Thanks to the India HCI 2011 organisers for inviting me to speak at this year’s conference in Bangalore.

It was great to meet and listen to thought leaders from India and around the world in this space.  Of particular interest were:

• research into AR (Augmented Reality) by HITLabNZ
• eye-tracking technology from SMI and Tobii
• the work being done on bottom-of-pyramid empowerment through mobile by Microsoft Research
• design-thinking approach to building exchanges for virtual economies (MMORPG “money”, frequent flier miles, credit card reward points etc.) by Cognizant Technology

I talked about how using UI toolkits that a) have broad and deep functionality exposed by a powerful design-time interface and b) that are “pattern aware” is a winning strategy for UX driven development since they:

• minimise the disconnect between the customer, UX practictioner and developer by enabling the easy creation of high-fidelity prototypes
• effectively address the challenges of time, budget, developer ability and the growing need to target multiple devices

As promised here are the slides: