We’re looking forward to attending the CHI 2010 conference next week and have a variety of exciting things planned. First, we’ll be leading a SIG, “Understanding Cool,” on Monday, April 12th, from 2:30-4:00. In this session, we’ll be discussing the challenges of designing “cool” products and services. We’ll lead discussions with participants to come up with examples of “cool,” what makes these examples compelling, and challenges for “cool” design, along with suggested design principles.

On Tuesday, April 13th, Karen is being honored by CHI with a Lifetime Practice Award. She’ll be speaking from 9:00-10:30, Tuesday morning, about practical innovation at her acceptance speech. Come listen to her talk about what makes for successful innovation – and the challenges  confronting a company trying to bring innovative ideas to market.

Finally, on Thursday, we’re teaching a course on interaction design called “Looking Below the Surface: Understanding and Analyzing Interaction Design” from 9:00-10:30. Focusing on the essential core concepts of design, this course will use real-world examples to help participants better understand interaction design and the importance of underlying structure. We will also provide strategies for making “good” design decisions and introduce interaction design patterns as a method for identifying structure.

Hopefully, we’ll see many of you at least once during the week. Make sure you come up and say hi!