UX Australia: Recent Episodes
UX Australia
On most objective measures, the design industry is thriving. Our skills are in high demand, our salaries are rising, and companies can’t fill roles fast enough (recent blip notwithstanding). Design leadership has come of age, we’re seeing companies invest in team development, and more and more designers are earning that hallowed “seat at the table”. So why, when I talk to designers, do so many of them feel burnt out and despondent; like all their hard work and effort has been for nothing. It’s as though the design industry is going through some sort of mid-life crisis.In this session design leader, start-up advisor, speaker and coach, Andy Budd, takes us through some of the reasons why we’re experiencing this sense of collective Ennui, and what we can do about it. This talk may make for awkward listening at times. However, unless we can have an open and honest conversation about the behaviors that are holding us back, we’ll never unlock the full potential of what design has to offer.
Information Architecture (IA) is foundational for great usability and user experience. But for IA to become embedded in the product development process, we must use the language of product: what user problems does IA solve and what are the commercial/ organisational benefits? In this talk I will share ideas and approaches on:- A better way to explain IA to product people/stakeholders- How to frame IA work in terms of stories, strategy and metrics
With the worldwide population of adults over the age of 65 growing faster than any other according to the United Nations, considering their voice in designing the 3D embodiment of the internet (the Metaverse) is necessary for moving away from the deficit model of ageing, especially coming out of the pandemic. This presentation advocates for an ethnographic, co-design approach with older adults for those looking to design in a fully immersive space.
As a UXR I spend a lot of time note-taking and would love to share a note-taking strategy that saves my team and I a HEAP of time (and money). The new strategy is visual (which clients love) quick to synthesise (which researchers love) and easily translates findings into design recommendations (which designers love). You can thank me later.
Going smaller, to go bigger: A design system evolution. Over the past 2 years the Atlassian Design System team have been reimagining how a design system needs to evolve to be a force multiplier for good - good for our own team, good for our designers and developers and good for our customers. They’ll share their journey towards unlocking a thriving design system which supports the past, the present and the future all at the same time and how they evolved it to drive both purpose and impact at scale. In a time of economic uncertainty, different design models of what good looks like not only become necessary but essential to fuel the next decade of design system’s growth. We’ll share the highs and lows and wisdom we have gained by going smaller, to go bigger.
When were diamonds first used to describe the design process?When was the first 'how might we' question asked?What were the original steps of 'brainstorming'?Some answers to these questions can be found in a 30 year period in America after the end of World War 2, when parallel intellectual movements centred around creating scientific methodologies for creativity and design thrived. Many of the ideas, principles, and design processes of that age are still with us today.Other answers are much, much older.In this talk, we will do more than describe yet another design process model. Instead, we will explore the historical and cultural origins of the design and creativity methods that are still common in design, and we will explore how they were both informed by and developed in reaction to the emergence of computing and large-scale data management. By the end of the talk, you will have a new perspective on how the origins of our methodologies can embed biased assumptions in the work we do today.
The lack of a moral framework in the design disciple, let alone a set of ethical guidelines, put designers at great risk of doing more harm than good in the world.
Regenerative design. What’s that mean and why should I care? How do I design for regeneration in my own life and design practice? Let's explore practical ways we can design regenerative business, product, and service ideas that customers love - and increase our wellbeing while we do it.
Interested in how government + design + sustainability experts came together to co-design a "world-first" tool to tackle global warming? If so come along to this talk for an up-close look at how we managed to achieve the impossible —> getting agreement on a way forward when all of the experts told us this was NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN.
Oh my gosh - the hype about Chat GTP and how it makes exploding your content production efficiency super easy is mental But is it actually based in reality.. Ed note - no, Chat GTP did not write this. Let's look at five examples of how Chat GTP has actually been successfully used and what degree of human intervention is still required. Spoiler alert, it's a LOT.
How to deliver a design project that gets results.Design can make or break a digital transformation project, so it's well worth getting right. Sarah Heimeier has led dozens of successful transformations for some of Australia’s largest financial institutions and leading FinTechs, and in this talk she'll share her winning framework. You'll leave with practical, actionable steps to deliver your project in a way that aligns with your business goals, enables new technology, and has the whole team celebrating.
Discover how design can bridge the gap between young Australians and policymakers to reimagine policy-making for urgent issues like climate change, access to mental health services, and housing affordability. With the Policy Canvas framework, a make-first mindset, and a shareable narrative, you'll learn how to broker better conversations, re-engage young Australians, and achieve better outcomes for the community
Driving a multi-sector collaboration for countering online child sexual exploitation.To create systemic change at a societal level and solve a wicked problem like online sexual exploitation of children (OSEC), we need to understand and consider all people involved in the ecosystem. This talk explores the required sensitivity and strength in doing so: how robust research and strategic design can lead to responsible investment and ecosystem mobilisation; and how it helped a newly set up NFP organisation and manager of the Child Protection Fund (CPF) define, refine and maximise social impact.
We crave connection at every age – including our golden years. Technology has amplified our ability to connect on a global scale, but older users have been largely left behind. We’ll share what Ryman Healthcare and Journey Digital learnt when designing an app for a diverse group of users with an average age of 80.
Inclusive Design has emerged as a global practice, but what are the benefits of incorporating its principles into design practices in Australia? In this presentation, I will define what Inclusive Design is and what it isn’t, highlight common misconceptions and explore the benefits Inclusive Design brings to businesses and users. The audience will walk away with a better understanding of the global inclusive design movement, and everyday practices they can implement tomorrow to make more inclusive and accessible products, services and spaces.
While we often focus on users and the products that deliver value to them, nothing would exist if it wasn't for the organizations that make these products.If we look at organizations under a product lens, we have a system that grows and evolves in time, fulfilling its ultimate goal: delivering a product or service for its users.But how does this system grow? This is often left to individuals to figure it out, a lot of frameworks focus on the "ideal state" and not on the change to get us there. By understanding that organizations are living systems and not static structures we can break the illusion of the "ideal team" and "ideal company" and focus instead on the pragmatic goal: managing meaningful change that creates more efficient organizations that benefit employees and, ultimately, users.Because let's be clear: no organization ever fits any ideal model.In this talk we are going to see how we can use our skills to approach meaningful and direct change in organizations, through processes, culture, and ultimately, the wellbeing of all the people that make things happen.
When tackling complex problems it can be difficult to know where to begin but usually we want to start with what will deliver the most value. Unfortunately value can be difficult to pinpoint often due to lack of data but this is where design research can shine.In this session we will explore a structured approach to valuing opportunities, making it easier to calculate and communicate value to your stakeholders.
Ever wondered how tech companies like Zendesk conducts research for to help determine future directions, particularly in new product areas like bots and automation.In the realm of customer service, automation is often thought of as deflection. We don’t often think of opportunities for people to help themselves and having customer support specialists get really hands-on and unblock more complicated situations. This talk covers how we collaborated with a global team and customer base to drive the direction and the future of customer support. We will cover some of the challenges faced when researching green-field products and share how we handled: How to position and get buy-in with strategic research when the stakes are high & pressure to deliver is high Coming to an agreed outcome when there are opposing and diverse viewpoints from the stakeholders.* Getting consensus on what is the most important thing to tackle next using an evidence based and data-driven approach.
The presentation will provide resources to make presenting research results more engaging. Incorporating infographics resources into presentations is an excellent way to generate an impactful narrative while presenting much information in an easy-to-absorb format.
We've all been there; a mixed methodology research assignment inclusive of behavioral, attitudinal, qualitative and quantitative packed full of customer insights ready to change the world... only for that Powerpoint to sit in an executives inbox for months on end, ignored or overlooked.How might we bring the value back to research reporting? By bringing humans together to understand research outcomes in a workshop rather than a report, we make our insights relevant and valuable.Strategy comes to the fore, and human connection and empathy direct to those that need to hear it... and take away what is most valuable; the change it needs to be.
Scattered research write-ups, a heap of new employees, and everyone is WFH. When even the researchers are saying “hey, where’s that report about xyz we wrote last week?”, it’s time to get organised with a research repository - though we have no budget and no new tools. I’ll be sharing the story and pitfalls of how we built a repository on a shoestring, to raise awareness and improve access to research in the business, with minimal admin overhead (the real holy grail).
Design research is generally discussed in the context of gaining a better, deeper understanding of the needs, behaviours and motivations of individuals and groups. Typically, these people are viewed as being outside of, or separate from the organisation responsible, or interested in, responding to those needs. In his 2010 book on Innovation, Disrupt, Luke Williams speaks of the power of understanding tensions experienced by individuals as a means of sparking innovative ideas.Organisational Tensions provide similar insight and serve a similar role when engaging in strategic design activities. Like individuals, organisations undergo tension as a result of internal and external forces; the misalignment between systems and needs; and the changing expectations of customers and staff in relation to the work of the organisation. This presentation will look at the ways in which organisational tensions can be identified; look at some examples of tensions; and look at a case study from the State Library of Victoria.
Democratization is something few of us would choose if we had alternatives. We would want budget and headcount to grow the UX Research department. A team stretched thin is told not only to let anybody do some or all of their jobs, but that they will need to train and oversee this work.
We use design research to improve products and services, but how often do we consider the user experience of participating in research? This presentation will explore how to embed accessibility and inclusion in design research practices so that everyone can feel welcome. In doing so, you’ll find richer insights and reach broader, underserved communities.
Let me ask you this - How certain are you that the product, service, feature that you researched, is delivering positive outcomes for people in the real world? Is it working the way you said it would work? When did you last check?Human-centred design practices enable evidence-led decision making. The assumed outcome of this practice is that we build everyday products and services that enhance people’s lives, support positive behaviours and contribute to communities in a meaningful way. But, without effective evaluation, we can’t be sure if what we designed is working the way we said it would.In this presentation, learn how to measure what matters and understand if outcomes are being achieved.
Exploring the aftermath of enforced behaviour change (from Covid-19) on younger people’s habits, identity and behaviour and understanding what it means for the ABC as we deliver audience informed digital experiences.Over the last 2.5 years, people across Australia, and much of the world, endured a period of enforced behaviour change, that radically changed how we lived, socialised and worked. These changes intensified many people’s relationships with digital products and technology, with the ABC benefitting from this voracious appetite to be informed, educated and entertained. But as the regulations, norms and guidelines that dominated our lives during Covid-19 disappear, come and learn how this rare event impacted audiences' habits, behaviours, wellbeing and decisions and what it means for the ABC as we deliver audience informed digital experiences.
How to gain rich, valuable insights to help you truly understand your customers.You might be comfortable designing based on data, but how rich and robust is that data? In this talk you’ll learn how to conduct meaningful research in a fast, easy and more effective way. It will explore ways to plan and run research, so you can gather unique, valuable and actionable insights. Come along to master the tools and methods you need to improve your design research practice so you can create rave-worthy experiences for your customers.
Anthropology’s, and by extension Ethnography’s remit is frequently defined as asking the question, 'what does it mean to be human'? But, what if humans were not at the centre of what we do? Solving global issues and promoting systemic change, means changing not just the inputs but also our point of view.
Children are often seen but not heard in the design process. How can you look at them more as co-creators than consumers for your product or service? This talk will help you to understand working with child-centred design mindset in startup or company. As a design for children rights advocate Saloni will explain her own framework as she learnt and unlearnt listening to children’s voices and designing with them.
The good, the bad and the complex: appreciating complexity through frontline UXRDuring this presentation, I will delve into the challenges I faced while transitioning from researching consumer products to products used by expert users.I will share how the typical research process gave me limited kind of work I could do and how opening up to rethinking research processes helped me see how far research can go.
When were the concepts behind the double diamond invented?When was the first 'how might we' question asked?When did people start 'brainstorming'?The answers are all in a 30 year period after the end of World War 2, when parallel intellectual movements centred around creating scientific methodologies for creativity and design thrived in America and the UK. Many of the ideas, principles, and design processes of that age are still with us today.In this talk, we will do more than describe yet another design process model - we will explore the historical and cultural origins of the design and creativity methods that are still common in design, and interrogate how those origins could be embedding biased assumptions in the work we do today.
As designer leaders, we want to be able to make wise decisions and we want to draw on wisdom to guide us as we lead our teams and design in organisations.Fortunately we don’t have to wait until we are old and grey to access wisdom; it can be experienced through ways of thinking and acting. In this talk we will explore what wisdom is made up of (according to research )and how we as design leaders can use aspects of wisdom now.
Lessons learnt from 20 years establishing and scaling Design-led Innovation at a team, organisation and country level.
Many of us have taken for granted the ability of our teams to show up for work with energy, positivity and a willingness to jump into a room with several other humans for days at a time to swarm on a design challenge. This is not true anymore. Leading design teams in the context of ‘the new normal’ (hybrid teams, fully remote, new resilience challenges) requires us to really understand the principles of design thinking, while re-evaluating some of the practices.In doing this, I have seen an opportunity for deeper empathy, more global collaboration, and found new ways to foster creativity to add to our toolkit of in-person methods.
We continue to see more and more organisations prioritise employee engagement and strengthening their Employee Value Proposition (EVP). Whilst there is no 'one size fits all' answer when it comes to building and scaling an empowered and engaged team - prioritising people over process is key to growth. Gain insights and a practical approach to apply with your teams in an ever-changing landscape.
Is money the only way to recruit and retain staff?There are more factors than money that an employer can use for both retaining and hiring designers. Using Daniel Pink’s model of mastery, autonomy and purpose, I will go through ways to craft roles and packages that will appeal to the market.
Design hiring is broken. And with The Great Resignation and Remote Jobs Boom, we’re in the most competitive recruiting market of our lifetimes.A radically transparent approach earns designers’ trust, speeds up your hiring cycles, and helps all candidates perform their best
When we think of “users” we often confine their identities to how they’re interacting with our products and services. But how might we understand their mental models of the world and how those behaviors translate into the experiences we deliver? In this session, we’ll explore ethnographic and visual methods for continuous research, the role of language and metaphors in survey design, and actionable strategies to develop meaningful, adaptable products.
Traditional leadership styles are centred on Eurocentric concepts of authority figures influencing and guiding through the organisation to achieve their ends. SEVA leadership challenges this concept to create a new paradigm that integrates concepts of communal wellbeing, equality, and inclusiveness through service. Based on the Sikh concept of ‘Seva’ or ‘Sewa’,, there are three facets to SEVA Leadership: tan, man and dhan—physical, emotional and material service. ‘The SEVA Wheel’ is a simple, easy to apply design framework that offers a new perspective on how to embrace transformative, holistic, leadership for individuals, communities, and organisations to prosper.
One of the biggest challenges for design leaders today, is creating cultures of trust & authenticity that allows people to thrive. Feelings are the most under-utilised tool we all have to shape culture. Carolyn will explore through her own experiences, how acknowledging and utilising feelings has guided her & the team at Creatable to create more impactful experiences for our people and our users.
How do we set our future design leaders up for success now and not leave until they become a design leader? Our talk will share how our trials and tribulations of challenging the norm of a leadership team, to ensure we stay true to our principles and break the mold for inclusion.
Designing practices for hybrid and flexible teams requires a very clear understanding of what must be consistent and what can be flexible. In this presentation I will draw on some specific case studies and stories from my time as both a researcher and consultant in business process design and work practice. As researchers we talk about a desire to make our findings relevant to industry and as consultants, managers and leaders we talk about drawing on evidence. Over the last 7 years I have been wearing both of those hats simultaneously and it has had tremendous benefits for both my research and my consulting practice.
In a complex and uncertain world, businesses have focused on the importance of 'telling a good story' to cut through the noise.
But how can designers use storytelling to inform their day-to-day work? Not just when crafting presentations or communicating to clients, but within the DNA of our digital products.
In this talk, we'll take proven narrative structures and apply them to the new world of websites, apps and emerging technologies.
UXA2022 Day 2
Do you squirm in your seat when asked to introduce yourself? Do you find networking awkward and embarrassing? In meetings, do you find yourself keeping quiet even though you have something to say? Does a quiet evening at home with a book sound more attractive to you than an evening socialising with people you’ve never met?
If your answer to most of these questions is yes, congratulations: you are (probably) an introvert. As an introvert, you lose energy when engaging with people rather than gain. People engagement is not optional if you want to lead. So how do you lead as an introvert?
In this talk, Tim Yeo will share techniques he's used to manage his own introversion in order to lead as a designer. He'll also share power tips he's learned leading a fully remote global team during coronavirus isolation that play to an introvert's strengths.
UXA2022 Day 2
Death to “best practice”: The journey to cohesive design practice at scale.
UXA2022 Day 2
Inclusive design for cognitive disabilities, neurodiversity, and chronic illness.
UXA2022 Day 1
UX Australia Day 1 How Enterprise Software Can be Saved by UX Research and Service Design.
The inspiring story of how DeadlyScience came to be. The challenges and celebrations of the journey so far.
UXA2022 Day 1
Have you ever wondered how the answers of voice devices or conversational robots are designed? And what should be considered while designing inclusive interactions at public spaces?
In this talk I will present a case study of an iterative interaction design approach of a voice-based service robot for a museum. You will gain an understanding about the complexity of public spaces and the challenges of inclusive designing for diverse user groups, along with helpful methods to complement your design process.
UXA2022 Day 1
UX Australia 2022 Enterprise Service Design for Government: De-risking the design and delivery of digital services.
So you’re designing with accessibility guidelines (WCAG), but how are you designing for vulnerability and inclusion? This talk will share some of the vulnerability guidelines we have developed for websites, products and services to ensure we are designing inclusively.
UXA2022 Day 1
In a world where we are striving for increased velocity, greater productivity and better efficiency we talk about the unexpected Value we produced through the process of stretching our design sprint over 5 weeks instead of a single day.
We’ll talk about how we seeded a design thinking model which encouraged a deeper understanding of our most vulnerable members while generating a cultural shift into collegial cross-team collaboration.
You’ll not only get an insight into the value pockets we extracted, but also gain insights into a practical format to run your own design thinking sprint.
We’ll share the insights we gained along the way as well as a practical format to run your own design thinking sprint.
UXA2022 Day 2
UXA2022 Day 2
Have you ever had to design training for an online audience? You probably had a few questions. What’s the optimal lesson length? Should it be delivered live, or pre-recorded to enable self-paced learning? How can you maximise for social learning?
In 2020, Justin created an online cohort course that teaches visual thinking to designers around the world. In doing so, he tried his best to answer the above questions. Through this case study, Justin shares some strategies and best practices for online training, including principles of ‘New Learning’ pioneered by Mary Kalantzis and Bill Cope
When you’re an individual or very small team trying to establish design capability in a novice area, it is critical to change the mindset and the culture so that improved design (and improved product outcomes) can flourish. Having been the first ‘designer’ introduced into different government transformation projects in different government departments, as well as similar situations in commercial organisations, I can share some personal observations (which won’t be attributed to any department individually!), share some stories and offer some specific advice which might help others build design understanding in similar contexts.
UXA2022 Day 2
Would you like to take on a new role as a product manager or product leader, work more effectively with product managers as a UX practitioner in a product-led organization., or reframe your UX design orientation (and reinvent your career!) in terms of digital product design writ large?
User Experience is arguably the best foundation for becoming a Product Manager, but it will only get you part of the way there. So, what are the UX-related skills, complementary technology, and business expertise you’d need to master to succeed as a product manager?
Learn how to leverage your design “superpowers” and user experience training to thrive in a product-centric workplace, achieve better outcomes in terms of product UX, develop more efficient teams, and foster better work environments.
UXA2022 Day 2
Succeeding in Design 2022 Is UX the remedy for Ethical Fading at the clinical interface?
Design Research 2022 Are you consulting, collaborating or co-designing? And why it matters
Design Research 2022 Beyond graphical UIs - Researching voice interaction with social robots
Design Research 2022 Pitching & planning design research for multi-million dollar enterprise tools
Design Research 2022 Keep Cognitive Biases from Creeping into your UX Design and User Research
Design Research 2022 Bet you didn’t know you’re a (UX) philosopher? Improving our craft by exploring our past.
Adrian joins Steve to discuss his upcoming presentation 'Pace Layer Mapping' at Deign Research 16 - 18 March. Tickets are on sale now at https://uxaustralia.com.au/conferences/design-research-2022/
Taylor joins Steve to discuss her upcoming presentation 'Becoming Agents of Change and Innovation' at Design Research, 16 - 18 March. Tickets are on sale now at https://uxaustralia.com.au/conferences/design-research-2022/
Chris joins Steve to discuss his upcoming presentation 'How to create advocacy through storytelling' at Design Research, 16 - 18 March 2022. Tickets are on sale now at https://uxaustralia.com.au/conferences/design-research-2022/
Alison & Bridgette join Steve to discuss their upcoming presentation 'Design Research with Dementia in Mind' at Design Research, 16 - 18 March 2022. Tickets are on sale now uxaustralia.com.au/conferences/des…-research-2022/
Janani joins Steve to discuss her upcoming presentation 'My Journey from Marketing Research to Design Research' at Design Research, 16 - 18 March 2022. Tickets are on sale now uxaustralia.com.au/conferences/des…-research-2022/
Jithesh joins Steve to discuss his upcoming presentation 'Beyond Pixels at Startups' at Design Research, 16 - 18 March 2022. Tickets are on sale now https://uxaustralia.com.au/conferences/design-research-2022/
UX Australia Day 1 The Contemporary Practice of Design - a look at the potential for design over the coming decade
UX Australia Day 2 Saving lives and making a difference: How User Experience techniques helped NSW Health rapidly respond to COVID-19
UX Australia 2021 Day 1 Non-human personas and other UX tools for a post-pandemic world
UX Australia 2021 Day 2 Design Systems with augmented teams: best practice for connection and alignment
UX Australia 2021 Day 2 The Why, When and How of including people with disability in the design process.
UXA2021 presenter Jen Blatz joins Steve to chat about her upcoming presentation ‘Presenting Your Designs Using Spontaneous Talks Framework'.
Register a ticket at Eventbrite to catch Jen at the conference www.eventbrite.com.au/e/ux-australia…s-137875359913
UXA2021 presenter Krystal Higgins joins Steve to chat about her upcoming presentation ‘Better Onboarding’.
Register a ticket at Eventbrite to catch Krystal at the conference www.eventbrite.com.au/e/ux-australia…s-137875359913
UXA2021 presenter Oliver Weidlich joins Steve to chat about his upcoming presentation ‘Designing Experiences for the Augmented Human’.
Register a ticket at Eventbrite to catch Oliver at the conference www.eventbrite.com.au/e/ux-australia…s-137875359913
UXA2021 presenter Steven Wakabayashi joins Steve to chat about his upcoming presentation ‘Design Thinking for Building Equitable Teams’.
Register a ticket at Eventbrite to catch Steven at the conference www.eventbrite.com.au/e/ux-australia…s-137875359913
UXA2021 presenters Scott Burns and Petra Gulicher join Steve to chat about their upcoming presentation 'Rethinking UGC at the ABC'. Register a ticket at Eventbrite to catch Scott and Petra at the conference www.eventbrite.com.au/e/ux-australia…s-137875359913
UXA2021 presenter Kate Archbold joins Steve to chat about her upcoming presentation 'Designing with Different Disciplines'.
Register a ticket at Eventbrite to catch Kate at the conference https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/ux-australia-2021-tickets-137875359913
The UX Australia podcast series is back, featuring presenters and guests for the upcoming UXA2021 conference. Martin Tomitsch joins Steve today to discuss his upcoming presentation 'Non-Human personas and other UX tools for a post-pandemic world'. Tickets to the conference are available now https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/ux-australia-2021-tickets-137875359913
Pensieves & Crystal Balls: Mitigating Bias When Investigating Past Behavior and Future Intent
As design researchers, we’re constantly trying to ascertain what people do and why.
Often this means digging into what people have done in the past and asking them to predict what they’d do in the future. There’s only one problem: people are notoriously bad at accurately recalling past events and reliably forecasting future ones.
In this talk we’ll explore key ways in which memories and predictions can be unreliable, what this means for our craft, and strategies to mitigate some of these biases for even better research.
Designing a National Behaviour Change Campaign for Rural Cambodia
Every year the health of children under 5 years old in Cambodia is jeopardized due to a lack of good sanitation and hygiene, leading to undernutrition and stunting. Not washing hands with soap, exposure to harmful faeces in the environment, and drinking unsafe contaminated water are some of the main causes of life-threatening child illnesses such as diarrhea, which also affects brain development in the first 5 years.
So how can we ensure caregivers teach children in Cambodia to practice good sanitation and hygiene habits so they grow up healthy?
Learn how the iDE Cambodia Innovation Lab designed a national Social Behavior Change (SBC) campaign to improve child-centered water, sanitation and hygiene practices, creating an aligned strategy for everyone in the country to use. The campaign puts people at the center of the process and ends with innovative solutions that are tailor-made to suit their needs and create positive impact. With multi-stakeholder collaboration and 18 months of research and testing, it incorporates many approaches, including new services, products and tools that can be used in a sustainable way by the local community.
A Framework for Creating Actionable Insights
What do you do after you finish a few rounds of user research and have a range of great findings? How do you transform these findings into insights that drive action? Moving from the stages of findings, to insights, to actionable insights can be a daunting process, with no clear steps around how to progress from one stage to the next. In our talk, we will share a framework and a canvas which can be used to help move from findings to actionable insights.
What They Say vs What They Do
It’s often hard to spot the difference between what people say they want and what they actually do in practice. Sometimes an interview or a user test doesn’t give you the ability to see behaviours over time and in the real working environment. Journal studies can reveal these truths really well, so why don’t they get used more often? They are simple to set up, cost effective and give you rich insights, especially for audiences that can be hard to observe. In this presentation we’ll look at how journal studies could be a great addition to your regular research toolbox.
A Stakeholders Point of View on Engaging in Research
Researchers often struggle to engage stakeholders in research. As someone who has been a stakeholder myself, I also want to be engaged in the research so I can use it as an input to make design decisions. If both parties have this common goal, why is stakeholder engagement such a challenge? In this presentation I'll share a stakeholders point of view of how to make research outputs impactful.
How To Design Your Own “Empathy Walk” (and make your stakeholders live your research findings)
What can you make your audience experience in 30 minutes? Try being a single mum in subsidized housing in Chicago and see what kind of decisions you have to make to avoid homelessness. Or be a maize farmer in rural Zambia, anxious for the annual harvest, and see if he will buy your client’s health insurance product.
In this series of stories I'll show you a method that I believe should be in every research team's field kit when it comes time to story-telling and bringing your findings back into the boardroom. Come see how you can craft your own empathy walk from your research findings, and help your audience really connect with the people whose stories you are trying to tell, and the problems you are trying to make visible.
Creating Impact through the Research Journey
These days, researchers can’t share a report or presentation and expect their research to have an impact within teams. Researchers need to make sure that they’re able to take their teams along the journey of research to help their colleagues understand and get buy-in for research outcomes. However, this can be challenging when teams don’t understand or value research, or when the researchers’ outputs are misaligned to business objectives.
During this presentation, Jess will share how to identify the research maturity of your team to help maximize the success of bringing your team on the research journey to create impactful research outcomes. She will also share practical tips on when and how to empower your teams to lead their own research.
Reporting your User Research Findings like a Psychologist
Our user research findings lack gravity when they are reported poorly.
Oftentimes, we negate key pieces of information or unwittingly breach ethical guidelines. Despite the various benefits of having some creative freedom, as it stands, the user research report comes in too many shapes and sizes. This impacts both our ability to quickly consume previous research conducted by fellow researchers and more importantly, denies us the ability to appraise its quality; a fundamental function of research.
Albeit presenting our research insights with long slabs of text and convoluted words is a far cry from the desired objective, we have a lot to gain from leveraging the structure that psychologists turn to when presenting their findings - the academic journal.
The design of the academic journal is very intentional, with each section devoted to addressing a key aspect of the scientific method. Insofar as user research is to be legitimate in guiding large-scale product decisions, we are not exempt from holding ourselves to high standards of rigour - but we also don’t need to be terrified by them. What we need is a standard that works in our unique context - a context where time is money, deliverables are created in a hurry and budgets are minimal.
In this talk, we will hone in on the architecture of the academic journal and explore what we can borrow from it to raise the bar on our research reporting, ultimately maximising the weight and longevity of our insights.
Remote Research for Business Engagement
2020 has changed the way most of us will work for years to come and our ability to work remotely has empowered teams to be more connected than ever before. In this presentation, Stephanie will show you how remote technology can assist in immersing the wider business in customer research. She will talk about how remote research has engaged wider business teams and what this means for the digital experience, the team and most importantly the customer. She will also share her top tips to ensure successful engagement through remote capabilities.
Design Research 2021 Day 2 - Paul Merrel, Bek Hendry, Peta Marks & Sean Rom by UX Australia
Insights from Anywhere - A guide and options for doing remote research
COVID-19 has disrupted many things, including in-person research. We no longer have access to research facilities or labs. We can't even be in the same room as research participants. These are limitations, but limitations can lead to great moments of creativity. Just because you can't do research the way you're used to, doesn't mean that you can't do excellent research.
Lauren Isaacson has been doing qualitative research from her home since 2016 and will share what she knows about the advantages and disadvantages of remote research, how to set up a research lab at home, and how to ensure remote research success from recruiting to communicating results to your teams.
Trauma-Informed Design Research
Trauma is common within society at large and is particularly prevalent amongst vulnerable populations, First Nations peoples and people with Lived Experience of mental health issues. Trauma informed practice is a strengths-based framework that supports responsiveness to the impact of trauma, enabling physical, psychological, and emotional safety for both providers and survivors. In this presentation Jax will discuss the five guiding principles of trauma informed practice; safety, choice, collaboration, trustworthiness and empowerment and consider how they may apply within design research contexts.
Reimagining ethnography during COVID with adults, kids and cars
Covid-19 has been the catalyst for reimagining the way the ABC conduct design research. What we’ve learnt along the way (from planning, to conducting and analysing) has become grounded in our practice. Come and learn about the impact this has had on our processes, products and audience experience.
Gloves in the time of Corona - Guerrilla Testing in a Pandemic
How do you get real people to test a physical prototype during a pandemic?
Alana Wade and Serena Lai, user researchers at the Digital Transformation Agency, will share their personal 2020 experiences. They needed to conduct research on a government device, testing a facial recognition feature to verify real people with real people. Something that couldn’t be done remotely. Their option? Guerrilla testing: brief face-to-face interactions with people going about their daily business. Alana and Serena will share the lessons they learned pivoting a project in May from in-depth in person research into a socially distanced feat of guerrilla testing. This includes adapting to quick changes, preparing for rapid testing and insight gathering, and how to build trust in seconds with passers-by when you have to remain distanced. This was also a real challenge for observation on devices!
Embracing Diversity in Research
What do you do when you need to work with a very specific group of people? How do you approach research for those with disabilities or from different cultures or age groups? Maybe you have to test a product with a group of young teenagers or those who aren’t quite as tech-savvy?
We’ve uncovered valuable insights about user behaviour through researching with blind and low vision users, non-tech savvy users, teenagers and English-as-second-language users. In our session, we would like to share with you our biggest lessons learned and the challenges and importance of working with a diverse group of users, before the final product and no matter the product.
Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks: Moving from Experience Design Research to Product Design Research
This presentation follows my journey as I take on a new role in a new organisation that has a super strong product focus. Watch as I stumble through new ideas, challenges and techniques. As I grapple with what it means to move from being an Experience Design Researcher (of 20 odd years) to a shiny new role as Product Design Researcher.
This discussion might be already old hat for some of the young product design research folk, but there are bound to be some amusing stuff ups, missteps and anecdotes as I question my whole professional perspective on what good research is for and how it is conducted.
Will I be able to successfully navigate the new leaner world of research? Will I forsake my anthropological roots for the lure of data science?
Can an old dog really learn new tricks, and if so, what are the things that I have learned that have allowed me to stay in my new role. That is, if I manage to stay in the role! My probationary work period ends just before the conference?! Come along to find out how it all ends.
Exploring Health Sector Complexity through Design Research
Being adaptive in approach is key in research, especially when it comes to facing complex scenarios in an increasingly complex world. More and more, we are seeing governments and organisations opting to apply research and design-led approaches to decision making. As design researchers, it is our responsibility to provide clear, representative foundations from which these decisions will be made. This talk discusses a design-led approach to looking at policy within the health sector, by considering the people it impacts.
Finding the Sweet Spot: Leveraging Insights to Shape Strategic Direction
I work in the Australian superannuation industry – an industry which is complex, typically conservative, highly regulated and characterised by customer apathy and disengagement.
We’ve been striving to drive customer-centric change at UniSuper for 3-4 years now, leveraging research to reverse engineer processes and shift mindsets. In 2019, I co-presented our journey mapping journey at Design Research alongside my colleague, Leah Mackenzie.
This is “Chapter 2” of my story. It’s about what happened when the groundswell we had created resulted in a breakthrough moment: Customer Experience (CX) having a seat at the decision-making table.
This presentation will cover my experiences leading a small CX team to influence UniSuper’s strategic direction through organisation-wide collaboration. It’s about what we did with our seat, and how we did it, to ensure that the voice of the customer was heard authentically all the way up to Board level. I’ll cover using insights to drive action through codesign of enterprise initiatives, and lessons learned when addressing both business and customer needs over the course of 9 months.
This talk is for anyone who is grappling with the challenge of translating customer insights into strategic action. How can we advance the business impact of research?
People, Purposes, Patterns & Problem Space
How can your org go deep? How can it find 1000 more opportunities to support by studying the patterns that come from people's inner thinking as they pursue their purposes? Indi will unfold a way to bring this powerful perspective to your organization.
So You’ve Earned a Seat at the Table. What’s Next?
Over the past couple of years, “having a seat at the table” has become one of the most widely-discussed topics in the research community. However, once that seat has been earned, many researchers struggle to adapt to the needs and expectations of senior leaders and stakeholders, which are typically quite different from those of the product teams they’ve grown accustomed to working with. This presentation will offer several strategies and supporting examples to guide researchers from just having a seat at the table, to actually using it to influence high-level, strategic decision-making.
Sociolinguistics, Design Research, and You: How to Languate Gooder
Join me to explore the intersection of sociolinguistics - that is, how and why we talk the way we do - and design research. Learn how applying core concepts from sociolinguistics can improve the way you conduct your work. Have you ever thought about...
How the way you sound, and the words you use, might influence a research participant’s responses during testing? How our experiences and cultural backgrounds, and those of our research participants, influence the collection and analysis of research data because of the way we speak? Getting ‘meta’ for a moment - how we as a design research community communicate what we do - and how we may inadvertently exclude others through the language we use, turning people away from our cause?
In this talk, I’ll introduce design researchers to concepts that will help them grow their confidence in working quantitatively. I’ll show that even people who think they’re “bad at maths” already think quantitatively. I’ll give some basic criteria that quantitatively inexperienced design researchers can use to judge the quality and usefulness of numerical approaches. And I’ll show how to use quantitative approaches to win arguments with engineers, persuade managers, and create space for design.
Ben Kraal is the last Design Research presenter to join Steve on the UX Australia podcast, chatting about his upcoming presentation 'Maths for Design Researchers'. Register a ticket to catch Bens presentation at the online conference this week https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/design-research-2021-tickets-123110359399 Dr Ben Kraal is a Director of Experience Design for Symplicit, a customer led innovation consultancy. Ben’s background spans computer science, sociology and design. He's currently reading too many books.
Presenting 'Remote Research for Business Engagement' at Design Research this week, Steve is joined by ANZ's Design Research Manager Stephanie Lamont. Register a ticket to the online conference via Eventbrite https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/design-research-2021-tickets-123110359399 Steph Lamont is an experienced customer strategist and research professional. Currently working with ANZ as the Design Research Manager, Steph has a keen interest in understanding consumer behaviour and using this to create memorable experiences. Having worked with some of Australia’s largest brands, including most recently Bupa, she has extensive industry experience in Technology, Aged Care, FMCG, Education and both State and Federal Government. Steph is also an instructor at Academy xi, where she is currently mentoring students through the UX UI transform course.
On the latest episode Steve is joined by Ruth Ellison and Michelle Pickrell to chat about their upcoming presentation 'A Framework for Creating Actionable Insights'. Catch the presentation at Design Research 2021, tickets are available now https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/design-research-2021-tickets-123110359399 Ruth Ellison is an experienced user researcher and design leader who helps organisations gain a deeper understanding of their users and to make better evidence-based decisions. She cares deeply about building happy and creative teams. With over 18 years of design experience in both the public and private sectors, she loves working on complex problems and making meaningful work. Michelle is a User Experience Designer with a degree in Industrial Design. She is passionate about designing for empowerment with a particular focus on services and systems which give people a greater quality of life.
Michelle has worked in the UX industry since 2012 and has enjoyed problem-solving with a range of government and private organisations. She has also recently finished her PhD at the University of Technology Sydney. Her PhD is focused on the design of interactive rehabilitation equipment which delivers feedback to stroke patients while they are undergoing rehabilitation.
Joining us from Canada, Design Research 2021 presenter Lauren Isaacson joins the podcast to chat about her upcoming presentation 'Insights from Anywhere - A guide and options for doing remote research'. Design Research 2021 will run entirely online from March 17 - 19 and tickets are available now https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/design-research-2021-tickets-123110359399
Lauren Isaacson is a market and user experience research consultant from Vancouver, British Columbia. She began her career doing research and brand strategy for digital ad agencies in Los Angeles, California, but left that world behind and gravitated towards a career in research in 2009. Since then she has been an in-house research team of one for Motion Canada and TELUS Digital, an interim leader of the market research department of BC's hydroelectric utility, a subcontractor for agencies such as Blink, Macadamian, and Applause, and a direct consultant for small start-ups, national organizations, and anything in-between.
Lauren is a big proponent of developing community within the research field on a national and local level by hosting research meetups in her home city and accepting leadership positions with professional organizations for researchers. Lauren is the current chapter co-chair of the Qualitative Research Consultants Association Pacific Northwest Chapter and the former chair of the BC chapter of the Marketing Research and Intelligence Association. She also gives back to her community and environment by doing volunteer work and making donations as a member of 1% for the Planet.
Presenting "Get your hands dirty: Gaining the trust of hard to reach users" at Design Research 2021, Orica's Katrina Ryl and Roland Wimbush join the UX Australia podcast to chat their experiences working with the mining and construction industry. Tickets to the virtual conference are available now https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/design-research-2021-tickets-123110359399
Katrina comes from a traditional graphic design background. Throughout her education and into her career she has always had an interest in the digital world. It wasn’t until further into her career that she truly started to get a taste for the importance of designing digital spaces with the user in mind. With over 18 years’ experience in many areas of the design industry, including graphic design, publishing, website design, UX design, UX research, advertising, social media strategies and video production, she has worked with many clients from small business start-ups to large corporations in Australia and around the world. Roland Wimbush is a UX Design Lead at Orica as well as being an Industry Speaker and Mentor at AcademyXi. Following his passion for skiing and surfing he based himself between the Alps and the west coast of France for over 15 years where he blissfully designed technical equipment for leading international sports brands. He transitioned into the digital space following a move back to Australia with his young family. He now applies his design and research skills to humanising technology, designing products and services that improve challenging situations and creating and building meaningful start-ups.
Ahead of the online conference next month, Design Research keynote Indi Young joins Steve on the UX Australia podcast. Indi will kick off Design Research 2021 with her presentation "People, Purposes, Patterns & Problem Space". Tickets to the virtual conference are available now https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/design-research-2021-tickets-123110359399
Indi is a researcher who coaches, writes, and teaches about inclusive product strategy. Her work is rooted in the problem space where the focus is on people, not users. Indi pioneered opportunity maps, mental model diagrams, and thinking styles. Her way of approaching the problem allows teams to truly pay attention to people, without letting cognitive bias and assumptions creep in. Indi has written two books, Practical Empathy and Mental Models. Her next book, Assumptions Aside, will cover thinking styles. She builds knowledge and community via a series of live online advanced courses about the importance of pushing the boundaries of your perspective. She was one of the founders of Adaptive Path, the pioneering UX agency.
You can follow her on Twitter @indiyoung and access many resources on her website indiyoung.com as well as at medium.com/inclusive-software.
Joining us from Oakland California, Gretchen consults with clients to inform their product strategy and improve team collaboration skills. Her book, Mastering Collaboration is a handbook to help teams work better together. She spent the first part of her career in design consulting for firms like frog design, Cooper, and LUNAR. Recently, she was Head of Design at PG&E, California’s largest energy company, she has led the design of the hardware and software of a next-generation surgical system, and served as VP of Product at GreatSchools.org. Gretchen is a Bay Area native who left only long enough to get a bachelor’s degree from Harvard in History & Literature. You can purchase Gretchen's book online https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Collaboration-Working-Together-Productive/dp/1492041734
Margot Bloomstein is one of the leading voices in the content strategy industry. She is the author of "Trustworthy: How the Smartest Brands Beat Cynicism and Bridge the Trust Gap" and "Content Strategy at Work: Real-World Stories to Strengthen Every Interactive Project" and the principal of Appropriate, Inc., a brand and content strategy consultancy based in Boston. As a speaker and strategic adviser, she has worked with marketing teams in a range of organizations over the past two decades. The creator of BrandSort, she developed the popular message architecture-driven approach to content strategy. Margot teaches in the content strategy graduate program at FH Joanneum University in Graz, Austria, and lectures around the world about brand-driven content strategy and designing for trust.
You can pre-order Margot's book at https://www.amazon.com.au/Trustworthy-Smartest-Brands-Cynicism-Bridge-ebook/dp/B08R12TLYX/
On today's episode Steve is joined by Erika Hall, author of Conversational Design and Just Enough Research. Purchase Erika's books online at https://abookapart.com/products/just-enough-research
Diana joins Steve from Auckland to discuss her recent thesis 'Towards a Buen Vivir-centric Design: Decolonising Artisanal Design With Mayan Weavers From the Highlands of Chiapas, Mexico'.
Kelly Ann joins Steve to discuss co-design and designing with communities. Kelly Ann is a Social Designer, Researcher and author of Beyond Sticky Notes. You can find Kelly Ann's book at https://www.beyondstickynotes.com/
Steve is joined by Amy Bucher to discuss her new book; Engaged: Designing for Behaviour Change. Find more about Amy and her book at her website https://www.amybucherphd.com/engaged-book/
Putting people at the heart of a service transformation which drives scale and lasting value.
Design can be a powerful tool for traditionally conservative spaces like Mergers and Acquisitions. This is a story about how we took a strategic design approach to bring together three very different companies and align them on a shared, people centred value proposition and practice to own an emergent health category. It's also a story about the power of design, thinking and doing, and its ability to transform organisations and drive authentic experiences and valuable outcomes for customers, staff and investors.
“User research is just having a chat with someone, anyone can do it!”
How many times have you heard this before? If you are a researcher and someone said this to you, you probably felt undermined and frustrated. If you were the one that had said this, then even more reason for you to come to our talk on the 10 things NOT to say to user researchers.
In this talk, we’ll cover 10 frustrations of user researchers that come up in projects and teams. We’ll share ways to mitigate them to get better results, and happier researchers.
Significantly increase engagement in your UX workshops by applying Self Determination Theory
We’ve all been there. Finally, the decision-makers are on board and in the room to participate in a high-powered workshop. Energetically, you explain the agenda, go over general housekeeping, and move onto the first activity. Instead of enthusiasm, you’re met with blank stares and a room full of folded arms. Tumbleweeds blow and crickets chirp.
One of the biggest challenges with running UX workshops getting attendees to participate in design activities. How do we motivate people to buckle down and contribute during our small amount of time together?
What drives us to participate? What intrinsically pushes us to want to engage in a task? For over forty years, Dr. Edward Deci and Dr. Richard Ryan have worked with hundreds of psychologists and behavioural specialists to develop Self Determination Theory, the theory of human motivation. Motivation is described by Deci as, “Doing an activity with a sense of interest, enjoyment, and value” (Ryan & Deci, 2017, p. 36). Self Determination Theory identifies three universal human needs that must be met for motivation to occur. These needs are autonomy, competence, and relatedness (Ryan & Deci, 2017; Wehmeyer & Shogren, 2017).
About a year ago I started applying Self Determination Theory to the planning and facilitation of my workshops. I’ve noticed three improvements:
Attendees achieved deeper levels of synthesis More ‘heads-down’ task engagement Increased teamwork This talk will explain how to apply Self Determination Theory’s universal human needs—autonomy, competence, and relatedness—to a workshop setting. Viewers will receive practical tips to improve workshop planning and facilitation.
Ryan, R. M., Deci, E. L. (2017). Self-determination theory: Basic psychological needs in motivation, development, and wellness. New York: Guilford Publishing Wehmeyer, M., Shogren, K. (2017). Development of self-determination through the life-course. Springer: London.10.1007/978-94-024-1042-6.
In recent years, as technology engineering production and release cycles have sped up, user experience (UX) research practices have correspondingly become more Lean to best match those cycles. On top of that, the increasing interest in incorporating user feedback into product development keeps pushing the limit of resources that UX research teams can allocate. Is this seemingly unstoppable appetite for customer insights sustainable? How can UX researchers properly support their product teams’ growing needs? We argue that, to be successful at scaling up Lean UX research, product teams need to become active actors in the process, while researchers need to use their expertise to provide guidance and training as required. As an example of this approach, we describe our experience organizing “Developer Day”, a yearly event aimed at scaling up the Lean UX research practices of Microsoft’s Developer Division. Developer Day has also extended the reach of the division’s UX Research team for impacting decisions about the company’s software developer tools and services.
We're told that making assumptions is dangerous, yet in UX we make them every day. Who our users are, what they want, how they do things.
With so many projects vying for our time it’s inevitable we’ll make assumptions, so how do we minimise the risks?
In this session we’ll:
see how a group of 19th-century philosophers promoted the use of assumptions to make fast decisions take lessons from mountaineering accidents in the UK so you can make safer assumptions learn how to implement processes to check just how risky your subconscious biases really are
Every design decision has the potential to include or exclude customers. Global Research emphasizes the contribution that understanding user diversity makes to informing these decisions, and thus to including as many people as possible. User diversity covers variation in capabilities, needs and aspirations. I will discuss how we use Global Research to prioritize what product teams really need to build well and understand if their designs have relative ease of use that translates well to non-US users. Global Research priorities addresses some of the most challenging problems facing our global users today.
In UX interviews, it can be hard to get good-quality, unbiased insights (without acting like a heartless robot). With most FMCG and entertainment products, this isn’t too hard – but what if your product is related to health and personal issues? How do you remain objective and get valuable data from a user, while still being sensitive to the issues they’re going through – which you’re currently interrogating them about? The typical user story of asking participants to 'imagine' they have a cancer diagnosis just won't work for some projects.
This talk will cover tools and tips for running UX interviews to ensure vulnerable users are treated with dignity, respect, and empathy – while still being a source of valuable insights.
Our challenge: transform mission-critical emergency services alerting infrastructure to a more contemporary approach that works for 55,000 career and volunteer emergency services personnel across three agencies.
Creating a user-centric application isn’t about applying a UX tool or process here and there, but deliberately focusing on what the users need, and employing the right tools and techniques at the right times.
Hear about the challenges we faced when designing one app for three emergency services in Victoria, the tools and processes used and how we created positive change
Think of 8 people that you know. That's the number of people that die by suicide every day in Australia. This is a statistic that needs to change and it is our duty as designers and architects of experiences to address this problem.
During this talk, I want to take the opportunity to:
Present my story to the design community on how I have battled, and continue to work hard to manage my anxiety and depression; Explain what it feels like to deal with anxiety and depression and how I used creativity to produce a beautifully illustrated short story, offering hope and help to all my readers; How working with a multidisciplinary team allowed me to create and craft a product that used human-centred design to create an effective, helpful and informative tool; Present my learnings and proven strategies that anyone can try, learn and practice to improve their mental health.
I had no idea what CLV meant when I got into my first design role. Or ARPU. Or CAC.
In my presentation, I'm not going to discuss every acronym I’ve learnt recently. Instead I’ll cover how I came to learn what all those terms mean and why knowing what they mean, makes me better at what I do.
If you're working in an environment where you'd like to convince 'the boss' to hire more designers, to have a dedicated design systems team or maybe even hire your first UI writer, then I hear you. In fact, maybe you just want to convince a product manager that the thing you want to work on really is the most important thing for your team right now.
I'm going to talk about how to embrace your inner businessperson (it's in there!) and put your design skills to use where they are needed the most. It all starts with being able to understand and communicate with the decision makers in your business.
The world of user experience is confusing and messed up. When you are trying to deal with a UX challenge in your organization, you might as well spin a wheel to see if the answer lies in a mindset, methodology, tool, strategy, community of practice, field of study, or industry.
What is “user experience,” really? It is the feeling people get when they interact with your organization through a digital system. Other “spins” on user experience represent some of the ways people are talking about UX.
In your organization, does “UX” represent a design process, separate team, certified profession, ubiquitous skill, agent of change, or meaningless buzzword? Or is UX all of these at the same time?
Get an introduction to the Spins on User Experience so you can consider which to ignore and which are useful to advance UX in your organization
Mobile Accessibility: Testing native apps and mobile sites for accessibility
Unfortunately, when developing WCAG2, the Working Group did not envision the current world where mobile is almost ubiquitous. For example, on a mobile device there is no continual access to a keyboard (unless someone is using it as an add-on to the device – or using a Blackberry Classic). WCAG2 requires that all content be accessible to the keyboard interface, but it does not require that all content be accessible to a mouse or to a touchscreen user – which is essential on a mobile device. WCAG2.1 does include some mobile accessibility requirements, but doesn’t go far enough. Gian Wild chaired the Mobile Site Sub-Committee to develop a set of Mobile Site Testing Guidelines that are available under Creative Commons. These guidelines are meant to be used in conjunction with WCAG2 (and WCAG2.1) to ensure that sites are accessible to people with disabilities using mobile and tablet devices.
Accessibility is important to all – not everyone using your mobile app, device or wearable will be fully functioning: either because they have a disability or they are simply engaged elsewhere. Gian Wild talks about the things that are essential to avoid when designing mobile apps, devices and wearables to ensure that everyone can use them. She talks about specific mobile accessibility features: pinch zoom, native screen readers, haptic keyboard etc, and system accessibility settings: font size, screen rotation, high contrast etc
UXAUS 2020 DAY 2 Catherine Hills -It’s more than designing shmick features to achieve kaching! by UX Australia
As designers and creatives, we are pretty mindful about everything… except ourselves. In an age where burnout and hustle culture are part of the everyday vernacular, we often click past our warning message in the hopes of discovering the "greener" grass of greatness only to land up in the swamp of struggle.
In our quest to save the world, how can we better use our own design superpowers to help future and fellow designers get out of and recover from burnout?
In this talk, we will explore the cyclical nature of burnout, backed by science and personal stories, putting forth various methods to design our own best conditions and our own "normal".
Research, anecdotes, and advice included. Therapy sold separately
Design systems create an umbrella to to define the future of our design work. But design systems are not the biggest umbrella, so to speak—they exist under broader social, political, and infrastructural systems that affect the parameters, limitations, and variables of our system. Investigating design systems across many verticals, we'll look to see how design systems are impacted by the systems they live within. And beyond the verticals, we'll look to see how broader systems of power and oppression influence the design systems, and ultimately, the users who use the products defined by them. We'll look to see how to assess where our design systems live in broader ecosystems, the challenges inherent, and how to lean into the good, and resist the bad, to ensure we're serving all humans in an equitable and ethical way, maintaining safety and trust.
What incentivises us to behave in a certain way and what acts as a deterrent?
Through a myriad of experiments in his 1930s Harvard Laboratory, B.F Skinner centred his research on tackling this very question. By way of artful manipulations of the environment, Skinner observed and recorded his theory of Behaviourism - documenting how different variables impact behaviour formation and extinction. The stage in which the experiment took place - famously coined the Skinner box - told the worldfirst story of a rat psychologically hooked on food pellets.
Fast forward nearly a century later, and the protagonist amidst a tale of behavioural experimentation is no longer a mere rodent. Carrying Skinner-esque devices in our pockets, the everyday user has become victim to all sorts of covert behavioural manipulation they are not privy to. Despite being heralded as tools with emancipatory potential, software products have graduated with the times - now augmenting old tricks to design new behaviours.
As the custodians of a product’s experience, our remit goes beyond merely alleviating user pain points and creating ‘delightful’ experiences. We design behaviours. And with this, comes a newfound responsibility.
In this talk, we will explore how products leverage tricks from behavioural psychology to keep users ‘hooked’, and how we can use this knowledge to avoid designing with dark patterns and ultimately become better practitioners.
What about us?: Marginalization, Privilege, Power, and Inclusion Today.
I will be speaking to you about the role that privilege plays in our work in the field of UX, its effects on the products, and of course the people who end up using these products. We will also be touching on the idea of decolonizing design especially from the lens of post-colonial Southeast Asia and how we can create better products by reframing our understanding of empathy with an understanding of privilege and marginalization.
As the world of tech now shifts its focus on Asia it’s important that these heavy topics around ethics and inclusion be talked about especially in the diverse landscape. As the world continues to look at the emerging markets of Southeast Asia it’s imperative that we not forget about designing even for the most marginalized communities in our region so we can create a more inclusive and progressive tech and design culture.
The goal for this session is for attendees to understand the role of privilege and how an understanding of privilege and marginalization can help us design more ethical and inclusive products and teams across gender, race, religion, culture, and economic strata. This will also help attendees understand the issues and problems of the UX industry today that they'll encounter in their careers, especially from a Southeast Asian perspective.
Have you ever wondered how you might codesign for a whole industry?
Meld Studios team up with the Department of Planning, Industry and Environment (DPIE) in New South Wales, and Thrive Homes to share how they collaborated with each other across all levels of the building industry, in order to encourage industry change towards more sustainable building. Seated within this, is an exploration of the role Design can play in facilitating this industry-change, and thus how you can utilise your skills to do so as well.
What designers must learn from journalists
When reporting with integrity, journalists have a plethora of unique research techniques and checks and balances to ensure stories are corroborated, unbiased, facts are being reported on and sources are evaluated, just as designers should always carefully evaluate research and data and be conscious of how information might be swayed by biases or blind spots.
Journalists must maintain good relationships and often work together in order to craft a story, and for advocate journalists to create stories that increase knowledge of an issue and effect positive change. Designers can learn a lot from journalism as advocacy, as Buckminster Fuller says, ‘You never change things by fighting the existing reality, to change something build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete’.
Journalists have an uncanny ability to simplify the complex - something that designers need to do every day. They’ve had to learn and adapt fast to survive the digital revolution, and designers are often responsible for guiding people and organisations through this change ensuring no one is left behind.
In this talk you will learn where UX and journalism are crossing over, why it is relevant and what we can learn from each other.
Today Steve is joined by Gian in sunny Queensland, to discuss her upcoming UX Australia 2020 presentation Mobility Accessibility. Gian takes the virtual stage on Day 2 of the conference to discuss her work on mobile site & native app testing guidlines. Find the guidelines at Accesibilityoz.com https://www.accessibilityoz.com/resources/mobile-testing/ Tickets to the conference are available now https://events.humanitix.com/ux-australia-2020
Vinita joins the UX Australia podcast to chat about her upcoming presentation "Burnout: Confessions of a Corporate Design Athlete" and how to recognize and avoid burnout in our professional and personal lives. Tickets to the conference are available now https://events.humanitix.com/ux-australia-2020
Today Steve is joined by Donna Spencer to discuss the two books she is writing in 2020, and her upcoming UX Australia 2020 workshop, Facilitating Design Thinking Workshops. Spots to the workshop are filling fast, purchase a ticket before they run out! https://events.humanitix.com/ux-australia-2020
Woody joins Steve in today's episode to chat about his role working with Batyr, a for-purpose preventative mental health organisation for young people and how this has shaped his upcoming presentation "LIGHT - A Human Centred Design approach to mental health". Catch Woody's presentation at UX Australia 2020 August 25 - 28 https://events.humanitix.com/ux-australia-2020
In today's episode, Mags joins Steve from Melbourne to chat about how the Women in UX program came about, plus her upcoming UX Australia 2020 workshop "Lead by Playing to Your Strengths". The workshop is tailored to women who are looking to use their strengths for leading teams and projects. Tickets to Mag's workshop are available now https://events.humanitix.com/ux-australia-2020
In this episode, Steve is joined by Tatiana Mac to discuss her upcoming presenting "Systems of Systems". Tatiana will be joining us next month from Portland Oregan and will be kicking the conference off on Day 1! Catch Tatiana at UX Australia 2020 by registering a ticket https://events.humanitix.com/ux-australia-2020
Andy Healey joins us from Canada to discuss his upcoming presentation "Assumptions are good for your UX". Andy leads the Checkout UX team at Shopify, an ecommerce platform on which anyone can start, run, and grow a business. Tickets to the conference are available now https://events.humanitix.com/ux-australia-2020
Today Steve & Vinny chat about his upcoming 20 minute presentation "The Accidental Businessperson". Catch Vinny next month at UX Australia 2020. https://events.humanitix.com.au/ux-australia-2020
Jess Berentson Shaw virtually sat down with Conference Director Steve Baty to chat about her upcoming presentation, "Narratives for change: How effective stories help us build new systems". Catch Jess next month at UX Australia 2020, tickets on sale NOW. https://events.humanitix.com/ux-australia-2020
What’s the future of organisations? They’ve evolved a great deal from the industrial revolution to now. I want to take you on an evolutionary journey to learn from the past and experiment our way to the Future. Enabling change is easier than you think, and the key is shifting mindsets from a growth strategy to a company purpose.
The growing trend in the use of take-home design challenges during the recruitment process is reducing the quantity, quality and diversity of applicants.
Even worse than that, its tendency to demand fast and high quality demonstrations of creativity from an individual is feeding misconceptions about UX and causing applicants to break their own code of ethics. “I am not the user!”, “Thou shalt not be the final word!” are just a few UX sacred oaths design challenges force us to ignore.
Tania Nally analyses the unintended consequences of this hiring approach and proposes a way out of the wilderness. Join this session if you’re keen to learn Tania’s recommendations for a multi-tier hiring framework plus alternative interviewing activities for use in the selection process. Grow your confidence in hiring creatives while increasing the quality and diversity of applicants applying for your available positions.
Warning! Choosing to be the only designer driving craft & ops on product delivery trains may lead to extreme loneliness, self-doubt, and identity crises. Do you still want to proceed?
In this talk, I’ll share my journey as that designer: Developing a philosophy for design rigour, exploring leadership without authority, and inadvertently practicing the use of self - an Organisation Development instrument built on awareness and intention to create impact.
Stories & lessons suitable for all ages. (Virtual) hugs offered separately.
Giving feedback and the art of critique are essential elements of design and design leadership. This presentation will connect the ability of leaders to create a productive feedback culture in their teams and their teams ability to foster feedback as part of design critique processes. The presentation will explore:
How can a coaching approach support design leaders in fostering a feedback culture How a feedback culture creates a safe space for collaboration and psychological safety Practical tips, best practice examples and next steps for you to support a feedback culture in your teams
A good mentor can make a huge difference in the personal growth of a designer at any stage in their career. Senior individual contributors are in a good position to mentor others on the team as they're close to the day-to-day and can offer a different perspective compared to a manager. However there is an art to being an effective mentor, and when you're not the manager it can be difficult to build a mentoring relationship and influence someone's situation.
We know that design and innovation require ‘outside-the-box’ thinking, risk-taking, radical collaboration, the questioning of assumptions and a ‘fail-fast-learn-fast’ mentality. However, while we acknowledge these elements of an innovation culture, there’s often an insufficient focus on setting up the ‘foundations’ within a team to make this a reality. This presentation focuses on one critical foundation – psychological safety. It explores the connection between a culture of psychological safety and creating new and valued outputs, and in particular, the role that leaders of design teams play in creating a culture that empowers designers to best exhibit their design skills.
Designers and designer leaders alike are invited to question their own role in creating psychological safety for others. This presentation offers a brief background on the relevant research before outlining what this might look like in a ‘typical’ design team and process. I then provide a starting point for discussing how design leaders can better create spaces that empower their teams to feel safe to voice their opinions and be valued for their diversity – both of which are crucial in establishing a culture of genuine innovation.
One of the most undervalued qualities of a leader is their emotional intelligence and grasp of empathy. My talk will note the in which empathy is overlooked and minimised as a leadership skill, but also give highlighted short narratives that display the ripple effect of an empathetic leader. I hope to be able to foster a sense of (you guessed it) empathy, but also broaden minds on what it means to be a leader, and how leadership can manifest in many different ways for different people.
When ‘design speak’ starts getting in the way of ‘design thinking’, how do you cut through the jargon to make a case for the deeper value of a design mindset?
The language of Human-Centred Design has entered the vocabulary of corporate leadership, but without the accompanying mindset change needed to deliver on it. We hear lots of talk about MVPs, co-design and journey maps, but the end result often looks the same as it always did.
This talk explores the art of visual metaphors and their use in creating an emotionally persuasive case for design. We’ll take you through the development of a thought experiment that got home care executives engaging with design beyond a surface level understanding.
Drawing on 18 years of experience in education and design, we share our reflections and insights on the evolving landscape of work and how sowing the seeds of a creative approach can guide us even in uncertain times... How does this change the way we teach and learn? Can fostering purposeful creativity early on better prepare the next generation of designers for the future?
Cyril Secourgeon - How to successfully onboard into a Design Leader role by UX Australia
Empowering the customer pact for high business impact Growing your product, business or idea is about adding value for your customers and how your offering makes them feel. Building a product is not the same as growing the product.
Strategic growth involves finding your customers, getting to know them, staying engaged with existing customers, and providing sustained value to drive ongoing profitability. We have all probably heard of many growth terminologies from its early days like growth hacking, growth marketing, growth engineering, and so on.
Given the recent uptick in growth design roles as well as leadership for Growth design teams, the industry is maturing and ready for a stronger partnership with user-experience design. Chetana will give a primer on growth-driven design. In her talk, she will share a few critical areas of focus for leaders and teams to help evangelize a customer-centered approach to solving growth design problems.
Design Research - Day 2
We, along with our stakeholders, are all susceptible to many cognitive biases that can affect the outcome of our projects. Bias is unavoidable but it can also quickly derail our projects if they're not recognised and addressed. In this presentation, we will present a number of biases that we have identified in our experiences working with stakeholders across government, academia and industry. We will share tips on how to spot these biases and encourage stakeholders to be aware of these biases when making decisions based on user research. Being able to identify these biases will help you to support better relationships with your stakeholders to create better service and product outcomes.
Design Research - Day 1
So, you want to scale research in your organisation? Here are the biggest and scariest problems you'll almost certainly face and how to overcome them.
The good news is that more and more organisations are embracing research in product teams. Whether it is product managers doing customer interviews or designers doing usability tests, and everything in between – it is now fairly simple to come up with a compelling argument that research is a thing we should probably be doing.
So we move on to the second generation question. How do we scale this user centred behaviour?
Often the answer is designers and product managers do the research. This is often known as ‘democratising research’.
This sounds sensible, but there are some fairly structural issues in how we work that can undermine our best intentions. At best, it can render our research wasteful and inefficient, and at worst it can introduce significant risks in the decision making that our teams make.
In this talk we’ll cover how these dysfunctions come into being, what risks they pose and what we can do to overcome them.
Design Research - Day 1
Everyone’s talking about the need for a research repository. Several companies have built their own solutions internally including Uber’s Kaleidoscope, WeWork’s Polaris, and Microsoft’s Human Insights Library. In this talk, I'll touch on the pain points repositories try to solve and explore five principles to keep in mind for creating a successful research repository in your organization.
Design Research - Day 1
Company conferences are a great place to meet customers, but is it actually possible to conduct research there? Every year, Atlassian hosts a conference with thousands of attendees. I’ll share our journey of making the most out of this chaotic environment, using playful, tactile activities. Even if a conference isn't in your future, this talk will inspire you to engage research participants in creative new ways.
Design Research - Day 2
Even though it’s been around for a few decades, Laser Tattoo Removal is a health service still in its infancy. No company has dominated the market in the USA. Tobias were invited to conduct research to inform the design of a successful service that could rapidly scale. This has been a fantastic project, seeing our team taking an anthropological approach to the point of getting tattoos! In this presentation we’ll share some lessons learned as we conducted this International research project with stakeholders, consumers, clinic staff and artists.
Design Research - Day 2
How do you react to a request to deliver a research project that involves conducting 330 interviews, each 90 minutes in duration, including participant recruitment, analysis and reporting within roughly a 4-5 week timeframe? The client is a ubiquitous tech company headquartered in Seattle, you'll be working with a partner replicating your efforts in the USA, oh and you'll also be scaling your team of 6 up to 16, with 2-3 weeks lead time, in order to deliver the project. You say yes and hope like hell you can pull it off!
Design Research - Day 2
We know the best practice interviewing techniques, but we have all walked out of a session demoralised by the lack of deep conversation we hoped for.
In his talk Rohan Irvine will talk about participant archetypes to help you identify common behaviours, adapt your interviewing style in the moment and uncover meaningful insights from every participant.
Design Research - Day 2
Learn how three seasoned qualitative researchers designed a program of work that lives on at Atlassian.
Discover how we sustained participant-led conversations for three weeks to six months+ across the globe, working together with an enthusiastic team of internal stakeholders. We will share what we learned, the tools we loved and how we grappled with the challenge of productively analysing and managing hours and hours of video data.
Design Research - Day 1
Power differentials between researchers and the researched are felt strongly by marginalised people and communities. Peer-to-peer research is gaining traction in social design research to restore power balances and tap into people with lived experience who are eager to be co-producers of their destinies.
Design Research - Day 2
Human-centred design focuses on designing something that is useful, usable and engaging for the user - but have you ever experienced designing exactly that, yet users were not able to change their behaviour for the solution to be successful? That’s where Behavioural Design can come in. Designing for a change in behaviour uses interventions to impact behaviour in a way that’s helpful for the target user.
Design Research - Day 2
The field of public health offers a rich set of tools for exploring and defining design challenges and presents critical questions to address when developing solutions. As we are tasked with designing within increasingly complex systems, approaching our work using public health frameworks can push us to focus greater attention on structural and contextual factors that shape how and why people behave in certain ways.
During this talk, we’ll explore key public health principles and methods and ways you can bring a public health lens to the full design research process from project scoping and planning through sharing findings.
Design Research - Day 1
More and more organisations realise that strong design teams and robust UX research practice are critical for success. However, it is a challenge to shift existing org structures, mindsets and workflows to scale design and research activities. In this talk, Chris and Benson will share the key insights from the research on UX Research practices and how to best operationalise and scale your research team to maximise efficiency and support product strategy.
Design Research - Day 1
Hearing and sharing the voices of lived experience is critical when designing interventions that have impact. Are you interested in social innovation and designing for social outcomes and want some pointers on conducting research with vulnerable people? Learn about some common pitfalls, approaches and things you need to consider when designing and conducting research, so that you can best support the design and delivery of initiatives that matter.
Design Research Day 1
We're spending the first day of the conference getting 30 people to make and test prototypes. In this talk we'll share with you what we learnt from that experience. We don't know what that is yet! But we're pretty sure there'll be something about continuing to get insight from users - prototyping is not just about finding out if your ideas work.
UXAUS2019 Day 1- Celso Borges & Libi Cunnington- In this talk, Libbi and Celso will be speaking about trauma-informed design and the role it played in their journey in developing Sunny, an app that uses the power of storytelling to help women with intellectual disability recognise and respond to violence and abuse.
As more services are digitised and access to real people becomes increasingly limited, it will be more important than ever to design products and systems for those hardest to reach.
We need to see more organisations acknowledge that design must go beyond basic adherence to accessibility standards and focus on truly understanding how their audiences may be impacted by the psychological effects of trauma, cognitive impairment, equity of access and unconscious and conscious biases.
In this 20 minute talk, Libbi and Celso will be speaking about how the trauma-informed design principles (Safety, Trustworthiness, Choice, Collaboration and Empowerment) were used to guide them through the process of developing the 1800RESPECT Sunny app. From how interviews were conducted and setup to avoid retraumatisation, to the multiple formats of communication, workshops and presentations that promoted inclusivity. The Sunny app was completely co-designed with a group of women that have an intellectual and/or physical disability and may have previously experienced violence or abuse.
These women (EAG - Expert Advisory Group) and their indispensable contributions are what makes Sunny one of the best projects we have ever worked on. It has been an amazing journey, one filled with tears, joy and lifetime learnings, as we strive to help women with intellectual disability recognise and respond to violence and abuse.
Introducing, Sunny.
UXAUS2019 Day 2 Meld Studios and Norcott Innovation team up to share their experiences of using respectful curiosity as a tool to co-design creative solutions alongside people with disabilities.
Through our experience, some people (including us) can feel apprehensive to co-design alongside people with disabilities because our lived experiences are perceived to be far from similar. We share why working with people with disabilities should be considered normal practice, not as a ‘bonus’ or a ‘great opportunity’.
We’ll explore:
who are we building inclusion with and for; mistakes we’ve made along the way (and why these are so important… and normal); share practical recommendations for recruiting and conducting user research; all while busting some good ol’ assumptions (you know the ones that lead us astray…)
UXAUS2019 Day 2- Yoel Sumitro Taking a half-done car, driving it at breakneck speed, and completing the assembly at the same time is the 134 design talents from Bukalapak product design team’s lived reality. Seems impossible! But the team has done just that: going from scrappy underdogs to thought leaders within the company in a matter of one year, all while continuing to output market-leading products despite significant obstacles like an education system in Indonesia that doesn’t yet have a sufficient focus on design. How was this accomplished? By leveraging design thinking and applying it to the problems we faced! Following the phases from empathising and identifying through to prototyping and testing, we created lasting structural solutions to key challenges such as designer burnout, encouraging critical feedback, closing the skills gap, optimising value-add activities, and ensuring employee growth and happiness. In this presentation we’ll walk you through our story, how we faced these challenges, the solutions we developed that have set us up for future success.
UXAUS2019 Day 1 Amazon's Alexa is popular... very popular. In fact, in 2017 Alexa rejected more than 1 million marriage proposals, a 400% increase over the prior year. From Pygmalion to Pinocchio we humans are wired to convert things into people. Let's step back from the AI hype, lay down on the couch, and ask some tough questions... "tell me about your smart speaker...”.
UXAUS2019 Day 2 Nearly every day we hear of new privacy concerns related to technology. The implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation in Europe has brought the idea of Privacy By Design to the forefront of many designer's minds. Traditionally privacy has been defined as control, with greater control seen as a good thing. However, the traditional view of privacy as control may prove limiting in a society driven by data. This talk will go on a journey through the many dimensions of privacy, from the legal view of privacy to the norms and values that drive decision-making around privacy. Using examples from health care, and using My Health Record as a case study, we will explore how we can go beyond privacy as control.
UXAUS2019 Day 2 How Experience Design [xD] is the new everything.
Tea Uglow spent 15 years designing experiments for digital experiences in 'real' reality at Google's Creative Lab - often with cultural orgs like the Royal Ballet, PunchDrunk, NASA, SBS, Penguin, and British Museum. Tea explains how our own cognition of reality is becoming more important as we move past the era of mobile UX and into a world where our interaction with information starts as we walk through the door.
the human brain is the cleverest machine we have understanding sensory patterns and cognitive filters how ML erases the weird and the wonderful how to work with culture as a sandbox. “UX spent 30 years designing X as a function limited by form. Now, form is ‘reality’, we get to redefine the whole relationship. Ideally, human-first.”
Breaks down as using computers to enhance not replace our abilities:
orientation in space (the importance of ears) xD & aperture effects (why dramaturgy matters) confronting AI bias at a Design level (data blindspots) lateral creativity (out of the left field) repurposing as scale (stealing ideas)
UXAUS2019 Day 1 Our brains create shortcuts when we make decisions and choices. This can have an impact on any phase of the design process, from research to experience design. This short talk highlights some of the key cognitive biases and ways to mitigate their influence.
UXAUS2019 Day 2
When I came to Australia 4 years ago speaking no English at all, I had to start from scratch as a designer. Learning to communicate again taught me a few lessons about humans, design and inclusion that I was not expecting.
UXAUS2019 Day 2 Over the long-term, conversation-driven products are on a trajectory to be more disruptive than mobile products, in ways both good and perhaps not so good. Conversation is a key marker of how we identify humanness, and technology is beginning to be capable of mimicking it. For our part as designers, how do the product approaches need to evolve and guide the innovations we need? Phillip will break down the anatomies of conversational products and interfaces - outlining the design opportunities we have and how to aim for success that includes both people and business.
UXAUS2019 Day 1 Thank God for rules. Without the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, the web would be an even messier place.
Whether designing services or digital products, we are faced daily with different layers of rules coming from industry regulations, frameworks, legal teams, partners, vendors, the conveniently called "requirements" and sometimes our very selves.
Looking at concrete examples from 5 areas of design, we will ask ourselves why, when and how rules should be questioned in product strategy, ways of working, UX methods, interface design as well as in the product delivery cycle.
Time to bust the famous "We've always done it that way".
UXAUS2019 Day 1 From sunset to sunrise. How Australia Post is empowering e-commerce by sunsetting legacy systems to create a bright future for parcel sending.
Get the low-down on how Australia Post has empowered e-commerce through the creation of a single online parcel sending application, designed to replace 20 complex legacy systems.
Despite challenges and compromises, the team delivered a seamless, satisfying experience for Australia Post merchants, providing genuine benefits to business and operations. Hear direct from the Product Manager about what worked, what didn’t and what the team would do differently next time.
The presentation will focus on dealing with complex businesses, products and systems with key insights into research, influencing the business, finding opportunities and thriving in a dynamic industry where the inconsistency is the only constant. You’ll walk away with strategic tips and tricks including understanding your organisation, selling better, stepping up in your role and the perils of perfection.
These may be applied to experiences of any scale, in diverse organisations and industries.
UXAUS2019 Day 2 As Australians, we are experiencing a growing scale of vulnerability in Australia and have a big trust problem. Organisations are working to rebuild ethical and transparent services that are customer first. We, as designers, are more often than not designing for vulnerable customers and know someone that has experienced trauma in our lives.
This talk will provide attendees with insights, tools and techniques for how to design with, not for, vulnerable customers with lived experience of trauma and disability.
We will cover two key topics: 1. It’s one thing to identify vulnerable customers, but we need to know how and when is appropriate to act. 2. Co-designing with customers who have lived experience is a human right, yet emotionally complex.
Based on personal experiences, throughout this talk, we will also be honest about the importance of self-care when dealing with the “dark side” of human centred design given the subject matter.
UXAUS 2019 Day 1 Guide me, but don’t tell me what to do. This is what we hear from young people. NextStep is a free ReachOut product designed to help 18-25 year old’s going through a tough time. The web app helps young people identify their challenge, narrow down to a single area of focus and generate a recommendation to take a next step that is personal enough to be meaningful in times of distress.
The internet affords young people significant opportunities to be self-directed, which can be beneficial for bypassing stigma, financial barriers and even literacy barriers associated with mental health challenges. But the internet can be an overwhelming place to be, and so are our minds when we’re in moderate or high distress. Additionally, when a young person is questioning something’s wrong, but I’m not sure what they often don’t know what they are looking for online, and want to be guided to appropriate resources they can access anonymously.
This talk focuses on how we reconcile the polarity of building a digital experience for young people with mental health challenges who present in distress:
- How we use multiple data sources to derive insights for product development including behavioural data, UX testing feedback and co-design qualitative insights
- Baking in the rigour of an evidence-based approach within the sector into the technical logics that underpin the web app to mitigate potential risk or harm to young people
- How we deliver on design principles - upfront, practical, flexible and visual - to ensure that we engage young people in a meaningful way
- How we reconcile the need for interactivity and engagement without distracting or diminishing the severity of a young person presenting in high distress by drawing from a duty of care framework
- How we ensure the right language is used to assist young people with problem recognition without being diagnostic
UXAUS2019 Day 1 An exploration of how our brains are forming patterns in the real world and the cross over they have into our digital products.
We’ll look at real examples of how an individuals' motivations, emotions, and stories related to their experience in achieving a particular goal online.
How the focus and diffuse modes of thinking can help organisations realise weaknesses and gaps between a persons' perceptions and motivations vs. the business and design requirements.
Benefits include an in-depth understanding of the way we support people - not just ‘users' and adapt existing products, services, or processes to particular behavioural situations.
UXAUS2019 Day 1 What happens when you try to upskill designers in business basics and business leaders in design thinking? Is it possible? Does it work? Join me on my journey where I share my learnings from this experiment.
UXAUS2019 Day 2 Can’t we just publish stuff? No. No, you can’t. Find out why pumping out content is so damn appealing — and how we can prise clients fingers off the button that says publish.
It’s easy, it’s reassuring, and we need to do better. This is the start of a conversation about ways of reframing how we deliver content, shifting client’s thinking to a more user-centred model, and prising their fingers off the button that says ‘publish.’
UXAUS2019 Day 1 Having to put charts into wireframes can be cumbersome. If you ever had to design a dashboard or a report you might have faced challenges such as: what data to show and how to define useful metrics; how to best communicate your low level ideas with clients; what tools to use to create charts; whether to design in low or high fidelity; how to maintain a consistent visual style; or when and how to incorporate real and fake data.
There are indeed many ways to go here. Approaches include creating charts within your favourite wireframe environment; using hand drawn sketches as placeholders, importing visuals created with tools such as Excel, or building a prototype using code. It all gets more complicated when you go beyond your usual line and bar chart and enter the realm of designing for highly bespoke and interactive exploratory interfaces.
As UX designer at a data visualisation studio, Martin is constantly working with data-driven wireframes. In this presentation, he will shed light onto possible obstacles and give a variety of solutions on how to overcome them. He will bring real examples from many of the studio's projects and give insights on their creative process along with practical tips on how the design team deals with data and charts when prototyping.
UXAUS2019 Day 2 In this talk, I will be discussing how Designers and Developers can work together to get ideas into their customer's hands as quickly as possible so that they can be used, measured and improved. Product testing will let you know if your customers 'can' use your product, but it will not tell you if they 'will' use your product. These two things are very different. We need to get ideas out quickly and start monitoring and measuring the outcomes.
Techniques like 'Dual Track Delivery' and 'Designing your backlog' can help multi-capability teams get ideas into the live environment quickly and I will be discussing how they work and the risks you need to be aware of.
UXAUS2019 Day 2 With interactive experiences increasingly becoming automated, algorithmically optimized, and driven by artificial intelligence, how do we ensure that we don't accidentally create absurd, out-of-proportion, or even harmful interactions? How can we ensure, in other words, that the experiences we create for humans are as meaningful as possible? As Kate O'Neill, author of Tech Humanist, points out, it's critically important that we do what we can to make our work matter, because our every design decision has a chance of reaching massive scale. Kate will examine how to bring meaning to even the smallest design decisions, to every interaction and every system, and ultimately, through this focus, how to bring more meaning to our work.
UXAUS2019 Day 2 How would you illustrate the concept of ‘culture design’? What about ‘designing at scale’, ‘disability design’ or ‘UX journalism’?
Over the past year, Justin Cheong has sketched over 60+ header illustrations for Adobe’s Thinking Design blog, a place of stories and interviews with leading design practitioners and pioneers including Liz Jackson, Joe Macleod, Mike Monteiro and Don Norman. The job seems simple: Read an article, then produce an illustration. But is it really that straightforward?
Join Justin for a behind-the-scenes view into the process of editorial illustration.
UXAUS2019 Day 1 The Victorian Mental Health Tribunal deals with people in the midst of profound crisis. The Tribunal wants to lift participation rates in their hearings and processes because they know that it improves patient outcomes.
But the patients at the centre of the hearings are suffering from severe mental illnesses. Further, they often being held, against their will and for their own protection, in locked wards, with little access to phones or technology.
Our job was to understand the needs of patients then redesign the Tribunal website around these needs. We needed to establish an effective role for the website play in this context of a mental health crisis.
Our talk focuses on how we conducted a human-centric design process given the special context surrounding those with profound mental illness:
How to recruit for such a sensitive demographic How to compassionately interview this demographic and their families How to observe Tribunal hearings and the interactions between patients, their treating teams and the Tribunal members Transitioning these observations into actionable and agreed insights with the MHT executive Co-design of a greatly simplified content solution based on our research The need to go beyond the web channel
UXAUS2019 Day 2 The ills of consumption have a common source - endings. We design rich, emotional and meaningful experiences to onboard the consumer to a product or service. But, in contrast, the off-boarding of a consumer experience is barren of emotion and meaning.
Researching this theme over the last few years revealed a far more profound story. Its origins deep in hundreds of years of social history, with closer ties to religion and death than to business.
This presentation takes the audience through a remarkable story of why consumer endings have been distanced in the customer lifecycle, and why endings have the potential to be a business differentiator of the future.
The talk will reveal how shards of the consumer experience break lacking a coherent ending. It will provide examples of how this can be avoided and the improvements designers can make. Techniques and approaches will be shared that aid discussion, design and delivery of endings for consumer experiences.
UXAUS2019 Day 1- Harry Mann, Sophie Goodman, Grace Turtle Polifroni & Mitch Cullen
Are we truly designing experiences that meet our user’s needs?
Recently, many digital experiences have been held to account for negatively impacting the people they are designed to serve. Optimising for engagement has created addictive, unhealthy behaviours, conversion optimisation has in some cases resulted in ‘dark patterns’ which seek to deceive users and digital automation now threatens people’s livelihoods. Leading technology companies must now confront the implications of the products and services they create on people and society, and many are introducing tools to improve the wellbeing of their users. But there is still a long way to go.
We believe ethical design is critical to our ongoing success as UX practitioners. We are positioned to influence decision makers in regards to future experiences and measures of success. Our challenge is to shape our design approach in a way which optimises the wellbeing of the end user and considers the long-term impact over short term utility.
To discuss this topic we’ve brought together a panel of diverse design leaders, specialised in digital product and service design, digital delivery, applied anthropology and design futuring. Our panel will share their perspectives on the role of ethics in design as well as practical ways to introduce ethical decision making into designing and delivering digital experiences. We will then open up the panel and allow audience members to participate in the discussion by submitting questions anonymously using their phones.
UXAUS2019 Day 1 Bite-sized activism for STREAT! Helping reduce our environmental footprint collectively How do you massage small, discrete chunks of volunteer time into a program that creates something bigger than the sum parts? That’s the question we asked ourselves when we set up a Human Centred Design (HCD) community volunteer framework to support STREAT’s Planet Plan knowing that many people want to volunteer time to something that serves a higher purpose but has limited time available to commit.
STREAT is a hospitality-based social enterprise that provides supported vocational training and holistic personal support to young people aged 16-24 who really need a hand. While we are working on maximising our social footprint we’re also working hard to minimise our environmental footprint as part of an ambitious Planet Plan!
In this talk, we’ll share our “bite sized” volunteer framework and how we’ve been applying it to formalise a Planet Plan and for the first time to help solve a challenge: How to recycle, reduce and eliminate single cup, bottle and can use through a Human Centred Design and product innovation approach. For this challenge we’ve been working with universities, people with available volunteer days and individual HCD practitioners who have a few hours they can contribute. We’ll share what’s gone well in modifying traditional HCD activities and the things we want to improve on. We'll also tell you what happens when you morph a design "sprint" into a "relay". And, we’ll share some of the interventions and prototypes we’ve come up with including behavioural design nudges, product innovation and closed systems for re-usable coffee cups.
UXAUS2019 Day 1 Optimal content experience is essential for optimal user experience.
Over 15 years as a content strategist, Elle Geraghty has identified seven core problems that prevent organisations from nailing their content experience. In this talk, you will hear what those problems are, with concrete examples of how you can start to tackle them.
Content, including text, photographs, videos, infographics, illustrations and voice scripts, are the core of any digital experience. Learn how to get them right.
UXAUS2019 Day 2 Ever wonder why you find yourself procrastinating and not staying focused? Why you lose interest in projects quickly? There is a perfectly good reason for this and it can be explained by the failure cycle.
We’ve all experienced it - one week you’re all excited about a new idea or project and then the next your motivation and enthusiasm have disappeared. In this short talk we will explore why this happens and how you can overcome it.
You’ll walk away from this talk with:
- An introduction to the failure cycle and why it happens
- An understanding of how the failure cycle may appear in your life
- A way to overcome the failure cycle in your life
UXAUS2019 Day 1 Think of a hammer. Think of a steam shovel. Think of a computer. Each of these is a tool a person can use to get things done. But using a tool isn’t the only way to do things. In the age of narrow artificial intelligence, we can hand things off to an agent and have it do the thing. Designing a tool for you to use is really different than designing the AI that does the work for you. And if you only know how to design hammers or even just computers, well, you’re behind. Come hear Chris Noessel introduce these new kinds of technologies, discuss what they can mean for your users, and share the models by which you can design for them. Catch up…to agentive tech.
UXAUS2019 D2 Design and designers should be able to make sense of change and direct their skills and knowledge to create multiple alternative futures. In order to design futures-focused products and services in a continuously changing world, designers need some understanding of futures thinking.
In this presentation, you will get an introduction to futures thinking and learn deeply how the decisions you make affect the worlds we will experience in years to come. You’ll be challenged to consider how you make a difference today and the kind of legacy you leave for future generations.
UXAUS2019 Day 1 Big Tech, with its billion-dollar unicorns, has robbed us of the potential of the Internet. Fueled by the extreme shortsightedness and greed of venture capital and startups, the utopic vision of a decentralised and democratic commons has morphed into the dystopic autocracy of Silicon Valley panopticons that we call surveillance capitalism. This status quo violates our human rights, threatens our democracies, and casts doubt on the integrity of personhood itself.
Aral Balkan is a designer and programmer who has been making things with computers for the past 35 years. He’s spent the last five of those working on the problem of technologically regulating the abuses of surveillance capitalism as well as designing freedom-respecting alternatives to it. In this talk, he presents his latest thinking on how we can create alternatives to surveillance capitalism that cannot be co-opted. His suggestion is simple: Think small.
UXAUS2019 Day 1 The Australian Government’s Digital Service Standard is not just for improving citizen experiences. It can also be applied to internal service delivery, increasing productivity and engagement among public sector workforces. Learn about how we applied the Digital Service Standard to transform the staff experience using human resource systems.
UXAUS2019 DAY 1 AI-generated and mixed realities are blurring the boundaries of “truth” and challenging how we value it. Synthetic Realities have reached new heights of sophistication, sparking controversy, and also fascination, about its creative possibilities.
Customers will increasingly expect brands to meet them halfway to supplement the realities they desire. Next, they will expect reality to adapt to them in real time without any conscious request. And the role of designers will be to set the stage on which these experiences happen, often curating AI systems rather than designing themselves.
UX practitioners face the double task of designing the interfaces to these new products, tools and services as well as seeing design for digital disrupted as radically as the invention of Photoshop and desktop publishing did three decades ago. If anyone can summon up an entirely generated image or an interface just by speaking its description, what is the future role of the designer?
The mixture of fear and fascination of the power of synthetic media is understandable but wrongly frames its future trajectory. This talk takes a view on synthetic realities not as something brand new, but the latest iteration of a long history of re-defining truth and reality through media manipulation.
Using visually compelling examples from the latest research and work in synthetic and generated media and charting their convergence, we'll see just how quickly they will be absorbed by culture, radically shake-up the fields of design, advertising and marketing in a very short time-frame, and transform the role of future designers and creatives. It raises important questions of design, ethics, and craft that the UX and broader design community will have to find answers to pretty damn quickly.
UXAUS2019 DAY 1 It started with “how can we get our participants more engaged?” and in the process of throwing out ideas, we landed on a board game. And something exciting happened. Come along to hear about how you can use simple game elements to drive more creativity and fun in your ideation sessions – for better solutions!
UX AUSTRALIA 2018 INTERVIEW WITH ZOE ROSE ON DISABILITY AS A DRIVER OF INNOVATION IN UX by UX Australia
UX AUSTRALIA 2018 INTERVIEW WITH BILL DEROUCHEY ON DESIGN CAREERS IN THE SCIENCE FICTION FUTURE by UX Australia
UX AUSTRALIA 2018 INTERVIEW WITH CORNELIUS RACHIERU ON MULT - CHANNEL ECOSYSTEMS by UX Australia
UX AUSTRALIA 2018 INTERVIEW WITH FARAI MADZIMA ON CULTURAL BIAS IN DESIGN by UX Australia
UX AUSTRALIA 2018 INTERVIEW WITH ASH DONALDSON ON WHY HEALTHCARE IS SICK by UX Australia
UX AUSTRALIA 2018 INTERVIEW WITH EVA - LOTTA LAMM ON SKETCHING WITH CLARITY by UX Australia
UX AUSTRALIA 2018 INTERVIEW WITH GORDON MCNENNEY ON CONTEXT - SENSITIVE HELP by UX Australia
UX AUSTRALIA 2018 INTERVIEW WITH STEVE PORTIGAL ON USER RESEARCH AND INTERVIEWING USERS by UX Australia
UX AUSTRALIA 2018 INTERVIEW WITH ELENA SANCHEZ ON RUNNING MORE EFFECTIVE STAKEHOLDER WORKSHOPS by UX Australia
Listen to an interview with Steve Baty on what we can expect from UX Australia conference 2018.
Hear what participants enjoyed about attending the UX Australia 2018 workshops in Melbourne.
From tactical to strategic - how design research can drive the strategy of a $2bn company by UX Australia
From little things big things grow – Scaling a design research practice by UX Australia
Putting customers on the radar: Focusing on customers to drive value and impact by UX Australia
Bad design is bad for your health: Why data visualization details matter by UX Australia
With great power comes great responsibility: A quest to consciously do good by UX Australia
Flinders Street Station: A journey to implement UX in wayfinding and customer information by UX Australia
Fit and finish: The importance of presentation value to UX deliverables by UX Australia
Helping participants actually participate! Lessons learned from diary studies by UX Australia
Your corporate job doesn’t need to suck: A case study for inspiring creativity and innovation at IBM by UX Australia
Designing under true pretences: How to gain backing for what needs doing by UX Australia
Managing the challenges of introducing user research - anecdotes from a mobile game studio by UX Australia
Design research with young people takes courage, creativity and plenty of pizza. Being prepared, authentic and sensitive to the teenage brain is essential.
ReachOut Australia and Redrollers Research have collaborated on many projects over the past 7 years and regularly share learnings in between projects. In this presentation, we’ll draw on our design research experience from multiple projects working with young people on the topic of their everyday lives, mental health and wellbeing. We’ll share our successes and failures, and the lessons we’ve learned along the way.
We will walk you through 7 key themes: sharing stories; methods; activities and materials.
Four and Twenty Pi: A recipe for adapting service design to a government context by UX Australia
Designing for life-changing impact: From bottled water to ending world poverty by UX Australia
Irrational thinking: Using behavioural economics principles in UX projects by UX Australia
How mobile phones have changed New Zealanders’ lives and why it matters by UX Australia
Designing an online tool to improve the way young people navigate the mental health system by UX Australia
Ethnographic methods don’t make an ethnographer: Looking past the quotes by UX Australia
The researcher’s blind spot: 6 cognitive biases we shouldn’t ignore in research by UX Australia
Under the influence: Exploring dark patterns & the power of persuasive design by UX Australia
The craft of design leadership: War stories from design firms, startups, and big companies by UX Australia
Service re-design of the State Library of Victoria: Approaches and lessons learned by UX Australia
What can social sciences tell us about designing for the internet of things (IOT)? by UX Australia
Moving the digital frontier: Transforming a large enterprise to be customer centric by UX Australia
The what, why and how of achieving an accessibility friendly organisation by UX Australia
Talking to stakeholders: 13 communication anti-patterns that block good ideas by UX Australia
Spreading the love: Industrialisation of common sense in a large organisation by UX Australia
The conference keynote was given by Greg Petroff, Chief Experience Officer at GE Software and General Manager of GE’s User Experience Center of Excellence.