Calling all picture-snappers, internet-makers and the designers and art directors that love them. Come to this month's social networking happy hour. Let's chat about business and/or non-business and take this opportunity to meet and/or reconnect. All members and nonmembers are invited and highly encouraged to come out.

The DSVC Social Network aims at bringing together members and non members to discuss relevant topics on a monthly basis. These are free, open discussions where everyone can interact and discuss different point of view on various subjects of note. These social networking meetings are totally casual and totally free, and along with solving a design crisis or answering a question or two, are a great opportunity for our community to get to know each other face to face.

Date: Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Time: 6:30 pm
Location: Belmont Bar
901 Fort Worth Ave.
Dallas, TX 75208
Cost: FREE

When?
Tuesday, March 23, 2010 @ 6:00pm

Where?
Cohabitat
2517 Thomas Street
Dallas, TX 75201

What?
Designing a multimodal application is not just adding speech to a website or adding a GUI to an automated phone system. When creating a multimodal interaction, several multimodal-specific aspects of design need to be considered. These include user modality preference, conflicting mental models, variable usage environments, and technology limitations. Julie Underdahl and Catherine Zhu will explore the challenges even an experienced GUI or VUI designer faces when attempting to design an effective, user-friendly multimodal application.

Who?

Julie Underdahl is a Senior User Interface Design Engineer at Convergys. She has over 6 years of experience implementing and usability testing voice user interfaces. Her experience includes a wide range of speech applications across many different industries. She works closely with clients and their customers to deliver custom, user-centered applications, including recent design and testing of multimodal interfaces. Julie has a BA in both Spanish and Biology and MA in Linguistics from the University of North Texas.

Catherine Zhu is currently a Senior Consultant with Avaya Professional Services. As a member of the Global Speech Engineering team, she has worked closely with clients and their customers to create a number of custom speech applications leading clients through the entire design process including requirements gathering, data analysis, call flow design, prompt writing, grammar development, voice talent coaching, usability testing, and tuning. She holds an MS in Applied Cognition and Neuroscience with a specialization in Speech Technology from the University of Texas at Dallas and a BS in Cognitive Science with a concentration in Linguistics from Rice University. Catherine continually strives to be an advocate for the user leveraging her education and experience in user-centered design.

Please join us for our March Tweetup as many of us head off for SXSWi.

This Tweetup is a joint effort between SMC Dallas and #cubanakolls. (Lauren Fernandez & Traci Kolls).

Be sure to use the hashtags #smcdallas & #cubanakolls when talking about the event!

La Duni Northpark Center
8687 North Central Expy
Dallas, TX