mentegrafica | infovis solutions

I would like to post and share some thoughts that have been become interesting in terms of designing the user experience in digital solutions for information retrival during these past meetings.

First of all I would like to say "thank you to all the people that gave me the opportunity to join to such great events.

In cronological order: Andrea Femminini, Marco Bertoni, Ilaria Moroni, Emanuela Casson, Andrew Vande Moere, Stefano Lazzari and Maria Grazia Mattei.

At the end of May it has been a conference in Rome about Accessibility.
The event was hosted by Università di Roma Tor Vergata and was well managed by Andrea Femminini and Marco Bertoni.
Ive been invited to join to the event giving some answers about the Adobe Flash technology and Accessibility issues.
The most interesting part, to me, of the event was during the morning session where interesting, stimulating and well known people spoken about the Italian laws about accessibility, human rights, disable users conditions and the use of assistitive technologies.
I really appreciate the organization of the event and the attention to deliver the best esperience to the whole audience, from web live streaming to the use of a big projection of real-time speakers words.
In next monthes some
By the user experience point of view, I have appreciated the way how different people solve information retrival and information handling issues.
In terms of infovis I realized that a lot of work must be done in next years to design new solutions that could also help blind people to interact with complex data sets.
Its a challenge that will involve all of us.

The second interesting event has been hosted at Università Biccoca in Milano and was about Knowledge Organization.
It took place on 22nd of June and was managed by the Italian section of ISKO ( International Society for Knowledge Organization ).
I have been there with Domenico and Francesca in order to speak about the DesignNet project and, mainly, the role of infovis based solutions for thesaurus based digital archives ( slides are available ).
The event was really interesting to me because a lot of contents were focusing on cognitive aspects and most of the topics emerged to become research opportunities from real users needs into the digital archives world.
Talking about infovis to a different type of audience than before, expressed a nice feeling: infovis could be really helpfull for digital library users.
It seems that infovis designed around real users needs ( such the dissertation project by Domenico ) could be a research and business opportunities for all professionals involved.

The third event was the most infovis focused and, to me, the most interesting one.
It was a workshop about information aesthetics ( leaded by Andrew Vande Moere ) and it have been hold in ETH Zurich ( a very nice building in a very cool place ), closer to the infovis summit.
I joined the other guys ( Warren, Paul, Urs, Robert Kosara, Robert, Andrew, Marckus, Andres and Roger ) and Im really happy to have shared ideas and thoughts with all of them.
During the morning we discussed about the defining of research goal for information aesthetics ( I really enjoed the way Markus expressed his idea with very clear and cool drawings ).
In the afternoon we worked on how to gain this goal and we produced the final poster ( thanks to Markus for his effort on this ), focusing on expressing the goal and the steps to reach that goal.
The other interesting aspects of the workshop have been the chance to evaluate and listening to other groups ideas and proposal.
I found interesting some thoughts about mobile working scenarios, road-map design and Geoviz meta tag opportunities.
At the end of the day, we had to anser to a survey and its final results have been moved into an interactive and funny application.
As usual, photos are available.

The forth event was about web2.0; it was on 13rd July in Milano at the Mediateca di Santa Teresa ( a wonderfull, marvellous place ).
I have been invited, by MGM Digital Communication, to talk about the design and the role of User Experience in web2.0 scenarios, talking to a particular audience: managers from services companies.
I found interesting some issues related to the traditional approach among consumers and companies and the key-role of designers.
The event will be also presented in Roma, tomorrow.
As usual, slides are available.