Looking back on 2010, I wanted to take a moment to recap a great year, as well as acknowledge all of our team’s amazing work and efforts. Their creativity, camaraderie and commitment to excellence are truly beyond compare.

Most of all we want to thank our clients. Without you we wouldn’t be here.

To recap 2010, we pulled together some highlights:

EffectiveUI in the Spotlight
This year we saw the result of a long-term goal with the release of “Effective UI: The Art of Building Great User Experience in Software” from O’Reilly Media. The book is a culmination of years of experience, research and techniques learned in the trenches.

We weren’t glued to our monitors working the entire year, though. EffectiveUI was fortunate to share the critical importance of user experience (UX) at several industry events.

Anthony Franco, our president and co-founder, spoke at Web 2.0 Expo, Gov 2.0 Expo, Forrester’s Customer Experience Forum, Microsoft MIX and Adobe MAX. John McRee, lead user experience architect, also presented “By the Book: Examining the Art of Building Great User Experiences in Software” at Web 2.0 Expo. Dan Saltzman, lead experience architect, gave an application demo during the “Java Frontier” keynote presentation at JavaOne. In addition, RJ Owen, senior software architect, Juan Sanchez, experience architect, and Leonard Souza, lead experience architect, presented a stellar session at Adobe MAX entitled “Screens of Possibility: Pushing Multiscreen Experiences with Spark and Flex.” Our talented team – including senior developer Jon Reid, software architect Drew McLean, RJ, Leonard, Juan, John and Anthony – lent their voices and expertise to many other national and local events. Last, but not least, Tony Hillerson, software developer, taught an O’Reilly online course for developing Android applications with Java.

In addition to numerous speaking opportunities we also won a number of awards. In 2010, EffectiveUI was honored with 15 prestigious awards and two top rankings.

For a full list of awards and rankings, click here.

EffectiveUI in the News
In October 2010 EffectiveUI published a report we commissioned from Harris Interactive that found 38 percent of users are not happy with mobile applications. This report started a valuable conversation on the importance of UX that we will continue in 2011.

Looking back at the year in technology news for 2010, it’s hard to forget the springtime sparring over Flash between Apple and Adobe and the greatly exaggerated (and untrue) reports of the death of Silverlight this past fall.

To see EffectiveUI in the media in 2010, click here.

What’s ahead for 2011?

Next month Anthony will be doing a deeper dive into his technology predictions for 2011, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, mark your calendars — we are already slated to speak at some great events in 2011, so be sure to attend our sessions at these conferences:

IxDA Interaction; February 9-12, 2011 • Boulder, CO
• Lindsay Moore and Austin Brown, user experience designers, present “Human-Centered Design and the Intersection of the Physical and Digital Worlds”
• Tim Wood, director of user experience, presents “Scandalous Interaction”
• EffectiveUI and Adobe co-host the Opening Night Party

AnDevCon; March 7-9, 2011 • San Francisco, CA
Tony Hillerson, software architect, presents “SCM for Android Developers using Git”

SXSW Interactive; March 11-15, 2011 • Austin, TX
John McRee, lead experience architect, presents “Your Mom Has an iPad: Designing for Boomers”

Web 2.0 Expo; March 28-31, 2011 • San Francisco, CA
RJ Owen, senior software architect, and Michael Salamon, lead experience architect, present “Design Essentials for Developers”

As 2010 comes to a close, we wish you a prosperous 2011.