On Wednesday, May 6th, User Intelligence hosted the UX Cocktail hour. This edition of the informal gathering of 'User Experience' people had a theme - "User Research" and two official presenters - Steve Portigal and Elio Tagliola. The theme was a great fit with User Intelligence, as User Research is one of the services we offer.
Preparations for the event started early in the afternoon, such as moving furniture around to maximize the available space. We also decided to hang our clock collection again (14 clocks to show all UX Alliance partners and our own offices).
As we were finishing our preparations, the first attendees started arriving and by 18:30 our office had filled up to its maximum capacity. After making sure everybody had their drinks and snacks, peter
peterboersma [dot] com (Peter Boersma) kicked off the evening with the customary introduction.
After that, Mark Kassteen told the attendees why tonight's theme fit so well with our company and what we do, by showing some examples of recent and ongoing projects. After that, it was time for a quick break and some more drinks.
Steve Portigal talked about Cultural context, and it's relevance when doing design research. A great and inspirational presentation, with lots of fun examples! After another short break, Elio Tagliola took to the stage. Elio showed how integrating user data from different channels (web, call center, newsletter) can help improve the user experience of multichannel processes.
After the presentations, most people stayed for another couple of drinks and lots of networking, and we had to shoo the last people out of the office around 22:30. Another great UX Cocktail hour, with interesting and inspiring presentations and people!
Pictures are available at the User Intelligence's Flickr stream.