Using many examples from a real software project, Ellen will walk us through different stages of the development process, showing how her team was able to shift the discussion to joint problem solving rather than arguing about what users need, what features are important, and how they should be designed. She’ll discuss how these techniques can be used to prevent conflict before it happens, help focus on solving demonstrated usage problems, and give “both sides” the satisfaction of seeing how their skills are improving the product.

Ellen has been designing user interfaces and studying them in use since 1988. During her career, she has enjoyed moving between product development and advanced development, and between hands-on user interface design and management of design and engineering projects. She is currently a Technology Design Leader at AT&T Labs, where she leads a small team that is building applications for lightweight communication and collaboration. Before joining AT&T, she was Director of Design and Production at Excite, responsible for the design and production engineering of Excite’s Web pages. Prior to that, she worked at Electric Communities where, through the magic of startups, she started as the principal UI designer and eventually became Co-Director of Engineering. Ellen also spent over six years at Sun Microsystems, where she designed desktop productivity tools and later joined an advanced development group that designed multimedia-based collaboration tools.

In other words, she’s been through the trenches and is well versed in how to design from both sides of the screen. Veteran and novice designers, programmers, and managers will all benefit from this presentation.

If you’re inclined to do some homework before the program, Ellen and co-author, Alan Walendowski, have set up a Web site that includes excerpts from and a discussion forum about their book.