Very enjoyable day with a great line up of speakers. A couple of my favourites were Ron Pompei and Jeff Veen. The key thread running through out the day, was the user being the co author of the experience.__Ron Pompei presentation “Emerging Trends in Creative Thinking” explored the principles of environment and experience design. Integrating commerce, culture and community to create value and meet human expectations. Creating transformative environments such as a “a shop or work space that impacts on the user not simply on a physical level but emotionally intellectually and spiritually as well.” Working with clients to understand the emerging culture and growing shift in values. __A rich presentation by Jeff Venn which looked at designing the new web, mainly focusing on relevance of Web 2.0.__http://www.veen.com/digitalfutures.pdf_One thing that I really hooked into was developing trust at every level. From surface through to strategy. Trust your users – users as peers. Amazing quote that users can deduce whether to ‘trust’ a site within 1/20second._”even if a website is highly usable and provides very useful information presented in a logical arrangement, this may fail to impress a user whose first impression of the site was negative” – Dr Gitte Lindgaard Carleton University._Veen also went on to touch on the Halo Effect. Surprisingly the Halo Effect may or may not have anything to do with the physical appearance of a site. It can equally be applicable to any attribute the user holds valuable. For example a site may look good, and because of this it’s deemed that the content is good, even if the two items are not related. In marketing the Halo Effect is one where the perceived positive features of a particular item extend to a broader brand.