San Francisco

The last week of July, Omniture paid for me to attend the Cooper University Visual Design course. It was a two-day seminar where I learned a ton about how visual design fits in to Cooper's interaction design methods, and how to effectively use visual design to communicate with a software user. Really fascinating stuff for sure.
Cooper University is named after Alan Cooper, who is the pioneer in the interaction design field (sometimes called "user experience design"). He is the inventor of visual basic and he sold this to Microsoft back in the Windows 3.0 days. In fact, Alan Cooper is really the one who invented the GUI operating system. So basically, he knows his stuff. Omniture actually uses his methods to design our web-based software applications. Okay - enough words, time for pictures.

This is the Hotel Monaco where I stayed. It's a "pet friendly" hotel, so lots of people had their dogs and cats - some of the rooms even have fish in them!



Omniture flew me out a day early so I could "play." I took a cable car to Pier 39 and saw some pretty cool things (and some pretty weird people). Of course, as soon as I saw the Hard Rock Cafe, I knew this was going to be a good trip. Needless to say, I came home with a HRC t-shirt.



They have sea lions at Pier 39. This one posed for me.



This is the whole reason I came - Cooper University.



Yeah, Alan Cooper and I go back a long way. At least back as far as July 28th, that is. He's actually a really fun guy to talk to. Lots of experience, lots of opinions, and a great sense of humor!



This is the view from the Cooper headquarters in San Francisco. Having a booming design consulting business definitely has its perks.



Overall it was an awesome trip. Tons of fun and a great learning experience. There is still way more to do that I didn't have a chance to do during this trip. I guess Omniture will just have to send me back there for another design course!