East Bay Innovation Group (www.eBig.org)
Startups/VCs – Berkeley SIG: How to Bake User Experience Strategy Into Your Startup

Monday, March 16th, from 6:30-9PM
University of California Berkeley Extension, Golden Bear Building
UC Extension Classroom, Second Floor, Room 211
1995 University Avenue
Berkeley, California
(Two blocks from Downtown Berkeley BART)

Bake User Experience Strategy Into Your Startup

In the rush to get a new product or concept into the market, the “user experience” may be given a back seat. In the myriad of start-up details, how much attention can be given to the “look and feel” – which can be added later? Or can it? And what is it anyway?

“User experience” covers the myriad ways your customer will interact with your product and company – website, user interface, support center, user manual, training, forums, help system, and beyond. While you may see each of these areas as different company functions, to your customer they are all part of a single thing – your product and their “experience.’

The success of your product (and company) depends upon whether that experience is engaging, efficient, effective, and predictable, or disconnected, time-consuming and difficult. Because a good user experience touches nearly every part of your company, it must be “baked in” from the very beginning — and it is nearly impossible to “add later”.

Meghan Ede will explain how to “bake in” an approach which produces great user experiences, from the get-go. She’lll start with a simple question: “Does Customer = User?” (Not always). And she’ll end with an explanation of how to hire the right person from a growing array of user experience professionals. In between, she’ll talk about how to make your great product even better.

Who should attend: This session will be of particular interest to entrepreneurs launching products or services with a visible user interface or company website. If you are responsible for any of these product areas: creation/design, marketing, support, training or evaluation, or face resource allocation decisions you will find value in this presentation

About the Speaker:
Meghan R. Ede provides user experience strategy and research for products in a wide variety of fields – from complex Enterprise & IT software to finance, social networking and youth gaming websites. Meghan hones in on key elements and then creates unique srategies to develop creative user experiences. She has worked at small start-ups and also “big names” such as Intuit, eBay/PayPal, Intuit, Charles Schwab, Wells Fargo, Yahoo, Cisco, Sun Microsystems, Symantec. She has a B.A. in Psychology from Universite d’Ottawa and an M.A. in Psychology from Carleton University, both in Ottawa, Canada.

Registration:
To register, please send your name to register@ebig.org and mention the session name and the date.

Pay at the door by cash or check
Free to e-Big members
$15 if pre-registered
$20 otherwise

Directions:
From downtown Berkeley BART, walk two blocks northwest to University and Milvia. The Golden Bear Building is on the North side of University.

From I-80, exit University Avenue and drive East toward the hills roughly 19 blocks. The building will be on your left (north) side. There is street parking available and also the Center street parking garage two blocks south. Do not try to park in the onsite underground parking lot, as the lot closes early and your car will be locked in overnight.