Join other people who want to learn about game design through designing and playtesting game exercises. We're currently working on exercises from chapter 2 of from Challenges for Game Designers. Get the book, try an exercise, and bring your work to test, or just show up to help playtest someone else's game idea.

Want more details? Contact Audrey at [email protected] or @spinnerin on Twitter.

UX Book Club is back! Without a book...

Instead, please bring a few of your favorite UX-related resources (blogs / blog posts / articles / papers / podcasts / books / etc) to share with the group.

They can be your all-time favorites, or just something helpful or remarkable you've come across recently.

Be prepared to discuss what blogs / people / podcasts / etc you follow to keep up with the latest in UX and UX-related news.

We'll also discuss what book(s) we should read in the coming months.

Hope to see you there!

We're re-booting UX Book Club in the new year with something a little different!

Fan favorite Amber Case will be hosting us (address will be sent to attendees) and giving a presentation on her new book Designing with Sound (and likely her other recent book Calm Technology).

Questions and discussion included.

Doors at 6:30. Presentation at 7:00

Pre-order a hard copy of the book at Amazon (release date is Dec. 13): https://www.amazon.com/_/dp/1491961104

Or read on O'Reilly's online learning platform, Safari: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920051923.do

About the book:

Sound can profoundly impact how people interact with your product. Well-designed sounds can be exceptionally effective in conveying subtle distinctions, emotion, urgency, and information without adding visual clutter. In this practical guide, Amber Case and Aaron Day explain why sound design is critical to the success of products, environments, and experiences.

Just as visual designers have a set of benchmarks and a design language to guide their work, this book provides a toolkit for the auditory experience, improving collaboration for a wide variety of stakeholders, from product developers to composers, user experience designers to architects. You’ll learn a complete process for designing, prototyping, and testing sound.

In two parts, this guide includes:

・Past, present, and upcoming advances in sound design ・Principles for designing quieter products ・Guidelines for intelligently adding and removing sound in interactions ・When to use voice interfaces, how to consider personalities, and how to ・build a knowledge map of queries ・Working with brands to create unique and effective audio logos that will ・speak to your customers ・Adding information using sonification and generative audio

About the authors:

Amber Case studies the interaction between humans and computers and how our relationship with information is changing the way cultures think, act, and understand their worlds. Case has spoken, performed and written about the future of sound design at conferences and events around the world. Case is also the author of Calm Technology (O'Reilly, 2015). She lives in Portland, Oregon and online @caseorganic.

Aaron Day (who will not be in attendance) has been designing sound experiences and interfaces since 1998. He has worked for clients including Bruel & Kjaer, Fiat, Ferrari, Maserati, Wire, Mozilla, Qoros, Telefònica, Bosch, Vodafone, Sprint, Siemens Audi and Samsung. Aaron lives with his family in Berlin, Germany.

All participants must read and abide by the Event Code of Conduct.

Event Code of Conduct (Short Version):

Be respectful of other people, respectfully ask people to stop if you are bothered, and if you can’t resolve an issue contact organizers. If you are being a problem, it will be apparent and you’ll be asked to leave.

For a full Code of Conduct please see: http://cyborgcamp.com/code-of-conduct/

Additionally, we respectfully ask that you do not tag the venue on social media.

We're finishing out 2019 having collectively presented roughly 85 human-centered events. Let's celebrate with a Human-centered Community Gathering!

Join Portland’s human-centered groups who are passionate about HCD principles and how they can change the way we work and live.

You’ll have an opportunity to: Meet and share insights with folks across the many fields that intersect in HCD in Portland

Shape this community by giving feedback on a few ideas we have been working on for 2020 on how to bring the human-centered communities closer together.

Some of the groups that will be there include:

• OpenIDEO - Portland Chapter
• PDX Design Research Group
• Portland Accessibility and User Experience Meetup
• Portland Community Design Thinkers
• Service Design PDX
• UX Book Club

Other Good Stuff

We'll be setting up until 5:30 or so. Doors open around 5:45.

The entrance on 7th Ave is ADA-compliant. If you have any accommodation requests, please email [email protected] in advance of the event to discuss.

We support introverts, extroverts, and everyone in-between at this event. Don’t be shy, or do - either way, join the fun and help shape our community!

This event is sponsored by Studio VO, Concrete, and WeWork Labs Portland. Thanks, y'all!

Want to know more about the human-centered disciplines in Portland? You're in the right place.