Discussion on how to meet the demand for a good or at least acceptable user interface design. This can be done in different ways—using random internal resources or contractors, educating its own specialists or teams, not to mention the nuances of the process in each case. Round-table experts with different industry experience will discuss the major trends and challenges of such integration.

Talks during the discussion:

• Svetlana Tsikoza «Could a programmer turn to be a UX designer?»
• Constantine Osnos «A web coder cry to programmers: how can we live together?»

Moderator: Svetlana Tsikoza

Independent User Experience Consultant

Svetlana Tsikoza

Has been working at Exigen Services (ex Starsoft) since 2004, Svetlana was, for several years, in charge of the UI design team working for T-Mobile. Some of the work done by Svetlana and her team for T-Mobile won prestigious British awards for usability.

Now the team built by Svetlana support all the UI and User Experience design related activities: user researches and analysis, modelling, requirement elicitation and visualization, UI prototyping, graphic and information design and UI development. Design team starts working of a project from very beginning and keeps monitoring and supporting the development process till the product delivery.

Now Svetlana is focused on popularization of UX methods and practices inside and outside the company. The team has conducted a series of work-shops in several St.Petersburg universities and also Svetlana teaches “User Interface Design” course at the IFMO university.

Working at Exigen Serives, the company famous as an expert of Agile, Svetlana sees the team goal for the near future as to build strong expertise in the symbiosis of User Experience practices and Agile methodology

Speaker: Constantine Osnos

HTML coder, UI designer, First Line Software

Constantine Osnos

The Constantine’s way is logical and quite banal. An ordinary school on outskirts of Saint Petersburg, deep immersion into life of insects, then special biological class across from Hermitage.

Then suddently—pediatric academy with unofficial underground musical communities of that time. Archaeleological expeditions turning imto work as children psychiatrist. Psychotherapy with adults, then alcoholics and drug-addicted people as patients, then trainings—and, as usually, second high school in area of design and web development.

A small pile of sites of a consulting company pulsed and breathed in Constantine’s hands for five years. Then five years of total outsourcing in Starsoft/Exigen company, mostly for Britains. Trips there, fraternization with customers, conferences near Thames river.

Sharp jumping to a micro company with multitude of growing sites and pseudo-sites. Parallel process—just freelance for capricious customers.

But roots call. So, outsourcing again, Americans, new technologies being cleaned from dirt, conferences—and something behind the horizon.

Expert: Ivan Mikhailov

Ivan Mikhailov

Product manager, oktogo.ru

Interaction designer. He sees ill-conceived decisions in the field of human-computer interaction as a personal insult. Over the years, he’d repeatedly insulted himself by means of desktop and web based software, but then somehow found ways to amend it. Knows a lot about what lies behind abbreviation UX, IA, UCD, CX, CJ, and pretends to know even more. Learns constantly. Admires Nielsen.

Expert: Alexey Kopylov

Alexey Kopylov

Partner and co-founder, UIDesign Group

Alexey has been designing user interfaces for the past 10 years. He has worked in this area in several Russian and foreign companies. Alexey’s work is based on a solid theoretical foundation which is the results of both foreign and his own research. Regularly he participates in various conferences and is engaged in editing of Russian editions of books on usability, as well as writing for blogs and well-known Internet and printed media. He is particularly interested in conceptual design topics.