Next sigchi.be event: 23 April ‘08 @ Skynet

After a successful new year’s drink, with demos of three different prototyping tools by Emakina, Alcatel-Lucent and Namahn, and a more informal drink last week in Ghent, it’s time for the next full-scale SIGCHI.be event.

This event will be held on Wednesday 23 April from 17:00 to 20:00 at Belgacom Skynet, Rue Carli 2, 1140 Brussels (for directions, see http://www.skynet.be/index.html?l1=about&l2=location&new_lang=nl). You can register for this event in our events section

For this event, we’re offering an exciting program with a lot of interactivity. We start off with an experience report from CHI 2008. The CHI conference (http://www.chi2008.org/) is being held from 5 April to 10 April. We know several of our members will be attending the conference, but because not everyone is able to go, we will provide a platform for CHI 2008 attendees to share their experiences with the SIGCHI.be community.

After these reports, a panel will discuss a controversial issue in User-Centered Design: the use of personas to guide the design process. David Geerts (CUO, K.U.Leuven) will give a short presentation on why personas are a very useful tool in UCD, while Karl Gilis (AGConsult) will counter this with a short presentation on why personas are not useful at all. Following these contrasting viewpoints, we will stimulate a discussion among all participants about the advantages and drawbacks of personas.

As always, the event will end with a drink and some food, and plenty of opportunities to network.

The detailed program of the event is as follows:

17:00 – 18:00 CHI 2008 experience reports (10 min. each)

18:00 – 19:00 Panel presentations and discussion about personas

19:00 – 20:00 Networking drink and food

If you are attending CHI 2008, please send us a note if you are willing to present a short experience report (ca. 10 minutes) of the most interesting sessions, something that really struck you or just some nice anecdotes.