UX London in sketchnotes

Last week our UX team were lucky enough to attend UX London 2012 for three days of inspiration, learning and networking. I’ve been practising sketchnoting (aka visual notetaking) since UX Cambridge last year. Here are my sketchnotes of most the talks and workshops I attended at UX London (also available on Flickr).

On Long Noses, Sampling, Synthesis, Design and Innovation, Bill Buxton (keynote)

The crux of Bill’s talk was simple – no idea is original. Designers are constantly influenced by what has gone before. To innovate, designers should reference existing designs that have proven successful and follow an iterative process to refine design ideas using techniques like sketching, prototyping and user centred research. He showed many examples of how product design in the past has influenced and shaped successful digital technology products such as the iPod and iPhone. For detailed text notes of Bill’s talk see Luke Wroblewski’s notes or Jon Kolko’s notes.

Learn to Play UX Rugby: Why your agile UX adoption is failing and what to do about it, Anders Ramsay

Anders stepped in at very short notice to replace Janice Fraser, who couldn’t make it in time due to a delayed flight. He talked about some methods which designers can use to work more effectively in Agile teams. For example design pairing, where designers develop and try out multiple  design ideas collaboratively with developers or other designers. And user Fridays, where no matter what stage at development a team is at, users are always brought in on a Friday to get regular feedback on design concepts and prototypes. For more detailed text notes of Anders’s talk, see Luke Wroblewski’s notes or Jon Kolko’s notes.

Luke Wroblewski, ‘Organising Mobile Web Experiences’

Luke provided some excellent insights into how mobile design patterns are evolving. He covered the importance of considering context of use and the ergonomics of smart phones (e.g. the comfortable ‘reach’ for your thumbs when holding a smart phone at the bottom). Luke advised designers to think ‘mobile first’, a similar concept to designing for top tasks or red routes, which requires designers to strip away content and functions to the most useful / frequently used. For more detailed text notes of Luke’s talk, see Jon Kolko’s notes.

Kristina Halvorson, ‘A Content Strategy Roadmap’

Kristina talked through a practical framework for managing content-led projects. She explored content roles and responsibilities, tools and techniques to ensure project teams don’t get ‘burned by content’ (an experience that many of the audience had been through). For more detailed text notes of Kristina’s talk, see Luke Wroblewski’s notes or Jon Kolko’s notes.

Mobile and UX, Inside the Eye of a Perfect Storm, Jared Spool

Jared’s talk was very entertaining. Starting with Sturgeon’s Law which states that 90% of everything is crap, he asked the audience “Are your designs in the other 10%?”. Jared covered various examples of how experience design can delight users, but warned that expectations change over time and delighters can become basic expectations. Therefore understanding and considering context of use is vital. Being a User Experience Designer requires us to develop a vast range of skills and methods. Jared ended with three simple questions to ask your team:

1. What will the experience of your design be in 5 years?
2. In the last 6 weeks, have you spent 2 hours watching users use your design?
3. In the last 6 weeks, have you rewarded a designer for a design failure?

For detailed text notes of Jared’s talk see Luke Wroblewski’s notes or Jon Kolko’s notes.

The Next Step for Design: Social Entrepreneuship, Jon Kolko

For me (and many other delegates, judging by the response afterwards) Jon’s talk was an inspiring and energising end to the first day. Jon established the Austin Centre for Design and teaches design and social entrepreneurship techniques and skills. He discussed how designers can solve ‘wicked problems’. He urged the audience to leave the organisational machine behind and use their design skills to develop and pursue innovative business ideas in order to solve complex social and humanitarian problems. If you are interested in this topic, Austin Centre for Design have a free book called Wicked Problems.

Methods of Design Synthesis, Jon Kolko

Following on from the previous day’s talk, Jon’s workshop was fast-paced and fun. We covered a huge amount of ground in 3.5 hours (2 week’s worth apparently!). Although I was familiar with much of the content of the workshop the one real stand-out technique for me was what Jon referred to as ‘Insight Combinations’, a way to match insights from contextual or ethnographic research with design patterns, to develop design ideas.

Design for User Experience Workshop, Dan Rubin

Although I found Dan’s workshop a little slow, compared to the morning workshop with Jon Kolko, there were some useful takeaways about working with Visual Designers.

The Quest for Emotional Engagement: Information Visualisation, Stephen Anderson

Stephen’s talk highlighted the risks of using well worn design patterns and questioned if they help make sense of complex information. During the workshop he walked through a practical way to analyse data points and the relationships between them. He then demonstrated how to develop interactive information visualisations which make sense of data and invite engagement.

 UX Team of One Bootcamp, Leah Buley

Leah’s workshop was idea for those working in teams or organisations where they are the only User Experience practitioner. She provided some tactical and persuasive tips for winning over colleagues. She also ran us through some practical techniques which encourage team collaboration and buy-in. One technique which I found particularly useful, and hadn’t heard of before, was the UX Health Check-up - a framework for analysing product quality over time.