Learning | Fiona MacNeill | Macknowlogist

UX Brighton 2022 - 4th November

Sun, 13 Nov 2022 18:21:29 +0100

The brilliant return of UX Brighton

UX Brighton, a mainstay of the Brighton UX community returned on 4th of November after a 2-year hiatus. This year’s event focused on UX and Product Management. I have been reflecting on this intersection both personally and professionally of late and outline my thoughts below. Some thoughts are fledgling, some are fully formed, some I may revisit, some I may abandon later.

According to one of my sketchbooks 2020 and 2021 never happened.

The level of a problem

Products solve customer’s problems or as I prefer to term it products provide a means for customers to get the thing that they want to do, done (props to as this is blatantly inspired by Jobs-to-be-Done). So a product should represent an innovation in that it makes that thing they want to do quicker, or easier, or safer, or cheaper, or some combination of the former. But what about once that product exists? It needs to mature and respond to the way the customers change, their contexts change, or the thing that they are trying to do change. These are internal problems for the product to address within itself so that it might carry on solving the high-level problem for the most customers and also gain new customers.

When a product stops solving a problem

I am in the process of moving away from Evernote. As a committed customer for many years it used to be my brain outside my brain. Was it the lack of new features that pushed me away? No, although I am intrigued by the promise of and interconnection between thoughts and ideas, I was still mostly happy with it. Ultimately, what pushed me away were the little cracks in functionality; the five times duplicated note, the slow load times, the indexing failures. My trust was broken, just like an unreliable human relationship it was the little things which set off alarm bells. As a seasoned technologist, these tell-tale signs of an unloved product get me packing my bags. To the point where my bags are packed before I’ll even adopt a product these days (shakes head at proprietary file formats). No escape plan, no deal. This is what comes from years of being the person charged with saving other people’s data.

Defining a problem

Perhaps it would be more accurate to say defining the definition of a product-problem. In UX a problem might be at a micro level as in a specific process or interaction is failing, e.g., I cannot buy the replacement fridge-freezer I need due to an issue with one part of the payment workflow on a popular UK-based vendor’s website (true story). At a product level, if that website were a product and it’s primary purpose was to enable the successful sale of fridges then that product has failed. So UX problems can be product problems. So, is it more about the lens by which we see these problems? Could it be that the product manager owns a collection of problems across the product’s development cycle and the UXer owns their problems as a subset of that. I think that is how I interpret it as someone outside that particular domain, yet also identifying with it. My products are learning experiences, when they are successful they result in the subsequent adoption of desired behaviours. If the means of product delivery in terms of suitability, usability, accessibility, availability, reliability, and robustness fails, then my product also fails.

Defining a collection of problems

Problems do not exist in a vacuum and are often symptomatic of bigger issues. So, acknowledging the breadth and distribution of problems and then identifying which are the most important and impactful to address is essential. This theme arose in both Janna Bastow’s and Matt LeMay’s talks. Deciding what is most important relies on research and analysis based on having access to a variety of information sources.

It is also clear that a collection of problems derive from and are influenced by multiple domains within a business. So this is where the connections between business strategy, product strategy, and UX strategy converge. Jaime Levy’s excellent book on was referenced by speaker, Alison Rawlings. A profoundly influential book during my years in graduate school. This was where I learned about business research staples such as competitor analyses, a method I still use frequently today.

How did someone else solve this problem? Was the outcome a new product, or a collection of approaches working alongside a product (more like a service)?

Defining plans to address each problem in your collection

This is where it all gets a bit Pokemon, but then consider for a moment an epic boss-style battle in Pokemon or any other strategy-based game. You have a collection of problems; your opponents, the posse of pokémon. You have a bunch of constraints; the skills that your pokémon have, and those skills in comparison to your opponent’s skills. Your battle strategy should reflect that nuance of playing to the strengths of your pokémon or the weaknesses of your opponent’s pokémon. There is probably a reason why the word strategy conjures up pictures in my mind of mustachioed people in a room playing a gigantic game of Risk. It is complex, it is messy, and very few people have a holistic viewpoint, preferring to stick to their own area of the board. Then add to all of this chance and the inevitable risk that brings; the roll of the dice, the rogue influence of a powerful person, a pandemic.

Defining a strategy as a collection of plans

A strategy attempts to understand problems, barriers, constraints, context and external influencing factors and create a framework for plans, and by extension a rationale for decisions. As Matt LeMay noted, your goals will gain clarity if you can explain the reasons for trade-offs.

Making decisions and actioning plans

To expand on the above further, I feel that strategy can be a framework or container for plans, plans are the catalyst for actions, and actions are reliant on decisions. So my key take away from speakers Lucy Spence and Alison Rawlings was the need for clarity in decision making. Good decisions, or at least a decision of best-fit, are research and data informed. Decisions should also be reflected upon after they are made. As an approach to this Spence shared statements that she uses to bring transparency to her decision making:

Knowing the outcome, I would make the same decision again
Knowing the outcome, I would make a different decision today
I would use the same process to solve the problem again
I would use a different process if I were doing this again

Hmmm the little thought experiment with Evernote below could help me learn something as it sits in the bottom-right quadrant of this decision matrix.

My decision to use Evernote back in 2013

Let’s take a look at decision to adopt the Evernote product in the first place, perhaps I will gain further clarity…

Selected statement:
Knowing the outcome, I would make a different decision today

Why?

Because my expectations have shifted and I have changed since I adopted Evernote. It is also proving to be quite a lengthy process to get my notes out intact¹.

How have you changed?

Well, I’m much more into coding than I was back in 2013. I suppose I want a note taking app a bit more like GitHub with tagging and version control.

It sounds like the context has changed…

My expectations have changed because the technology landscape has changed. But my skills and knowledge in coding were the catalyst for my increased awareness of the broader technology landscape.

Selected statement:
I would use a different process if I were doing this again.

Why?

Because my requirements have changed. The issues with functionality have probably just pushed the matter forward.

A ha! There we are getting to the truth of the issue, but like any human decision it isn’t clear cut. I had outgrown the product and my trust was degraded, the combination of both led to a level of inconvenience so as to hasten my move.

Recognising when your plans are not working and correcting the course

As noted by speaker Janna Bastow, this might manifest as solving too many problems for a small number of influential people, at the expense of solving the biggest problems for the most people. Bastow advocated splitting up this kind of custom or agency-style work from the product work. This is an interesting idea as it is clear to me throughout my career that large scale projects have often suffered at the expense of the small ones. While many small projects which seem doable on paper, ultimately they eat up the time which should be dedicated to larger ones. Lest us not forgot that having many smaller projects on the go calls for the need to routinely context-switch which consumes more mental energy as a matter of course. The popularity of methods such as Sprints, indicate this need for placemaking for mental space-making.

To conclude

To conclude, it is clear to me that when you own a product, it is always on show. What I mean by that is that as long as a product fulfills the core need then it will be loved and largely ignored, but when the cracks appear and that situation is compounded by eager competitors or lack of innovation then abandonment feels more enticing. I always had respect for product managers, now I have even more.

Random closing thought

Was Captain Kirk engaging in metacognition when he took the test? If you take the scenario at face value he cheated at the test. However, was Kirk considering this problem-space of the Kobayashi Maru at a philosophical level? Kirk refused to accept that the solution was predetermined and by researching the situation found an alternative. This alternative reflected his personal ethos and values. These values persisted throughout his career, he did not accept the no-win scenario². There was always a solution, he just needed the right crew of people to work together and see it.

This reminds me of two of my favourite points in Matt LeMay’s talk…

“Most questions of role clarity are actually best resolved by goal clarity…” “High performing cross-functional teams naturally self-organise around shared goals.”

LeMay also provided a great primer on Adam Thomas’ ( ) ‘ ’ which relate to the sunk cost fallacy (which Mr Spock explains below).

If you are interested, I have moved to and used the following script to convert my notebooks to Markdown: On that point I also write this blog in Markdown; a clear example of how my requirements have changed since 2013. ↩︎
Of course [spoiler alert] Khan put Kirk’s ethos to the test (in both the original and the reboot), but that could be a whole other blog post. ↩︎

Cufflinks - Edition 2 - 23rd October

Sun, 23 Oct 2022 18:21:29 +0100

Welcome back to Cufflinks

Hello again! Truth be told I was not expecting a 6-month hiatus between blog posts. I have had so many thoughts, ideas, and experiences that I have wanted to blog about but lacked the time to do so. What have I been doing all this time? Well I’ll provide you with an overview below, but first I will share my favourite articles over the past few months.

Reading highlights

Headline: embracing a level of discomfort means that your are actively learning and growing. A very wise friend once told to me that we often do the thing that we are second best at. That is because the thing that we are best at is often deeply uncomfortable. I feel this way when I am working in the solution space in design, especially when there is a lot of ambiguity. I also felt like this when I worked as an artist and curator. In short if I didn’t feel uncomfortable I knew I wasn’t really doing to work. As humans we tend to like the path of least resistance. So keeping your sights on the longer term benefits is essential if you want to stay the course.

Mei Zhang’s post is a wonderful gift to all designer-kinds. It provides a helpful article and an for navigating the many methods and tools approaches available during each phase.

This article provides a very fun and accessible explanation of Design Thinking and how it works. Using a high stakes dinner party as an analogy!

This article is pure brilliance and I keep coming back to it over and over. It has become a permanent fixture in my personal playbook.

This article include excellent time and communications flow management tips. Many I had already implemented, some I had not and now do. On this topic, I am really looking forward to the . That has been a great feature in Slack and is a good way to respect folks’ time and control your own communications hours.

Even those of us who have been writing alt text for years can improve our practice (so many that I would tweak with hindsight). This guide is going into my #LX #UX toolkit for safekeeping and frequent reference. Thank you @scope #a11y #accessibility

— Tweet by Fiona MacNeill (@fmacneill) on June 11, 2022

Some things I did and things that I am doing

Here is a whistle stop tour of my person highlights over Spring/Summer 2022.

I was a guest on the UX Coach Podcast

It was an honour and a pleasure to be invited to be a guest on UX Coach Podcast which aired in July. Visit the UX Coach website to .

One of the highlights for me during the discussion was talking about the difference that coaching made for me in my career…

…I had to make a change…having that coaching experience and being able to look inside myself and go “what are the skills I have to solve this problem?” Oh, I actually know a bit about data analysis. I know a bit about algorithms and what are recruitment processes based on? Algorithms, LinkedIn keywords. Okay. Let’s go and have a look at what all of the keywords are on the favorite jobs I would really like on LinkedIn. And then let’s think about how those apply to me and do I have them? And I thought, yeah, I actually do. I can genuinely cover all of those keywords. Those are all things that I know about and have applied. So then I added those to my profile. And within a week I got a recruiter contacting me.

And it was like, if I just thought of about it in the way that I think about solving problems in my job, then I could have been onto this much earlier…

For more on this you can check out .

So what I have learned is if I approach solving my own problems with the same level of interest and tenacity that I apply to those of my clients, I will find solutions. This is rut kyptonite!

I completed some career firsts

My first Sprint

I devised my first design Sprint (Knapp, Zeratsky and Kowitz, 2016) in August for an internal client group. It was both intense and invigorating to consider inputs, outputs, flexibility and outcomes. The process was successful and thanks to the ingenuity of my collaborators we only used 4 sheets of paper across the event. We avoided the usual pile of sad and used-up post-it notes by using which allowed us to write, wipe off, and reuse. My particular favourites were the (index cards) which have now become a mainstay in my design studio.

Learning campaign based on user research

I have designed and run outreach campaigns before. However, this was the first time that in-depth user research and interview transcript analysis had pointed towards the approach as the most effective solution. Discovery to truly understand the underlying problem made all the difference. The campaign itself is multi-channel across intranet, internal communications tools, and email. It also includes a three-week challenge via the LMS as a mini-course with a limited-edition badge. The campaign has resulted in the creation of valuable job aids which can persist beyond, helping colleagues in their work.

I have been volunteering for Ladies that UX Brighton

Now this is the venture which has been taking up time when I might have been blogging, but it is totally worth it! Ladies that UX (LTUX) is a magnificent organisation holding meetups in 85 places around the world and supporting women and people of underrepresented genders in UX. LTUX Brighton chapter has been on hiatus since March 2020 due to the pandemic. So, myself and co-organisers now have the task of rebuilding it from the ground up. After several months of meetings and concerted networking we are getting ready to re-launch in 2023. A highlight for me has been getting to give a talk to students on my former MSc UX program. It was such a heartening experience to share my enthusiasm for UX and the Brighton UX community with a group of interested people. If you would like to learn more or get involved (we are seeking more volunteers and speakers) visit the .

My favourite image from the new branding from Ladies that UX. Can you guess where this is in Brighton? - Answer at the end of the post.

I am feeding my mind, moving my body, and curating my space

I am cultivating creative and curious encounters on a daily basis. This is a lifelong pursuit for me, but I have to admit that I had let it lapse a bit due to busyness.

In a similar vein I can recommend the work of Stefaan van Hooyd, author of who I saw give a talk at the Learning Technologies Autumn Forum (13th October, ExCel Centre, London).

Amazing talk with @stefaanvanhooyd on Curiosity #LTAF22

— Tweet by Fiona MacNeill (@fmacneill) on October 13, 2022

Activities to feed my mind

Applying for my alumni library membership and reading books outside my current area of knowledge. Currently I am reading a book on linguistics.

Okay I have to admit that I let out a high pitched exclamation of delight when I received my approval for alumni library membership today. Thank you @brightonalumni for making this possible!

— Tweet by Fiona MacNeill (@fmacneill) on August 3, 2022

Going to the theatre more. The show that caused to me to think, learn and reflect this week was Ifrah Mansour’s one-woman show, “How to have fun in a Civil War”. Which effectively and poignantly retold her own experiences as a young child in Somalia.
I have been drawing again and will be trying to attend life drawing sessions at least once every couple of months. It is clear to me that the intense observation required in drawing supports my practice as a designer. It is a muscle I definitely need to continue flexing.
Finding any excuse to see art both locally and when I am working in London. Sticking around after work to visit the Tate Modern for an hour where I saw the , as shown in the featured image for this post. I loved the way that the former oil tanks at Tate remind me of the former industrial smell and tranquility of the nooks and crannies in The Soap Factory (an art gallery and former workplace of mine).
Another unexpected delight was getting to go up The Shard last week and gaining a whole new appreciation of London. Seeing the space where the was founded from the vantage point of their gods and wondering what life must have been like 2,000 years ago.

Moving my body

I took part in two runs in September. One with work colleagues through City of London for SolarAid. It was amazing to run freely without cars amongst the towering buildings and neons reflecting off the rain-sprinkled tarmac in the evening light. I also ran my first half-marathon in September as part of the Great North Run. I raised nearly £400 for Mind charity and spent a wonderful long weekend in Newcastle with my mum. I also continue to kickbox and have taken up a bit of Thai boxing when I can fit it in.

Curating my space

I found some signed cards by one of my heroes, the artist Marina Abramović at the Baltic art gallery in Newcastle. The cards suggest ways to essentially hack your perception and are based on techniques Abramović uses prior to her performance art pieces. I decided that these are great for my studio and give me inspiration alongside some psychology cards and the odd cloud notecard! You’ll also note some fairy lights to cheer me up as we enter the long-dark of Winter.

You may not find a skull in the grand tradition of momento mori to be tranquil. For some reason I do!

Something I made or fixed

I have been contributing to awesome ID list of helpful tools for .

I have also been knitting these socks for my dad. Pretty jazzy huh?

The answer to my question about the building in Brighton: it is the top of the Dr Marten’s shoe shop ( ).

References

Knapp, J, Zeratsky, J., Kowitz, B. (2016) Sprint: How to solve big problems and test new ideas in just five days. New York: Bantam Press.

Extra features

on the topic of referencing…

A thread 🧵: As a #Dyslexic person who struggles with reading-at-speed, screen readers are a gateway to knowledge. I like to stay up-to-date by reading academic papers and industry reports. However, I want to talk about academic referencing styles and why they are a problem...

— Tweet by Fiona MacNeill (@fmacneill) on May 14, 2022

Cufflinks - Edition 1 - 24th April

Sat, 23 Apr 2022 19:00:05 +0100

What are these Cufflinks?

Cufflinks is the title for recurring blog posts where I share some of my favourite links. I plan to write these posts on a semi-regular basis. The inspiration came from the fantastic, Stéphanie Walter’s “Pixels of the Week” which is an amazing resource. Do check out .

Welcome to the first edition of Cufflinks!

Something I wrote

I am delighted to have been invited to write a guest blog post for . My post entitled, outlines my approach and some of the UX methods that I used in my former job as a Learning Technologist. The post is such a fantastic record as it really underlines why I made a career change. UX/LX research and design methods are now fundamental to my work as a Learning Experience Specialist and I build on this practice every single day. It is an amazing adventure and I am absolutely loving it.

Excerpt

Design methods can provide strategies for thinking about a problem on your own, or with a group of people. Methods can also provide ways of gathering feedback and showing your thinking to stakeholders and senior managers. Some of the methods may feel familiar, as they derive from anthropology, psychology, and social sciences.

Flow of activities starting with video interviews, followed by a written interview transcript. and a chart showing click activities when using software. Then example statements for a job or action: when I am [context], to help me [motivation push/pull], so I can [outcome]. A functional test list comes from the job statement followed by video and written web tutorials.

Things I have read

This article is a nice piece of validation for my guest blogging venture above. The writer talks about the importance of making UX work visible. So, it is not only the work of doing the research, but it is the process of involving stakeholders and then sharing the results. All three aspects vital to ’the work’. Doing this work on research and design in the open, helps to uncover the synergy between projects and to break down historic silos.

The more inclusive you are in inviting stakeholders to explain and understand your processes, the more brainpower you have on the solution. This way the product objectives can be more aligned from different perspectives and hence everyone — UX professional, organization, users, and business — wins.
- Hossein Raspberry (2022)

A key part of contributing to the design of an organisation from the inside is to find common ground to agree on. Design principles as rules of best practice are a good place to start. The ‘ ’ are now 25 years old, yet they are more relevant now than ever. I have often thought that the inclusion of the ’d’ word might be a mistake. As ‘design’ might imply that ‘designers’ alone are in a position to make an impact, in fact these principles need to be embedded at every stage of the product cycle and at every level of the product itself. Also as the principles were written by a group led by the architect Ronald Mace and the group included engineers, environmental design researchers, product designers, and architects it is clear that these concepts apply in any situation where a solution for humans is being built. We need to avoid the situation outlined in the below by engaging with all users and avoiding the assumption that what will be functional and safe for one, will be functional and safe for all.

Screenshot of Edward Rice's post on LinkedIn. Post includes the text: 'Poor Accessibility Regulations and enforcement results in this type of dangerous design. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see what’s wrong with this, on so many levels. Another case where common sense is not commonly used!'

This brings me on to the ideas of pace layering and cultural rates of change and why patience and persistence are both virtues for anyone involved in design and transformation. This month’s dConstruct newsletter from refreshed my memory on this one. Originally devised by Stewart Brand is his 1999 book, The Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibility, pace layers are a concept for thinking about how the rate of change differs at levels of civilisation. Fashion being the fastest to change and culture, followed by nature being the slowest to change. A chapter from Brand’s book is at . This concept has become well-worn in design spheres but still has merit as shown by Richard Rutter who uses it as a catalyst to consider the changing nature of UX-related professions.

From Brand (2018) Pace Layering: How Complex Systems Learn and Keep Learning

The Dunning-Kruger Effect is fascinating when you consider what learners think they need to know in comparison to what they might actually need to know to achieve competency.

If you’re training people, you can expect the bottom percentile to not even be aware that they are wrong. Dunning Kruger say it is because metacognition is linked to skill level — the same attributes that make a person skilled in the domain are needed to evaluate if one is right or wrong. There are domains where this is true — like logical reasoning — but also where it is not true, and where the effect would not be as obvious.
- Curiosity Research & Design (2022)

So with this in mind, we need our approach to be effective and to feel relevant to those learners who potentially think they know more than they actually know. Dr Phil Hardman’s bitesized suggestions, such as Observing Experts and Meaningful Collaboration are great and have already got me thinking about some alternative approaches to things that I am working on at the moment. I am eager to participate in the BETA version of the Learning Science Bootcamp, the sign-up link is available on the page above.

I have been thinking about creativity at work a lot recently. This is partly because I personally know that I am at my best when I make time for creative thought in my week (something I am doing right now by writing this post). At least an hour of that time should be at work. Most commonly this involves taking to paper to draw out the solution to a problem, but sometimes it involves a 10-minute skipping break in my local park. Why skipping you may ask? On the one hand, skipping is something that I have been actively practising for many years and on the other it is the closest you can get to dancing in a public space without confusing people. With skipping I can create a dance routine on the fly using different jumps and rhythms to fit what I am listening to on my headphones. This gives my brain a creative distraction from work tasks that might be troubling me. Then when I go back to the work tasks they are far more swiftly dealt with; that is the thing about brains, less is more.

I am taking this one on the nose, as I wrote this in an email the other day. I will also say that the issue noted by the author is how the statement ‘feedback is a gift’ was used to avoid communicating authentically and with empathy. The response Ang cited was “Thanks, Nick! I love feedback. Feedback is a gift!”. This is an empty response which suggests that they had not read the constructive feedback, least of all taken it onboard. To receive feedback with empathy is to listen and acknowledge, whether you agree or not, then delay a full response if more full consideration is required. Receiving feedback is hard and this is something I am continually working on getting better at myself. I for one will consider the article as a piece of practical feedback, which will cause me to think twice prior to stating the obvious next time and rather just focusing on the ‘doing’ part instead.

A fascinating article providing insight into working artists from a range of disciplines. How do they stay motivated? How do they cope with public critique? This felt like the perfect application of my point above, where a key idea in the article was to not internalise negative or positive feedback, but to take what you can from it to improve and most importantly not let it eat up your insides.

Note to self…

These are tools or posts which I have, or will, find useful.

Something I listened to

A great episode featuring some of my very favourite thinkers and theorists.

Something I made or fixed

I am trying to fix things and to buy second-hand when I can. My Converse trainers started disintegrating before our eyes at UX Camp Brighton this year so it was a topic of conversation. Thankfully all fixed now, thanks to some hardy denim from my fabric scraps and some all-purpose glue.

Just to follow-up on another key discussion point from @UXCampBrighton - I live by my word @yandle @UXLouX #Solved #FixDontBin I ❤️ my Milky Way shoes @Converse

— posted by Fiona MacNeill (@fmacneill) on April 23, 2022

UX Camp Sticking Power

Sun, 10 Apr 2022 16:42:07 +0100

What I did

On the 26th of March 2022 I attended UX Camp Brighton for the first time in three years. In 2019, I could not attend due to other commitments and for the past two years the event has not run due to the pandemic. The momentous return of UX Camp gave me an opportunity to refresh my in-person presentation skills by hosting a talk about my new found career as a Learning Experience Designer¹. The talk took a metacognitive approach by first looking at what a Learning Experience Designer (LXer) does. I then applied my discipline by using a LX lens to deconstruct the UX Camp format. Specifically, I provided a short demo of as it would apply to the event. From an Learning Experience (LX) perspective, UX Camp can be seen as a chance to learn about and, most importantly practise, UX and user research skills in a safe space.

I'm here for the title #uxcb22 @fmacneill

- Tweet by Rebecca Hugo (@becstex) on March 26, 2022.

Photo credit: Rebecca Hugo

I used the talk as a testbed for new ideas; some worked well, some need further reflection. This approach of testing with an audience was inspired by who was recently interviewed on . Nixon noted the use of public speaking to prototype ideas and get fast feedback. This was a liberating idea for me as for years I have felt that I cannot speak if I do not first write. But perhaps I can speak to write and write for speech. This is something that I need to develop and hone, but Nixon’s career is certainly an inspiration to me. Like me she has traversed and art and creativity within her career, yet she has also successfully applied these diverse experiences within business. But enough about me and my UX Camp talk, you kind of had to be there.

What stuck?

Taking the base idea of the talk forward, after two weeks, what of my own learning? What has stuck with me from UX Camp Brighton? By revisiting my recollections in this blog post, I am going to embed those concepts through the act of reflecting on them. Bonus!

The format of UX Camp means that I could only attend some of the sessions. The format has sessions running concurrently and they are not repeated. You also have to race to the session rooms and if the room is full, you find another session to attend. Of the sessions I attended the following had sticking power for me:

Applying 80/20 in UX @Foolproof -

This session was based on the , when applied to UX, in that…

80% of your user’s experience could be affected 20% of your product.

Unexpectedly Obvious - Chris How

This session provided a series of examples where design solutions were both ingenious and obvious. This was summarised by Chris How as:

Understanding the problem + Imaginative thinking = Unexpectedly obvious design

Are you at the table or on the menu? - Laura Yarrow

This session focused on the issues with the mystique surrounding UX purpose and process. There can be a notion of feeling hard done by and misunderstood as a UXer and Yarrow offered something of a growth mindset for UX designers and researchers to adopt. Yarrow deftly summarised the role of a successful UXer as a “Trusted Agitator”. A simple concept which really resonated with me across my career, both now and during my time as a Learning Technologist with a UX specialism.

Presenting presenting - Alliterative Alphabet Aerobics - Rebecca Hugo

Always one of my favourite speakers, Rebecca Hugo served up a session with poise, candour, humour, and genuine knowledge. Only the likes of Sandi Toksvig can compete in terms of creating a delightful and creative verbal universe during a talk.

Why Lorem Ipsum sucks and what to do about it -

Some great tips for using authentic text and content when prototyping in Figma and why that is important, especially when testing designs.

Why did it stick?

So what made these sessions successful from an LX perspective?

Applying 80/20…

In ‘Applying 80/20…’ Tehreim Arif gave us an authentic opportunity to practise with a scenario where we had percentage-based data from a fake employee survey. The employees had been asked the following:

If you could change one of the following things about your organisation, what would it be?

We were given the findings as percentages and asked to arrange them from highest to lowest on a piece of paper. We then needed to slice the data based on the figures that got us closest to 80% cumulatively. Alternatively we could look at the figures that made up the top 20%. Figures represented action items like: office location (28%), progression roadmap (25%), salaries (23%)

Having found the action items to work on, we were asked to look at these as a percentage of the number of items that were reported in the survey. So, say you had 10 action items in your quantitative survey question and each was selected by some of the participants. Then if three of the items made up close to 80% of the opinion (e.g., the list above which equals 76%), then that would be 30% of overall items where action was needed.

So, you get a measure of the areas to focus on to get the maximum value from the user perspective. You also get a way to communicate that concisely to stakeholders via the following like the following statement.

76% of employee experience can be improved by focusing on 30% of the organisation.

This session gave us an opportunity to practise and apply this method. Arif also gave us a series of scenarios where she had found the concept useful in her own work.

Unexpectedly Obvious

Chris How is a master storyteller and this session was no exception. The thing about stories is, they stick. These stories were told through evocation of different eras using slides based on single photographs with rich verbal narrative in accompaniment. Yes, the design solutions where compelling, but the context and route to ‘said’ solutions was even more interesting. My favourite story was Van Halen’s use of a proto ; a bowl of M&M’s leaving out the brown ones, nested in their long menu or rider of requests for gigs. This was use as a test check if the rider was being read and that the safety protocols it specified were being followed. For more on this check out on this piece of rock history.

Laura Yarrow held up a magnifying glass to all of us in the room. Laura used relevant examples which were designed to reflect the experiences and needs of the specialist audience at the session. This meant that when the reflection was triggered it came from a place of experience and authentic mentorship directed towards us as audience members.

Presenting presenting - Alliterative Alphabet Aerobics

Rebecca Hugo’s session was perfectly placed. Many of us had already presented that day or were about to. Those experiences were fresh in our minds. We had also attended other sessions that day which were still ripe for internal critique. Then there was Hugo’s presentation itself with a tinge of Lewis Carroll-esque humour phrased as an alliterative alphabet of tips, Hugo knowingly self-critiqued while engaging us in levels of metacognition.

Why Lorem Ipsum sucks and what to do about it

This resonated because it bore resemblance to my own recent experience as a tester giving feedback. Nothing takes you out of a demo like copy and content that shouldn’t be there and Sam Steele provided some compelling visual examples, showing how to create prototypes with the right level of detail.

What am I using now?

I am using 80/20 as part of a research project supporting a page redesign.
After Yarrow’s talk I reflected on how easy it is to play the role of the misunderstood artist/designer/researcher (speaking for myself here). What is harder is to bridge the communication gaps between your work, your colleagues, and your audiences. That is something that I am actively working on, so this talk really resonated with me. It is not enough to do the work, you also need to be able to explain the work and know where and how to collaborate. If I am doing my job properly I should be the gossamer that brings things and people together, not the hunting spider sulking in the corner! I am indeed a “trusted agitator” and I also loved the way that Laura used a simple graph to explain this relationship. I have taken inspiration from the graph to build a basic scoring system for a prototype learning game that I am building.
Hugo’s talk hastened me to reflect on my own speech patterns (the section entitled, “understand unruly utterances”). As a result I have resolved to try and solve a verbal tick borne out of my own occasional social anxiety. Starting questions with, “I don’t know if…”. I wouldn’t dream of phrasing a question like this for research, so it is time to fix it! Stop, think, speak.

Thank you UX Camp Brighton!

In spite of having two years away, this year’s UX Camp Brighton was one of my favourite events branching all the way back to 2014 when I first attended. Being part of the UX community in Brighton means so much to me personally, to my career, to my practice, and to my abilities as a designer and researcher. The learning journey never ends and it is nice to have help along the way.

Bonus feature

Al Power’s session, UI Design Tips for Success also had sticking power (pun intended). However, officially I saw it two days prior to UX Camp Brighton at our practice session as part of . Al has posted some great resources related to the session, so do .

My new title is Learning Experience Specialist but I feel like a designer and I worked hard to occupy a design space. So practice-wise I consider myself a designer. ↩︎