Hear Me Speak, Dec 2nd at SNHU; Software Evolution: Usability, Life and Death in an Impatient World

I just wanted to announce that I'll be speaking at Southern New Hampshire University in December as part of the "Computing Profession in the Year 2012" seminar series.

Software Evolution: Usability, Life and Death in an Impatient World

Tuesday December 2nd 7-8 PM
Walker Auditorium, SNHU
Robert Frost Hall, 2500 N River Rd
info / directions


My talk will be focused on software product management, interface development and usability as a core product value.

The seminar is open, at no cost, to interested persons from the university community or industry.

These seminars are co-sponsored by the NCC Student Branch (Nashua), the Software Association of New Hampshire and the New Hampshire chapters of the: IEEE Computer Society, and ACM (Association for Computer Machinery).

Here's the bio and abstract that I've handed in for my talk I'll cover this material as well as a lot more.

One of the topics I plan to discuss very openly is the new product development methodology that I applied with great success at Ektron: Consistency, Discovery, Intuition and Subtlety. Each of these keywords describes an overlapping concept of software development that when implemented together compound to produce great software.

Hope to see you there!

Software Evolution: Life and Death in an Impatient World

Bio

Greg is the founding director of GRSDesign, LLC, and a software product development specialist focused on user interface design and usability.

Greg has a BA from Ithaca College in, "Computer Graphics and Visual Special Effects"; A program of study he established focused on computer generated special effects in film.

For 15 years Greg has created multimedia, software and websites for prominent Fortune 500 companies: Sovereign Bank, Rational Software, Kinko's, Network Appliance, and others across the country.

Greg's favorite software project to date has been lip-synching Barbie in Spanish for international release of "Barbie fun nails".

Greg recently finished a two year project developing next generation content management systems for Ektron Inc and producing several new websites for Assumption College.

Abstract

I have no patience, and neither do you.

When you interact with a person, place, or thing, you develop a relationship with it. We all have favorite pieces of software, which we can't live without. Building good software is about building a relationship that users want to be a part of.

The open source community and dramatic expansion in software choice has finally created a Darwinian environment, where software meets the challenges and expectations of its users, or is replaced by one that does.

Good software doesn't happen by accident, it comes from dedication and willpower. We will look directly at the different methods and practices that can produce highly usable software.

We will review the basic tenants of good user interface design that every developer should know.

We will review how the processes of developing good software features can be baked into your development methodology. We will specifically look at the agile development process and how usability practices can be integrated into a highly productive environment.

We will also discuss ways to avoid the design and development pitfalls that can easily occur in a multi-developer environment.