NJ UI Designer & Developer User Group?

Chip Lemmon is looking to form a new user group in New Jersey for designers and developers focused on building user interfaces.  There's been a lot of focus in the tech industry lately on rich user experiences.  Users are demanding better from developers.  Let's face it, a form with text boxes and drop down lists on a 'battleship grey' form just isn't cutting edge anymore.  Clicking a button and waiting forever for a page to load in your web browser is so 2003.

Poor user experiences have left a lot to be desired for many applications we use in the course of a day.  There are multitude of reasons for this, including technology limitations.  Perhaps one reason is that many developers haven't always been in tune with their artistic side?  And while most designers are, they sometimes aren't comfortable with their inner geek. 

There's a whole slew of new technologies out there that help address the battleship grey and slow synchronous web interaction scenarios that result in not so great user experiences.  And these technologies, while not necessarily a panacea, should help designers and developers work better together.  Perhaps even get developers in touch with their inner artist!

From Chip:

WPF,CAB, ASP.NET, AJAX, Web Parts, User Controls, SharePoint, XAML, Smart Client, Mobility, Tablets, Office 2007, SQL Server Reporting, and component vendors like Jersey's own Infragistics.  And isn't Vista as much about cool UI as it is about security?  Beside everybody knows the UI is the cool stuff and everything else is just the plumbing.  And we all know what goes through the plumbing ;)

With all of these new technologies arriving on the scene, a user group that is focused on them and user interface design & development topics sounds like a great idea!  Contact Chip through his blog to let him know if you are interested forming this type of group.