Updated 10 December 2009, new contact info.

Vertigo’s CEO, Scott Stanfield, chose last night’s Portland Silverlight User Group meeting to publicly announce that Vertigo is opening an office in Portland. The Richmond Point, California-based company is a leader in developing rich Internet applications (RIA) for some very high profile customers. Their projects include NBC Winter Olympics 2010, NBC Sunday Night Football, the 2008 Democratic National Convention, CBS 2009 Presidential Inauguration, and Hard Rock Cafe’s Memorabilia site. These RIA applications are built on the Microsoft technology stack and typically feature streaming HD video or high resolution imagery, combined with a high degree of user interaction, and exacting business requirements.

Stanfield introduced Cori Taratoot, general manager for Portland, as well as other staff from Vertigo, and explained his goal of having a team of ten developers and graphic designers in the Portland office by mid 2010. For more information on employment opportunities with Vertigo contact Jobs-Portland@vertigo.com.

Thanks for a great presentation at PSLUG last night, and welcome to the neighborhood!

The Seattle Silverlight User Group holds its first meeting tomorrow, Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 7PM. The meeting is on the Microsoft Redmond campus in the Building 40/41 cafeteria (map). The speaker will be John Stockton, senior RIA developer for Ascentium and  Microsoft Silverlight MVP, speaking on What’s New in Silverlight 4.

Scott Stanfield, CEO of Vertigo, plans to be there. How about you?

Here’s the extra nudge you might need to attend the Portland Silverlight User Group’s inaugural meeting tonight, Tuesday, December 8, 2009. Pizza and networking at 6PM, Vertigo CEO Scott Stanfield speaking at 6:30PM. Fiserv Cafe, 3400 NW John Olsen Place, Hillsboro, OR 97214.

Rich Interactive Beer to follow at Cornelius Pass Roadhouse.

The Portland Silverlight User Group is hosting its first meeting on Tuesday, December 8, 2009, and they are starting off with a big splash. Scott Stanfield, CEO of Vertigo Software, will be the speaker for the inaugural meeting. If you are not familiar with Vertigo, they designed the Silverlight-powered websites for the Hard Rock Cafe, the 2010 Winter Olympics for NBC, the 2009 Presidential Inauguration for CBS, and Sunday Night Football for NBC. Scott is also a Microsoft Regional Director, very cool.

The user group meeting is at the Fiserv Cafe (formerly the Corillian Cafe), 3400 NW John Olsen Place, Hillsboro, OR, 97214. The evening starts with pizza and networking at 6:00 PM, with the presentation at 6:30 PM. Afterwards there will be socializing at the Cornelius Pass Roadhouse.

Congratulations to Erik Mork and Kelly White for starting the Portland Silverlight User Group. See you there.

The world is filled with the beautiful, elegant offspring that come out of the marriage of different disciplines. Often the person creating such a work is called a genius, although to him or her it may seem a straightforward matter of applying a solution from one part of their life to another. I want to work with people who have rich and diverse experiences in their lives: the odds are just so much better that something incredible might happen.

And so it’s a mystery to me why it is exceedingly rare for a developer to know anything about being a consumer of the software she or he creates. When it comes to user interface, graphical design, human interaction or any other element of the user experience, the majority of professional developers I meet have not taken the time to learn what these disciplines are about and what they have to offer. It remains such an enigma to me because so many of these same professionals do have varied backgrounds and draw on other perspectives to inform and guide their software. Like the woman who started out in chemistry, worked in a lab, was appointed to analyze the results using a computer, found she liked computers more than chemistry, and decided to change her career. There are things she learned, for example about the scientific method, that make her an excellent developer. But it is hard to find many developers whose paths have crossed disciplines like graphic arts and design, or studied how normal human beings interact with objects or software applications.

Ian Voyce has a wonderful short exposé-cum-confessional, The 7 signs your UI was created by a programmer. Read and wince: been there, done that, billed the client.

Do you suspect a programmer may have put together the terrible user interface on that “enterprise” software you’re forced to use every day? There are some give-away indicators. Look out for them in your software, hunt down the developer and force them to read a book about user interface design. If you’re suitably senior, force them to a) improve it, or even better b) get someone with real UI experience to fix it. More…

I would prefer both options a and b: have the developer learn what UI design is about and work with a real UI designer.

One place such a developer could start is Bill Buxton’s book Sketching User Experiences. If you’re not familiar with Bill Buxton, do yourself a favor an watch the first few minutes of his keynote address at MIX09.