About the event

Online communities are the foundation of the social web.  UX practioners frequently encounter challenges when designing appropriate online community platforms that will encourage interaction and engagement. Do the fans/likes and comments on a Facebook page constitute a community? Are rewards and points in a gamified community the tools to keep users returning?

The UK UPA January event will bring together a panel of industry leaders who will share their perspectives and experiences on how design can foster (or inhibit) online community interaction.

We will consider how user experience in online communities has evolved in tandem with technological tools and the growing platforms for communication.  We will discuss the challenges of fostering community and if the very definition of online community has changed and evolved as a result of new technology.

Logistics of the event

Date - Thursday, 19 January 2012

Time - 6:30pm for 7pm start

Location - SapientNitro, 8 Spital Square, London, E1 6DU

Format of the evening

6:30 - 7:00 :: Meet and Greet

7:00 - 8:00 :: Talks by 4 speakers (details below)

8:00 - 8:30 :: Q & A (moderated by Andrea Lewis)

8.45 - 9.30 :: Networking

Please start tweeting your thoughts now and also during the event!

About the speakers

Kam Star, Chief Play Officer at PlayGen: Gamification and community engagement 

Games are amazing – they engage their users like nothing else and in return people lavish them with their time, money and attention. At its core gamification is all about understanding the psychology that drives participation in games.Kam will be discussing how gamification elements can be crucial tools in online community engagement, highlighting best methods of incorporating them into product design.

Kam is a digital media entrepreneur, inventor and an award winning games developer. Founder of PlayGen, Kam designs and develops playful solutions and platforms for delivering engaging experiences across the digital landscape. He has produced gaming projects for the BBC, AVIVA, Eden Project, UNESCO, McKinsey, Oxford and Cambridge Universities, NESTA, MoD, NHS, TSB and Wellcome Trust. Kam is also the founder of Digital Shoreditch, with the aim of bringing the outstanding creative, technical and entrepreneurial talent found in East London closer together.

Angel Brown, UX Director at Digitas Health: Healthcare communities: designing to inspire trust when it really matters

In situations of life and death, knowing who you can trust is critical to believing what you read on community sites. In this talk, Angel will touch briefly on models for designing for trust in healthcare communities and will then aim to bring the concepts to life by taking the room through a case study of her recent experiences with a doctors' social site in China.

Angel has been involved in IA and interaction design since web pages were grey. Over this rather long period of time she and has worked for a range of clients from The Body Shop to TfL's Cycle Challenge through to a full complement of pharmaceutical companies at Digitas Health.

She has presented at UK UPA, DrupalCon and many London IA events and facilitates an ongoing working group on UX for Intranets. She tries to keep one small toe in academia, so has been a member of the London School of Economics Media Group committee since 2007 where she produces events on new challenges in digital.

Rob Falla, Social Media Solutions Architect at Your Presence Online Ltd.: Growing Facebook communities: What is the real value of a “like”?

Rob will be discussing the meaning of a Facebook “like” and Facebook Fans and how to convert passive likers into an engaged community of fans. His case study will be Bunnyfoot’s recently launched Facebook game, Brand Bang! The community has been nurtured from the start by actively engaging with the users and encouraging them to share their scores and other achievements on their walls, and post comments and feedback on the game wall. In one month, it grew from 30 players to nearly 1000 players. We believe that this community will mature even further and grow from 1000 to 10000 players in another month.

Rob is a digital solutions entrepreneur and founder of Your Presence Online, a social media agency based in Cambridge. Rob was a columnist for WebTechniques and WebReview magazines and author of several web technology books. Rob designed and implemented information portals in Pharmaceuticals and Mobile Communications industries for companies like Lion Bioscience, Xtempus, Xerox, Symbian and Nokia. Rob is passionate about improving ROI for his clients by helping to build engaged and loyal online communities.

Blaise Grimes-Viort, Head of Community & Engagement at eModeration: Leveraging design to implement community building best practices: Dos and Don'ts

To build successful online communities people want to use, it is important to apply basic best practices to the layout design and user experience. Blaise will be presenting a few of these principles and discuss examples of good and bad applications. 

Blaise started his career in Community Management in 2001 and has worked with global brands, startups and charities, in fields such as Videogaming, Social Networking, Pharmaceutical, Broadcasting, Publishing and ISPs. This varied experience has provided him with a rich background in product development and customer collaboration, and the passion to help organisations build thriving online communities and social media outposts, both externally and internally. He blogs on community management at http://blaisegv.com, and you can follow him on Twitter at @blaisegv.

About the moderator

Andrea Lewis, Consultant at Reading Room

Andrea is a cyberpsychologist focused on the psychological phenomena associated with emerging media. Andrea has spent the majority of her career working with digital brands in New York, and has recently joined Reading Room Studio in London as a Consultant. Prior to Reading Room, her projects in London included the redesign of a global, online market research community for Face, a co-creation planning agency, and analysing user research data for the Southbank Centre.

Andrea is a usability and UX researcher and has worked across the media industry in project management and digital product strategy roles with brands such as MTV, VH1, Reebok, Virgin Media, and Dell. She thrives on developing immersive and engaging digital products and mobile applications, and has a healthy respect for robots and video games.

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If you have any questions about the event or if you wish to get involved (either as a speaker or just helping out) please contact Nick (UKliaison@ukupa.org.uk or @nickatram on Twitter) who is the organiser of this event.

There is no charge for UPA members. For non-members the cost is £10, and for student non-members £5, payable on the door.