Internet User Experience 2009

The pillars of the campaign included:

Gift Giving - We designed and built an interactive, persona-driven gift guide on Sears.com.

Heroes at Home - In cooperation with the USO, we developed a program to assist families of active military members with financial donations.

Golden Wish Ticket - Leveraging Sears's celebrity relationships, such as LL Cool J and Vanessa Hudgens, we designed a sweepstakes, which took place both in stores, and as an online Flash game.

The holiday program strongly emphasized cross-channel marketing and cross-promotion. A key to success was to integrate many online touch points. In addition to the core experience on Sears.com, we folded in online advertising, social media, and email.

The strategy and design process was an exciting user experience challenge. From developing creative in conjunction with Sears's other agencies, to integrating with the eCommerce system, to crafting the right emotionally-charged holiday "story" - this case study has it all. We will walk through the strategy, design, and build challenges we encountered - which even included some eleventh-hour government intervention.

About the Speaker

Since 2006 John Yesko has been a User Experience Lead at Roundarch, where he strategizes and designs large-scale websites. His projects have included consumer product, government, and financial services sites. Some of his key Roundarch clients have been Motorola, Sears, Northern Trust, and the U.S. Air Force.

Previously, John was the User Experience Group Manager at Fry, Inc. In that capacity, he led the UX / information architecture efforts for several prominent eCommerce websites. His clients included Eddie Bauer, Spiegel, and Dow Corning.

As a 15-year veteran of new media, John's experience also includes usability testing, interface design, illustration, and creative direction. He has designed Web and CD-ROM solutions for companies such as Kodak, Eli Lilly, Sierra Club, Caterpillar, and Accenture.

John earned bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Illinois.

John will talk about a variety of tools available from Google that can help to improve your web presence.

About the Speaker

John has over 15 years of marketing and product management know-how, including experience at industry leaders Microsoft and Apple and successful entrepreneurial ventures Yodlee and VXtreme. Prior to Google, John held the position of Chief Executive Officer at Indigo Security, where he orchestrated that company's acquisition by Tablus in January 2005. Post acquisition, John continued to work with Tablus as Vice President of Strategic Development. Before Tablus, John drove the strategy for Yodlee's suite of secure financial aggregation products. John helped to pioneer streaming video technology while at VXtreme, a start-up that was acquired by Microsoft and, at Microsoft, helped define the company's "TiVo-like" UltimateTV service. In his tenure at Apple, Kelley launched and influenced the design of several of the company's notebook computers. John was the first person hired into Google's Ann Arbor office and spent six months in India helping Google establish a new office outside of Delhi. John holds a BA from Middlebury College in Vermont and an MBA from the University of Michigan.

About the Speaker

Cathleen Zapata has over 14 years experience in online marketing and managing the Customer Experience, specializing in Web site usability. She is currently VP, Research & Customer Experience at Metrics Marketing Group. Her background includes a wealth of experience in usability testing, heuristic evaluations, user research and conversion enhancement strategies. Cathy has received extensive usability training from the Neilson Norman Group, and was recently quoted in MarketingSherpa's Marketing Wisdom for 2006. She is a published author, and frequently teaches on topics of Web Usability both nationally, and at local colleges and at community events. Cathy has been on the board of NEOUPA, Cleveland's local chapter of the Usability Professionals' Association, for over four years, and is currently serving as President of the chapter. She is also on the board of The Web Association. Cathy has consulted with numerous Fortune 500 clients on Web Marketing & Usability. Representative clients include: KeyBank, Medical Mutual of Ohio, National City Bank, The Cleveland Clinic, Nationwide Insurance, Safelite AutoGlass, Insurance.com, Citizens Bank, Flagstar Bank, Hallmark, Philosophy, Alltel and Coach, Inc.

About the Speaker

Joe Hass is a Solutions Architect for Hanson, Inc., a digital agency in Toledo, Ohio. He started in the IA world as an Experience Planner for Campbell-Ewald in Warren, Michigan. He has worked on projects for a diverse number of companies, including Alltel, Owens-Corning, and the United States Postal Service, developing websites, CD-ROMs, and user calculators.

Joe's prior experience includes working as a graphic designer for Campbell-Ewald and Sandy Corporation in Troy, Michigan. He's been in the graphic design world since he saw his first Mac Plus in a high school journalism lab in 1986. A baseball fan since childhood, Joe visits a new Major League Baseball park every year. He passed the written portion of the Wisconsin driving exam at the age of eight.

This presentation will focus on:

• What is accessibility?
• Why it is important
• Overview of disabilities, accessibility challenges and solutions
• What are the current and emerging standards?
• How to evaluate for accessibility using manual & automated technologies

About the Speaker

Mary Donnelly is a Senior User Experience Consultant with Evantage Consulting. She offers extensive experience in:

• Accessibility evaluations & testing
• User needs analysis
• Low and high fidelity prototyping
• Usability testing
• Research study design
• Heuristic evaluation and assessment

Mary has 9 years of experience in the healthcare and education industries. Prior to joining Evantage, Mary held the position of Senior Usability Analyst at Kaiser Permanente.

At Evantage, Mary has helped numerous organizations transform their products and services with rich user insight and requirements. For the past 18 months, she has supported Medtronic CRDM in the user research, concept development and definition of key products, including CareLink and the patient monitor redesign.

Ms. Donnelly holds Bachelor of Arts in Writing/Publishing from St. Mary's University, Winona.

Mary is a HFI Certified Usability Analyst, a member of the Usability Professionals' Association, and the Society of Technical Communication.

Attendees at this session will:

• Learn from the experiences of a UX professional from an organization where UX activities didn't exist. But they do now!
• Learn from the experiences of a group going from a small but stable design team to a team with influence over the entire product design and development process.
• Share their own stories and questions with the presenters and fellow attendees during the last third of the presentation.

About the Speakers

Timothy Keirnan is the User Experience Analyst at Jackson National Life Insurance. He is the first Jackson employee dedicated to full-time UX research and design, and enjoys introducing UX methods to coworkers on various website and web application projects. He is an experienced public speaker, has presented at multiple UPA conferences and other events, and is producer and co-host of Design Critique: Products for People, a podcast devoted to encouraging usable products for a better customer experience. Tim holds a B.S. in Audio Engineering from SUNY College at Fredonia and a Master's Degree in Technical and Scientific Communication from Miami University of Ohio.

Rebecca Richkus is an Interaction Designer at Autodesk, Inc. She has been at Autodesk since 1999, when she started on the AutoCAD team as a Product Designer. Since 2002 she has worked on AutoCAD MEP, a specialized 3D CAD software program for building systems engineers. In addition to creating designs in her role, she also conducts user research and usability studies related to her product. Rebecca holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from MIT and a Master's in Mechanical Engineering from UC Berkeley.

Doug Zeffer will teach you his management philosophy for interactive production which involves managing people according to their style and personality. Using real-world examples, Doug will demonstrate how your actions as a leader are key to getting the team focused and effective. Taking time to understand the way your team thinks can reduce you and your team's stress and make for a better work experience and quality product. Come learn some simple, centered thinking that is both motivational and effective.

About the Speaker

Doug Zeffer has been forming and coaching teams for over 20 years. He's currently Executive Vice President of Production and head of the Project Management Department for Enlighten, an interactive advertising agency in Ann Arbor. Starting in 1996, Doug has helped grow the agency from 9 people to over 80 full time employees. As the executive leader of Enlighten's production efforts, Doug oversees project metrics, resource and team management. He has a passion for team dynamics and enjoys tackling the problems encountered when people work together.

Before joining Enlighten, Doug had a civilian stint with the Navy as a programmer and applications developer. He was also a PC analyst and instructor for Ford Aerospace, and co-founded GRAFX Group - a previous competitor of Enlighten. As Vice President of GRAFX Group, Doug managed the company to develop interactive presentations for clients such as Dell, IBM, Sharp, and Toshiba and oversaw graphics work for several major motion pictures. Additionally, Doug served as Director of Development at Paul Mace Software, a publisher of graphic animation software, and was responsible for managing programming and testing. Doug maintains his management acumen through his membership with Vistage International/TEC -- an executive coaching organization that keeps him apprised of best practices. Doug has over 20 years experience in interactive development and has worked across multiple industries and verticals such as home goods, health, technology, and automotive. Doug holds a Mechanical Engineering degree from the University of Michigan.

General guidelines for user-centered design are readily available. The purpose of this presentation will be to take a closer look at two case studies representing two different types of Web sites and provide specific design recommendations for these types of sites. The first type of site is one that is used to locate targets within a large database, then take action on those targets (e.g., e-commerce sites). The case study discussed in this paper that represents this type of site describes User Centric's expert evaluation of a B2B contractor supply Web site. The second type of site discussed in this paper is one that is used largely for data entry and information organization. The case study discussed in this paper that represents this type of site describes a comparative usability test of two online Personal Health Records (PHRs), but the lessons learned from the usability test can be applied to other data entry type sites as well (e.g., internal order entry systems).

About the Speaker

Korey is a User Experience Specialist at User Centric, Inc., a user experience consulting firm based in the greater Chicago area. His background is in research design, methodology, and analysis. With User Centric, he has worked with clients in a variety of industries on projects related to medical packaging, mobile device UI, IVR design, and Web site / Web application UI design. Within the spectrum of Web site design, he has worked with clients to optimize the user experience for both B2B and B2C e-commerce sites in industries such as electrical and automotive supply chain, communications, and consumer products. He has also evaluated a number of client Intranets. He has experience conducting and analyzing summative usability tests as well as focus groups and tests of a more qualitative nature.

Korey's previous research endeavors have led to the creation of a patent-pending graphical user authentication mechanism, for which he is a co-inventor. Korey is an active member of HFES and has published and presented several papers at HFES conferences.

About the Speaker

Cora Bledsoe is the resident User Experience Specialist and Reality Check Provider at Quicken Loans, America's #1 Online Lender, specializing in refinance and purchase loans. She is the person primarily responsible for ensuring a positive experience for all users that visit one the many sites managed by the larger Marketing team. Working with developers, designers and project managers on a daily basis helps to ensure that all aspects of the business fully understand the users' motivations and where they collide with the needs of the business. Whether usability testing, heuristic evaluations, personas, prototyping or focus group moderation, her work at Quicken Loans is all about the user.

Cora holds a Masters degree from the University of Michigan School of Information where she specialized in Human-Computer Interaction.

About the Speaker

Carissa Demetris has over 15 years of professional experience in training, document design and user experience design. She has worked with companies in the health care, transportation, web design and software industries to improve product design and increase user adoption. She currently works as an independent consultant with Menlo Innovations, LLC.

About the Speaker

Jason is the president and founder of Usable Development, LLC, which focuses on user experience and web design consulting, development, and training.

He also serves as the Department Chair for the Internet Professional Program at Washtenaw Community College.

His background includes over 8 years of experience in the web industry, in roles such as Information Architect and Business Systems Analyst.

Oftentimes, the moment that this calamity is visited upon a design and build project is the point in time when the abstract and figurative world of pre-build documentation becomes "real" in the eyes of the client. At this crucial, tipping-point of a moment, the client will suddenly become clueful and say these words. Always these same five words: "now that I see it..."

Dan is currently in the process of conducting original research with "regular-old architects" in regards to this question of how it is that in their profession they're able to move with confidence from client approval on abstract renderings of a building concept to client satisfaction with the built, inhabitable realization of those renderings.

In his presentation for IUE 09, Dan will take his audience on a guided tour through the problem space his research is located within -- asking questions about the UX design process and its antecedents, observing parallels and stark differences between the process and deliverables of information architects and those of regular-old architects ... and then offering some suggestions for how UX practitioners might avoid the dreaded "Now That I See It" moment in their next project by adopting and adapting tools and techniques from the regular-old architects for representing design intent in deliverables and in communicating with clients.

About the Speaker

Dan Klyn is Technology and eCommerce Director at Flannel, and teaches the information architecture course at the University of Michigan School of Information. Prior to joining Flannel in 2007, Dan worked as an IA with agencies including Enlighten, Director Technology Partners and Pure Visibility, as an information architect at Fry, as director of IA and engineering at Q LTD, and as a web developer at Allmusic.com. Dan's academic background is in librarianship, and his interests and expertise are primarily in eCommerce and web video. His client roster includes Lumber Liquidators, Time-Life, ShopAtHomeTV, American Girl, TJ Maxx, Artistry Cosmetics, Rose Brand, British Virgin Islands Tourism Board, Costa Del Mar, Tobacco-Free Florida, SIGGRAPH, Ross School of Business, and world-famous folk music venue The Ark.

We have seen this trend first hand with a number of recent projects. We conducted usability tests on websites and intranets, focusing on the incorporation of various social networking features, including blogs, live chats, and videos. To the dismay of a number of our clients, these trendy features typically receive low ratings of usability, utility, and satisfaction when tested with target users. When asked, users have said things like, "I already use Facebook, and all my friends use Facebook, so I don't see the purpose in using [this social networking feature] here."

Incorporating the hottest features is not simply limited to websites and intranets. For example, we have tested products that tried to incorporate the iPod click wheel, and the feature tested poorly with users. We also tested products that tried to imitate the iPhone, and these products, again, tested poorly with users.

How can these features be so wildly popular on some sites and products, yet test poorly with users when implemented elsewhere? We have found that the most successful websites, intranets, and products are those that don't simply attempt to replicate the hottest features; instead, these features are implemented in targeted, more limited ways. Additionally, we have found that users have specific goals when they go to certain types of sites, and new, flashy features can quickly get in the way, causing user confusion or frustration.

In this presentation, we will discuss three case studies. The first case study is a qualitative study conducted with specialized physicians. We interviewed these physicians and obtained feedback about the value of incorporating social networking features to their existing website. We found that while, overall, physicians responded favorably to having this new feature, they had very specific expectations of its utility. The second case study is from a usability study conducted on a large retail store's intranet for their employees. This client tried to incorporate several popular social networking features; yet, employees were lukewarm as to whether they would personally use them. Finally, our third case study is from a usability test conducted on a children's health website. The clients wanted to develop a game and model their game to Webkinz and Club Penguin, popular online children's gaming sites that include social networking features. Business requirements, development time, and cost quickly became barriers to implementation.

Through the presentation of the three case studies, attendees will learn common pitfalls of implementing the hottest trends into websites and intranets, including:

• Replicating feature functionality that may conflict with user goals and intentions
• Assuming features will automatically add value to websites or intranets
• Overemphasizing new features and de-emphasizing features that users value

Attendees will also be provided clear guidelines for successfully implementing trendy features, including:

• Assess user needs and expectations with new features
• Limit and focus feature functionality
• Consider taking an evolutionary approach to implementing new features

About the Speaker

Martin is a Senior User Experience Specialist at User Centric, Inc., a user experience consulting firm based in the greater Chicago area. Martin's interests lie in both UI design and user research within the retail and consumer goods industries. He has conducted both user research and design on websites and web applications within the retail, financial, energy, telecommunications, and media industries. He brings much experience in interviewing techniques to the arena of user research, along with extensive training and consulting experience in research methodology and quantitative analysis. His recent work has concentrated around IA, UI design, and rapid prototyping for large scale web applications and touch screen devices. Martin is a member of APA, ACM CHI, and IXDA.

One of the primary reasons for our choice was that Axure offers wireframing capabilities similar to Visio, but also is capable of automatically generating specifications with Microsoft Word and creating interactive HTML prototypes. The integration between wireframes and specifications, as well as the ability to create HTML prototypes for usability testing, made Axure attractive to Enlighten. However, there was a legacy of Visio tools and experience that made a complete and immediate shift impractical. Instead, the team made a gradual shift to Axure, appointed a team member to investigate the tool, and used small projects to explore Axure's capabilities and create a methodology for future projects.

Axure offered several opportunities to increase efficiencies for Enlighten, particularly in regard to its prototyping capabilities. In the case of a large consumer goods client, Axure allowed us to easily create working HTML prototypes for promotional campaigns and interactive banners. As a result, information architects were able to better communicate ideas with the design and engineering team members than if they had used static wireframes. In another project for a large bank holding company, a medium-high fidelity prototype was created and used in external usability testing. In yet another example, a prototype was created for a client wishing to redesign an online form so that the client could test the logic of a survey before engineering began.

Integrating this new tool into our process has not always been easy. For example, Engineering and QA staff had adapted to certain documentation standards which Axure's specification generator could not always follow. As a result, the IA department has collaborated closely with both QA and engineering members to find compromises that do not burden either team. New releases of Axure and other integrated tools such as Protonotes continue to expand the tool's capabilities, and we will propose some enhancements we would especially like to see. However we have also learned that at the end of the day it is the people using it, rather than the tool, that make a successful project. In the future, Enlighten will continue to refine its methodology for using Axure.

About the Speaker

Jim Jacoby is a business strategist, seasoned user experience specialist, and entrepreneur. He applies his extensive background to build fully-integrated online solutions that create market advantage. Jim started the successful 7-year business, Manifest Digital, entirely focused on the concept of user-centered design. Initiated in May of 2001, the company (www.manifestdigital.com) has grown from a small core of design-focused individuals into a 50-person industry leader with integrated technology, strategy, and marketing roles. The cross-functional teams in this thriving company are capable of delivering conceptual solutions and seeing those through to production with a wide range of clients.

Throughout his career Jim has honed his skills more and more toward consumer and business interactions through the use of structured inquiry and observation methods. He now applies business strategy techniques with user-centered design professionals to solve complex business problems. His teams of user experience specialists perform primary and secondary research, assist in the facilitation of strategic workshops with clients, and validate hypotheses through rigorous testing techniques in Manifest Digital's custom-designed testing facilities.

He now shares his knowledge through his blog, www.everlastingnow.com, and teaches as an Adjunct Professor with DePaul University in their school of Computer Science, Telecommunications, and Information Systems (CTI). He is also frequently called upon to speak at additional nearby universities, professional organizations, and not-for-profits.

About the Speaker

Mark is the product manager and principal at Vertabase project management software. He has worked with hundreds of companies to improve their workflow on thousands of projects. A regular speaker at Adobe User Groups, Mark's articles have appeared in ComputerWorld Magazine, C|Net and in upcoming issues of Fusion Authority. He writes regularly at the Vertabase blog (www.vertabase.com/blog) and tweets about project management, business (and whatever else comes up) at twitter.com/mpmobile. Prior to launching their product, Vertabase produced high-end web projects for companies like MTV, Young and Rubicam and Sesame Street. In a different life, Mark worked on Wall Street and learned a great deal about risk management.

About the Speakers

Carol Treat Morton is a Menlo Senior High Tech Anthropologist®. She is driven by her passion for getting useful, usable and compelling software into the hands of people who need it. Practicing as a High Tech Anthropologist for Menlo Innovations for since 2005, she has the opportunity to pair every day in pursuit of the information necessary to design and build software that fulfills Menlo's mission of "ending human suffering as it relates to software." Morton has worked on a broad range of projects, ranging from medical device interfaces to fashion websites. And because of Menlo's philosophies of pairing and knowledge transfer, she has often worked on multiple projects during the same week, a flexibility she finds envigorating.

Prior to working with Menlo, she has pursued this passion across the diverse sectors of journalism, business analysis and non-profits, including several years on a Gates Foundation grant for Libraries for the Future to create and implement programs for public librarians to incorporate technology in their mission as community-centric institutions. She also spent a year in AmeriCorps as a technology advisor and instructor for a non-profit community technology center in Detroit's center city. As a usability consultant for Commerce One, a software development firm, she designed custom web applications to meet users needs, while also pursing her Masters Degree in Information Science at the University of Michigan.

Her information roots were nourished during her seventeen-year career as a journalist, where she used photojournalism, newspaper design and editing to reach diverse audiences of daily newspaper readers, at newspapers as diverse as the Detroit Free Press, the Long Beach (California) Press Telegram, The Orange County (California) Register and The Pittsburgh Press. To meet the changing needs of online readers, she developed expertise in web design and content development to move journalism in step with technology. She holds a BS in Organizational Behavior from University of San Francisco and an MS in Information from University of Michigan.

The following items will be covered:

Design Challenges
- Understanding how a large system (largely undocumented) that has grown organically over decades really works.
- Problems with following the Waterfall methodology
- Challenges peculiar to web applications vs. eCommerce websites
- Limited access to legacy subject matter experts (SMEs)

People Challenges

- Getting team members to buy into usability standards
- Cultural differences between legacy staff and web staff
- Understanding the language that legacy SMEs use

Migration Challenges

- Selling the new product to clients versus forcing a migration via sunset
- Building out and migrating applications in a piecemeal manner.
- Making the transition as seamless as possible.

Management Challenges

- Shifting targets and priorities
- Changing vision for the product
- Understanding technical issues and limitations

About the Speaker

Isaac Roussel did his undergraduate work at the University of Michigan and graduate work at Eastern Michigan University, both in the field of chemistry. He was intrigued with the then emerging field of computer science and took many classes in this area as well. After college, Isaac worked as an analytical chemist for 10 years before deciding that he liked computers more than beakers. So, with some additional education, he switched fields. His first major project was heading up the design and development of a large laboratory data management system.

Isaac joined Metavante in 1999 as a programmer but later moved to writing functional specifications and doing user interface design. He currently heads up the application design team for the company's Cash Management product group. In this role he is responsible for designing Web-based products to replace several large mainframe applications. He obtained his certification as a usability analyst through Human Factors International in May 2008.

He is a voracious reader, an avid video gamer, and is hopelessly addicted to Diet Coke and Chinese food. He lives in Dexter, Michigan with his wife and three children. (He is hopelessly addicted to them as well.)

The system can adapt by analyzing a person's use of the site. Is there backtracking where the user doesn't understand the current navigation? Does the user tend to focus on images rather than text? Does the user review detailed technical specification data prior to making a product selection? Factors such as these provide cues as to possible user preference. A user who often explores technical data may be presented with additional technical content. Conversely, technical content can be automatically reduced for users that seem to prefer images and avoid technical content.

Automatic adaptive adjustment of a site's look and feel, or so-called 'Internet morphing', refers to changes in the appearance of the site. A frequently cited example is of a website that automatically adjusts to a larger font size when it is determined a particular user is elderly, or otherwise has poor vision. While this example is good in that it is easily understood by most people, its trivial nature impedes recognition of the power of an adaptive internet user experience. It obscures the power of what is coming.

Adaptive internet user experience development will be motivated and enabled by a variety of factors including:

• Businesses strive to differentiate from competitors and continue efforts to maximize the revenue value of customers
• The increasing availability of the semantic web, with data structured in RDF (Resource Description Framework), will enable more 'intelligent' utilization of data by sophisticated software systems
• Utilization of the internet becomes more of a 'knowledge discovery' process rather than an indexed search
• Need for internet experience to become better fit to individuals' particular needs in order to provide a more cost-effective internet user experience, primarily in terms of time costs.

The tentative presentation outline is:

• Motivation, Why an 'Adaptive' Internet
• Basic Concepts and Terminology
• Current State
• Personalization, How Personal can it get
• Technologies
• Examples, Before and After User Experience
• What's Next, Near term Directions
• Potential Issues
• Question and Answer

About the Speaker

Michael Conlin serves dual roles with Polyergic Informatics, LLC as the Director of Business Development and the Director of Technical Development. Polyergic Informatics (POLY) is an advanced software consulting, design, and development firm, focusing on applying leading edge technologies to complex challenges in business, science, and engineering.

Mr. Conlin has over 24 years of commercial advanced system design, development, and project management experience, providing sophisticated, intelligent software solutions to organizations in the manufacturing, telecommunications, software, biotech, medical, automotive, credit, and financial areas, among others. His project experience has included Internet database systems, system usability, database and data warehouse development (including high performance databases), data mining and analytics, and sophisticated artificial intelligence technologies. He has developed a variety of internet systems servicing over 300,000 active business users.

Mr. Conlin has 10 publications in the areas of artificial intelligence, integrating advanced technologies, expert systems, and machine vision. He holds an M.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, a B.S. in Psychology, and a B.A. in Marketing, and is a member of the engineering honor society, Tau Beta Pi. In addition, he is a member of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence.

The panelists in this session have deep experience collaborating on multidisciplinary teams. Jan Muhleman is President of re:group, an integrated marketing communications company focused creating and maintaining relevant, powerful brands. Laurie Kantner is the Vice President of Client Services for Tec-Ed, a user experience consulting firm dedicated to improving the usability of products, services, and websites through user-centered design processes. Linda Girard co-founded search engine marketing company Pure Visibility, a strategic integrator of Internet marketing services dedicated to growing businesses by connecting them to new qualified prospects online. Dan Cooney, an information architect and the owner of Cooney Information Group, will moderate the panel.

Individually, our panelists represent branding, usability, and SEO, but they understand the complex balancing of these elements that will lead to success online.

Simply put, social networking has created new ways to communicate and share information. The promulgation of The Web has resulted in social networking sites that are used regularly by millions of people. It seems that social networking is here to stay.

Or is it?

When considering this question we have to ask ourselves, how is the current state of technology supportive of the goals of each generation? Are current social networking sites focused too heavily on the Millennials? How can a single site - such as Facebook - best serve the needs of multiple generations?

Using personas representative of each generation - Millennial, Gen X, and Baby Boomer - and defining their distinct goals for social networking, this session will discern how the face of social networking has evolved over the years. The specific impact of evolving technology will be explored, as well as issues related to improving the user experience for the next emerging generation.

Key points that will be covered:

• An introduction to major social networking sites, social bookmarking and user-reviewed content sites.
• Practical advice for building a brand consistent and yet authentically human presence that builds your business.
• How micro-blogging sites can improve your PR program.
• Practical tips about podcasting.
• How to get the benefits of blogging without the work.
• Favorite resources for all things Web 2.0.
• Secret stuff we learned through suffering so you don't have to.

The buzz about new media can be a barrier to entry, but we've learned that it CAN be learned and you don't have to know it all to put it to work in your business.

About the Speaker

Hi! I'm Jan Nichols, the person in charge crazy ideas and happy endings at Market Arts Creative. I started out as a chubby-cheeked mid-western farm girl who dreamed of becoming an opera diva. Surviving a trying adolescence, the farm girl finally arrived in New York City. It was definitely "Green Acres" gone Manhattan in search of the Metropolitan Opera. After countless auditions and more hours in a practice room than a first class felon spends in lock-up, I realized that French and German art song were not a reliable source of income. Finally, the starving artist (not that you could tell by looking) took a day job in advertising and discovered that work could be as much fun as hamming it up on stage.

My new profession covered both coasts, twisty demographic trends and franchise clients who, having purchased a program to assure their success, were immediately transformed into entrepreneurs determined to pursue their own destiny. Ninety-one client-years later (like a dog's life, multiply by seven) I finally figured out that the best job is the one you create yourself. As the owner of Market Arts, a creative services firm, my fascination with stories found another outlet. For the past 13 years, I've been crafting words and creating images for clients with products to sell, services to promote and relationships to build.

After years of observation, I realized that our clients relied on certain habits of thinking that had become a barrier to innovation. That particular insight motivated me to launch "The Creativity Forum," a monthly interview program in Ann Arbor, MI. Now, the show is available on the web as "Conversations with Creative Minds" so the whole wide world can use the power of creative thinking as a practical tool to achieve extraordinary results. Putting the lessons of creativity to work in my own life, I'm having the most fun ever, producing original programming for the web and helping clients be remarkable across multi-media networks.

About the Panelists

Christopher Barger, Director, GM Global Communications Technology.
Nick DeNardis, Associate Director, Web Communications, Wayne State University.
Kelly LaVaute, Social Media Director, Quicken Loans.
Shauna Nicholson, Marketing Manager/Ingenuity Engine, Biznet Internet Solutions.
Steve Schwartz, CEO Guy, RateMyStudentRental.com, and Co-Founder, Alfa Jango, LLC Software & Marketing.