Category Archives: Book Club

September UX Book Club

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Our next book club is coming up next week! The book is, Digital Ground: Architecture, Pervasive Computing, and Environmental Knowing, by Malcolm McCullough. Chapter 1 is available as a free download from MIT press.

Still come along for a catch up and a chat even if you haven’t read the book.

See you there!

When is it?

Tuesday, 27 September 2011
Come down after you finish work, book discussion will start from 6:30pm

Where is it?

Computer Science Staff Room
Level 8, Building 14, RMIT University
Corner Swanston & Franklin Streets, Melbourne

(Enter RMIT building 10 or 12 via Swanston Street, take the lifts up to Level 8, walk through to building 14 on your left and you’re there.)

How much does it cost?

Nothing, it’s absolutely free.

RMIT’s Computer Science department has generously offered to supply food and non-alcoholic drinks, plus there’s a killer coffee machine… Le has offered to organise some beers that people can reimburse her for, and you’re welcome to BYO as well.

UX Book Club July: The Atomic Chef

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Next tuesday night is book club! We’ll be talking about The Atomic Chef by Steven Casey – Amazon

Remember! It’s not mandatory to have read the book, just come along and see what other thought and maybe meet some new UX friends.

WHEN IS IT?

Tuesday, 19 July 2011. Come down to the bar when you finish work, we’ll start the book discussion around 6:30 PM.

WHERE IS IT?

Horse Bazaar
397 Little Lonsdale St
Melbourne VIC 3000, Australia

HOW MUCH DOES IT COST?

Nothing, it’s absolutely free. (Just turn up and buy something from the bar to thank them for their support of UX Melbourne.)

The next book club is this Tuesday. (Better late than never, right?)

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Next tuesday night is book club! We’ll be talking about Cooper,
Reimann and Cronin’s book About Face 3 - http://amzn.to/mu3tVH

Remember! It’s not mandatory to have read the book, just come along and see what other thought and maybe meet some new UX friends.

When is it?

Tuesday, 17 May 2011.

Come down to the bar when you finish work, we’ll start the book discussion around 6:30 PM.

Where is it?

Horse Bazaar
397 Little Lonsdale St
Melbourne VIC 3000, Australia

How much does it cost?

Nothing, it’s absolutely free. (Just turn up and buy something from the bar to thank them for their support of UX Melbourne.)

Paul Dourish @ UX Book Club

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The next Melbourne UX Book Club is Tuesday 15th February. This months book is Where the Action Is, The Foundations of Embodied Interaction, by Paul Dourish, and we are super lucky to have Paul in town and coming along to talk to us about the book.

Computer science as an engineering discipline has been spectacularly successful. Yet it is also a philosophical enterprise in the way it represents the world and creates and manipulates models of reality, people, and action.

In this book, Paul Dourish addresses the philosophical bases of human-computer interaction. He looks at how what he calls “embodied interaction”—an approach to interacting with software systems that emphasizes skilled, engaged practice rather than disembodied rationality—reflects the phenomenological approaches of Martin Heidegger, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and other twentieth-century philosophers.

The phenomenological tradition emphasizes the primacy of natural practice over abstract cognition in everyday activity. Dourish shows how this perspective can shed light on the foundational underpinnings of current research on embodied interaction. He looks in particular at how tangible and social approaches to interaction are related, how they can be used to analyze and understand embodied interaction, and how they could affect the design of future interactive systems.

Remember you don’t have to have read the book to come along – feel free to just come and have a chat about what others thought and learned from it.

To RSVP email rsvp@uxmelbourne.org

New venue this month!

Cogent Consulting
Level 3, 10-16 Queen Street
Melbourne VIC 3000
http://www.cogentconsulting.com.au/

Drop in after 6:00 PM for a 6:30 PM chat.
(Not before 6, as people will be working.)

Thank you to Cogent for sharing their space with us!

Paul has been invited to Australia by the Department of Information Systems at the University of Melbourne.

Prototyping for UX Book Club in October

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The next Melbourne UX Book Club is Tuesday 19th October. This month we are reading Prototyping, A Practitioners Guide, by Todd Zaki Warfel.

Prototyping is a great way to communicate the intent of a design both clearly and effectively. Prototypes help you to flesh out design ideas, test assumptions, and gather real-time feedback from users.

With this book, Todd Zaki Warfel shows how prototypes are more than just a design tool by demonstrating how they can help you market a product, gain internal buy-in, and test feasibility with your development team.

Remember you don’t have to have read the book to come along – feel free to just come and have a chat about what others thought and learned from it.

New venue this month!

LOOP
23 Meyers Pl
Melbourne VIC 3000
http://www.looponline.com.au/

Drop in from 6:30!