpable energy and excitement to the evening, and there was a
> good mixture of attendees, from young people just starting out in
> interaction design to more seasoned practitioners. About 34 people were in
> the audience, all eager to see and hear Jenifer Tidwell, author of Designing
> Interfaces <http://designinginterfaces.com/>, talk about "*Design
> Patterns: What they are, what they are not, and why you should care*".
>
> *The Meat and Potatoes*
>
> After Lisa introduced herself and the other organizers, Pauric
> O'Callaghan, Jesse Beach, and Will Evans, and after a warm welcome to the
> first Boston IxDA F2F, we got down to the business at hand: design
> patterns.
>
Jen's talk took us through what patterns were not (not style guides, not
> templates, not recipes), some common design patterns, and a discussion of
> how to find a middle ground between design principles and design templates
> or style guides. There was quite a bit of interest around the idea that
> handing a list of principles to a freshly minted eager and willing interface
> designer could not lead to good designs, and would certainly not give that
> designer the tools or framework to design, advance, and succeed in our
> field.
>
> After the talk and Q&A session was over, we opened the gathering up to an
> exchange of ideas about what people wanted from the Boston IxDA chapter.
> General feedback was that people are looking for things that are practical
> to them doing their jobs: workshops on tools, design tips and techniques,
> and maybe even peer-to-peer portfolio reviews. Some members in the group
> wondered aloud how IxDA could/would/should be different from Boston CHI,
> UPA, SIGIA, and other groups, where there is a lot of overlap in
> membership.
> Design Pattern Resources
>
> Designing Interfaces: Patterns for Effective Interaction Design, Jenifer
> Tidwell<http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Interfaces-Patterns-Effective-Interaction/dp/0596008031>(
> amazon.com)
>
> Jenifer's website: Designing Interfaces <http://designinginterfaces.com/>
>
> Don't Write Guidelines ­ Write Patterns!<http://www.it.bton.ac.uk/staff/lp22/guidelinesdraft.html>Richard N Griffiths & Lyn Pemberton
>
> Yahoo! Design Pattern Library <http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/>
>
> http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/index.php
>
> http://welie.com/patterns/index.php
>
> http://patterns.littlespringsdesign.com
>
> http://designofsites.com
>
> http://www.enumerable.com/dev/apl/apl3/apl3.htm
>
> http://www.uie.com/articles/design_patterns/
>