Houston Start-Up Design Studio and Workshop

Tuesday, October 11, Houston Experience Design will host a startup design studio and workshop at Caroline Collective from 7-10 pm.

We'll have food and drinks, plenty of space, plenty of great people to meet, and a great technique to learn about that's as useful to designers as it is to developers and entrepreneurs.

The way it works

First, we'll have some milling and mixing about over food and drinks. Then we'll have a short 20-30 minute presentation on how to give and receiving objective, constructive design critiques.

Then, everyone with software who desired feedback will pull out sketches or mockups or prototypes or working code. Designers will then rotate around the room offering constructive critiques on how to improve usability or engagement, etc.

The agenda

• 7:00 - Food, drinks, and meet-n-greets
• 7:30 - Presentation: Design critiques
• 8:00 - Activity: App grounding (identify objectives for the screens they want critiqued)
• 8:15 - Activity: Critiques (designers rotate critiquing screens)
• 10:00 - End

What to bring

If you have an interface you'd like critiqued, bring sketches, mockups, screenshots, prototypes, or working code of the screens you would like feedback on.

Everyone should bring business cards.

The location

Caroline Collective is located at 4820 Caroline St. in the museum district. Ample parking is available on the street, as well as in the dedicated parking lot in back.

What's in it for entrepreneurs and developers

Entrepreneurs and developers learn the basic, UX grounding techniques they need to help ensure their software fulfills customers needs. The critique process we'll introduce is directly  inline with lean startup and customer development thinking by Eric Ries and Steven Blank, and you will be able to go to work Wednesday morning with a tool you can start using on your own immediately.

In addition, the grounded critiques by user experience experts will offer specific feedback you can implement immediately. It's like 10, low-fidelity usability tests in an hour!

What's in it for UX designers

Knowing how to ground critiques around business and design objectives removes aesthetic subjectivity from the discussion and focuses on well the design functions.

In addition to learning how to ground critiques, we'll learn how to give and receive critiques. And most importantly, how to introduce critiques as a regular part of your organization's product development culture.

You'll go to with an easy-to-implement and valuable tool you can use on Wednesday.

For more information

For more information, email ag@agux.co, or follow @HoustonUX on Twitter.