Conference on Building Windows 8 Apps

The Ramp Group, a local digital UX agency, is co-hosting an event on Wednesday with Microsoft you might find interesting. We will be talking about using Windows 8 to extend existing applications into the field via Windows Phone and tablet devices. Along with it being a good introduction into designing for Windows 8, it also should be a great networking opportunity with professionals in the interactive space.

I will be speaking at the event about designing simplified interfaces in the tablet medium, as well as the virtues of branding and usability.

It will be held in the Microsoft Civica Building in downtown Bellevue (108^th Ave and 2^nd Ave).

You can register using the link below:
www.rampgroup.com/register

Agenda brief for Wednesday, 27 February 2013:

8 am Why Windows Phone and Surface make sense for business.
10 am Designing Windows 8 apps for high usability
12 noon Lunch - Sponsored by Ramp Technology Group
1 pm Microsoft Customer Stories and Demos
1:30 pm Interactive Design Session for your business scenarios
3 pm Extend Networking at Sea Star Restaurant

Guest speakers Bill Baxter and Ron Notbohm demonstrating apps they have built at buddy tv and UCIC School and Jason Levine, Creative Director and lecturer at the University of Washington.

Come for any or all of the agenda. Hope to see you there. And if you have some scenarios you’ve envisioned enabling with mobile or tablet solutions bring your ideas and we will see where they can go. Some of the best ideas might be developed as proof of concepts.

You can check out the brochure here:



I hope to see you there!

Sample Class Work

This spring, I began teaching two courses at the University of Washington. The class has been very enjoyable and I have been extremely impressed with the level of talent and creativity my students have demonstrated. Everyone had shown tremendous talent, so I wanted to share some of the work that they had come up with.

 This was a fun car selecting tool that a team of my graduate students came up with:

Here is the same project as an iPhone application that a team of my undergrad students thought of:

 This was a presentation a student did showing how the psychology of patterning propogates addictive behavior when using Instagram:

And here is a sitemap designed by a student showing the inter-relational data of a local music festival's website:

These are just a small sampling of the innovative abilities of these students. If you happen to be looking for interns for the summer for your company, seek me out and I will be happy to provide you some great students who are eager for real-world experience.

GreenLight Music Goes Live

Perfect Pixels provided the initial persona research and information architecture to the recently launched GreenLight Music service. A Corbis subsidiary, the service launched with more than a million-song catalog as a solution to the often frustrating and convoluted offline process of licensing music for commercial use.

The offering makes it feasible for a corporation to use a song for a corporate presentation, video or any other commercial need, by obtaining a license. Typically, getting a license from music labels and publishers can be difficult and frustrating. GreenLight Music simplifies the process by providing a one-stop shop to license songs for common commercial uses, such as videos, presentations, campaigns, and more. It can get your music clearances quickly, easily, and at competitive prices.

The deliverables included Personas, UX Strategy, Sitemap, Wireframes and Userflows. The solution required solving for allowing users to name their price for the song they want. Once you find a song, GreenLight will help guide you to submit a competitive offer to the music companies. When you make an offer, GreenLight goes to work securing the necessary approval from song owners.

The logic behind the UI was to streamline as much as possible the number of steps involved and to hide from the user the possible confusion of multiple scenario variations that normally would arrive in an offline experience. The result was to focus on a solution that was quick and intuitive.

Perfect Pixels' Jason Levine will begin teaching at the University of Washington in 2012

Beginning in the Spring 2012 quarter, Jason Levine will be teaching in the undergrad program for the Information School as well as the Masters of Communication in Digital Media program for the University of Washington. The two classes will be Information Architecture and Interactive Design.

The Information Architecture class will be focusing on how to structure content as well as creating an intuitive and logical presentation for complex websites so that users can put information to use.

The Masters Interactive Design class will focus on learning how to interpret user needs and placing users at the center of site design by learning the fundamentals of brand and usability.

Case Study for the Employment Security Department

We were tasked with a complete re-architecture and redesign of the Employment Security Department's employment and economic information website which is set to go live in a few months. The site contains thousands of publications, reports and presentations which required a complete overhaul. The case study below describes how we accomplished this task by focusing on a persona-based, task oriented navigation structure.

Just hit "Play" to hear the accompanying voice over.

Defining Content Categorization for a Website

View another webinar from Jason Levine