Lame picture of the not lame Gwen Bell taken from my iPhone. Next year I’ll make sure to bring along the SLR.

Mom2.0 has wrapped up! The conference had a great energy and I felt very lucky to be part of the talented speaker list. My good friend Angela co-hosted, and our new friend Adrian Roselli moderated. Luckily nothing broke and we were able to get the audience involved in the discussion. Success!

There was a quick review of the talk on the Mom2.0 blog as well as some live tweets during the session. I’ve also uploaded the full powerpoint (careful, it’s over 11mb) that details a handy usability checklist you can apply to your own site. I think it does a good job of showing successes and fails of most items, illustrating the user experience issues.  If you would like to see the full version of Angela’s usability checklist, check out Normal Modes. You’ll particularly enjoy the “Automatic Fail” section. 

I was telling a friend that along with finding blogging inspiration, the conference really was a giant self-help session for me. I found myself telling random people in my life about Gretchen Rubin’s happiness project, and applying the three small things you can do to make your day happier. My in-laws already want a copy of her book.

Take care everyone.

The Summit was phenomenal! It was fun seeing all these blog masters just walking around the hotel. They really are all beautiful and inspiring people.

I was even lucky to chat (briefly!) with Maggie Mason and Karen Walrond. I asked Maggie some questions for my upcoming session at Mom 2.0 (oh yeah, I’m speaking about usability and user experience with Angela) and Karen shared some of her findings from the recent Houston photoshoot for her book. I bow down to these ladies.

It begins tomorrow and I still have outfits to pick! Allison of petit elefant put together this guide of what to wear during the activities. This is a design conference after all, so I expect everyone to look fabulous.

Excuse me while I trash my sweats and go shopping.

A conference for design bloggers! Sounds like fun, huh? The Altitude Design Summit is taking place January 21 - 23 here in the SLC, during Sundance and ski season. Here is what is included in the full registration:

• Opening Social
• Speed Networking and Mixer
• Breakfast and Keynote address
• Lunch and Keynote Address
• Pass to Screening After-Party
• Lift Pass to Solitude Ski Resort
• Access to all sessions of Alt Summit

Maybe I should finally wrap up those business cards.

Oooo, screen printing! Book binding! Flower arranging! Now to pick which class to attend. Decisions, decisions.

From November 5th - 7th, The Art Weekend will be taking place at the Salt Lake Plaza hotel. I’m hoping to meet some more SLC designers and bloggers. And maybe eat a cupcake or two if offered.

Last month (wow, last month!) work sent me to San Francisco to attend Cooper’s Interaction Design Practicum. The class is a four day workshop focusing on user research, creating personas, and translating these things into successful business solutions. There were many great take-aways, especially their thoughts on obtaining accurate user research (on-site vs. remote, users pulled from a DB vs. recruiting through a marketing firm), but the best for me was their idea of a design communicator. I need me a design communicator.

Th DC is in charge of keeping the interaction designer grounded. They also apply a “narrative” to the interaction designer’s thoughts. The DC and ID work as equals in a small team. Doesn’t that sound great?

Meeting other professionals during the training made me realize how lucky I am to work for a group that values the importance of usability. My main goal for the training was to find a firm process for persona development - their main goals were to find ways of proving business value for user research!

Overall it was a great class. Check out Cooper for more information.

Last month I attended Jina Bolton’s presentation on “CSS3 and What Could Be” at the Future of Web Design conference. Here’s a list of some of the exciting new CSS3 features she covered:

• Advanced background and border options
• Multi-column layout:
  Including options to define “gaps” and the number of columns in your layout
• Advanced layout:
  Specifying “slots” on your page that you can assign content to
• Grid positioning
  Add hidden grid rules to a grid layout! A GD’s dream come true.
• Advanced selector options

What was wonderful about this presentation is that she provided the code and corresponding screenshots. Great job. You can view or download the presentation here.