The Linda Paradis Group London Conference
VisualChaos has been asked to cover the world leader in tattoo removal, the Linda Paradis Group, as they are speaking at their London Conference which was being held at the Arora Hotel in Crawley, Gatwick.
Linda is a world leader in the field of dermatology and in particular in tattoo removal, having pioneered a revolutionary technique that doesn’t involve lasers or surgical excision to make the ink invisible. With more than 25 years experience as a clinician, trainer and international examiner, Linda is currently on a world tour spreading the knowledge of this technique.
In 2006, Linda developed her unique tattoo removal method, which guarantees exceptional results, without the use of laser or risky surgeries. The differentiating and most important factor with Linda’s tattoo removal technique is the concept of the Square Needles 88RS paired with the specially formulated removal solution with a pH 8.5. This combination ensures no inflammation or scars on the client’s skin following the removal procedure.
Laser tattoo removals and surgical excisions are painful and can cause indiscriminate damage to the surrounding skin tissue resulting in scarring. This miracle solution for permanent makeup and body art ink removal is a safe and effective alternative to laser removals and surgical excisions.
#commercial #companymeetings #Dermographist #internationaltrainer #LindaParadis
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Good ways to help our company learn ‘bad UX’
By John Messersmith
Developer / UX Designer, Twisted Rope
In our last article we discussed the User Experience design process we developed internally to fit our existing production procedures at Twisted Rope.
A key component to our process is the involvement of the entire company, not just the User Experience Design (UXD) team, working together to produce a good user experience in our products.
We know that we have experienced designers, developers and project managers that can help us solve our UX problems. In many cases, these team members have seen solutions to the design challenges we're addressing or can draw on a past experience that was similar.
Our process intends to build on this knowledge and have the team conduct heuristic evaluations throughout every stage of design and production. As part of this, we are working to raise general awareness of UX concepts and conventions as well as educating the team on the “10 Heuristics of User Interface Design.”
One tactic in our strategy was to give presentations at our weekly company meeting. Every Wednesday at 11 a.m. EST, the company gathers in their respective offices ‒ from Los Angeles to Amsterdam ‒ and we meet online.
Included in our weekly reports of ongoing projects and company KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are special presentations given by individuals or groups within the company meant to shine a spotlight on things like new company initiatives. This is where our UXD team knew we would best be able to reach everyone to begin our UX crash courses.
In approaching these presentations, there were a few things we needed to keep in mind. The concepts we were about to address were somewhat abstract and unknown to many people. We knew technical talk was not the right choice. Waxing poetic about the merits of feedback for 20 minutes also would not have gone over well.
While these concepts are very interesting and applicable to the company, we couldn’t just mandate them as such. We needed to show it ‒ and show it in a way that would make it digestible and stick in their minds. Our goal was to keep the educational sessions short, fun and informative.
To keep them short, we agreed to divide our talks into three presentations. For each, we would introduce the heuristic principles covered that week. Each would be accompanied with the definition, followed by a brief discussion and then segue into some examples from our own client projects as well as examples from the web and other sources.
How about keeping them fun? We thought an interesting take would be to find movie or TV clips that show people in situations in which they are struggling with a bad user interface. We would use this clip to introduce the concepts for that day’s discussion.
CAN I GET SOME FEEDBACK?
We began our first presentation with a clip from the film “Get Smart” in which our hero finds himself in an embarrassing situation. If the device he was using provided clearer feedback on the state of the system or, better yet, some error prevention, it might have helped to save his dignity.
This clip lead to our discussion of the UX principles of “Feedback (visibility of system status),” “Error Prevention” and “Recovery (help users recognize, diagnose and recover from errors).”
GETTING SMART ABOUT USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN: Steve Carell, as Maxwell Smart in the 2008 movie reboot of the classic TV series, "Get Smart," experiences an embarrassing moment that perhaps could have been prevented with even a minimal amount of user feedback. Our Twisted Rope UXD team used this video and several others to break the ice and give our employees a crash course on the principles of user experience.
HELP! I NEED SOMEBODY
Our discussion of “Help and Documentation,” “Flexibility and Efficiency of Use,” and “Recognition Rather Than Recall” began with the BBC Two show, “Miranda.”
We think Miranda’s frustration with the speech recognition menu system could be alleviated by instead including an option for keyboard input (Flexibility and Efficiency of Use) or by implementing a feature to allow access to help sooner in the process.
HARD TIMES: In another video portraying bad UX, Miranda of the eponymous BBC Two program is stuck trying to communicate with an interface that can't understand what she's saying.
DEVELOPERS RUNNING THE ASYLUM
We ended the heuristics presentations with HBO’s “Silicon Valley” to introduce the last four principles we covered: “Match Between System and the Real World,” “Consistency and Standards,” “Aesthetic and Minimalist Design,” and “User Control and Freedom.”
The clip covers a wide variety of possible usability issues. In addition, it has the added benefit of illustrating to our team members the importance of getting your work in front of users and how their understanding of your interface can be very different from what you intended.
TOTALLY FREAKED OUT: In one of the signature scenes of HBO's "Silicon Valley," software developer Richard, played by Thomas Middleditch, can't seem to rationalize with users having a difficult time adjusting to his new app. The disconnect between developers and the users actually using a website or app can sometimes prevent it from becoming truly user friendly.
BONUS
In our search for the above clips, we came across an excellent demonstration of the ideas of affordances, specifically, and an inspired telling of the human-computer interaction (HCI) and User Experience field in general, produced by Vox. We thought that this was so well done, we had to share it with the company and provide them some insight into the “why” of what we do.
PULL, DON'T PUSH: "Norman doors" are a real life example the improper use of an affordance.
One of the satisfying outcomes of these presentations is that it got team members talking. Afterward, team members would tell us their personal web and interface foibles or frustrations that were illustrated by the principles we covered in the talk.
It speaks of a paradigm shift among our team members. They can now see their past difficulties with websites not as a weakness in their (the user) skills or abilities, but rather as a defect of a poorly designed product.
In one specific case, a few days after the “Norman doors” presentation, one of our project managers meeting with a client out in the field posted a picture on our office messaging system of another Twisted Rope team member having to push open a door that had bars (affordances) that suggested the door should be pulled to open. The caption he added to his picture? “Tsk tsk tsk … Get rid of your Norman doors!”
Norman doors are now a cultural reference within the company. Don’t you just love getting feedback?
Follow our UXD team on Twine and at twisted-rope.com as we design a process that works for us, helping to improve user experience for our clients, as well as their customers.
John Messersmith is a developer and UX designer at Twisted Rope who works with the UXD and email marketing teams in our Buffalo office.
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