UXPA Boston Conference 2015

As we have all heard the mantra "Content is King”, and as content is starting to become the main reason why customers are engaging with websites/mobile apps/product/etc (there you go – I said it out loud). It is paramount that we treat Content Strategy with importance, and ensure it is included from the start of design process if not prior to that.

 

Any design or experience is not going to be successful, unless there is significant amount of emphasis being put on ensuring content is there to support the design & customer needs. In many cases content will have to be created, rewritten, purchased, re-shot, etc., to fit the new design & experience. This also becomes that much more interesting (read - complicated) as we enter the realm of Responsive Design. 

 

This is easier said than done, especially as we move into to a content rich world where everything is tracked, stored, and globalized. You will be up for a ride if you assume that we can always rewrite the content afterwards. Unfortunately I was part of projects where we did that and paid dearly for this both in terms of hundreds of thousands of dollars to fixing the content or actually not being able to release the project at all.

 

In this session I will share my experiences from various projects I have led over the last few years, where we faced this problem, what we did, successes we had, and the perils of not including Content Strategy into the design process from beginning.  In addition, we will cover:

• how we can map UX design stages to Content Strategy to ensure content is part of the process from the beginning


• how both these fields are so similar, yet often times they are completely independent


• Case study – from real world projects spanning web, mobile and tablet experiences


• Lessons learned and hopefully attendees can take these and use them for their own projects


• Synergies of having both Design and Content teams as part of the same group/management, and benefits of working closely together.

 

Some of the takeaways for attendees will be:

• Cost of not having a content first approach


• How to integrate Content strategy within UX design process


• What obstacles we face when we go on this journey


• Ways to overcome potential hurdles


• What to do with images especially when dealing with responsive nature of the designs (x, 2x, 3x, 4x,etc)


• Share some deliverables we have used successfully especially when dealing with huge content stores, how to coordinate massive manual content work when you have teams spread across the world.

 

Great designs are only useful if they are actually implemented. How do you drive design and innovation in organizations that haven’t previously thought of design as a core value? How can we drive design and design culture so “UX” and “Product” are synonymous?

We present best-practices and pitfalls that we’ve learned based on our 30 years combined of UX experiences, to help to drive design strategy and deliver effective design communications.

1.  How to focus on value

Nothing will de-rail a design effort faster than lack of consensus between designers, stake-holders and developers as to what the business value of the design is. We’ll discuss techniques for driving consensus. 

2.  How to create a strong internal design language

Imagine your CEO talking about “slippy design” and understanding what a “primary action” is. We’ll discuss how to craft a company-wide language that drives great UX.

3.  Designing in an agile world

Stake-holders don’t understand the design process—it’s too slow they murmur. How do you get your stakeholders to appreciate time taken on a design is worth it?

Best practices for design presentations

We know that people don’t like to read, and the popularity of infographics and various other data visualizations prove that, so we need to think carefully of our deliverables, and how to make them more consumable.  Some best-practices that we’ve learned include:

1). Visualize, when possible

Visualize whatever deliverables you have would help people to understand your concept more clearly. As human beings, we understand visuals faster because they affect us both cognitively and emotionally. 

2). Use real content

No more lorem ipsum! Don’t fake your design! Real content make your design more realistic, and can also make people think more deeply.

3). Prototype, as fast as you can!

Prototyping is not only a good experience design tool, but also a very effective presentation tool.

4) Tell a story

Stories define our world and people love stories. Combining UX with storytelling will make you a better communicator. For instance, writing user scenarios is always a good way to show the design in context.

5. Best practices for explaining testing data

Great—now you’ve built consensus, a strong design language, you’re delivering results at blazing speed but how do you and your organization know you’ve succeeded? We’ll discuss how to best communicate test results to show your designs are valid.

With the explosion of devices in the wearable market, speech provides a real solution to the challenge around interaction methods on varying devices. Although not yet present, speech has the power to become a standard as it offers intuitive capabilities and hands free control across different form factors. Just like the devices themselves, the optimal speech interaction will have varying feature support based on the form factor, functions, and capabilities.  

How do we design optimal voice interactions across all of these unique devices such as hardware built into t-shirts, soles of sneakers, jewelry, glasses, watches and more? Maybe it makes sense for your watch to announce an incoming text message but it might be quite odd to hear that same message coming from your buddy’s belt. Or maybe your t-shirt knows that you’re running and thus triggers a more verbose dialog to reflect an eyes-free environment. Leveraging the environmental, location, and contextual information that these very personal devices often provide is one really powerful way to design smart, flexible speech interactions.

Designing to adjust to form factors, situations and sensory data leverages  speech as part of a potentially rich ecosystem of modalities that wearables can employ. For instance, sometimes you will want to design for speech as an input method, but rely on other output modalities - show understanding by simply taking action or perhaps by notifying a user with a tactile vibration response. Again, the entire interaction should be shaped with respect to the wearable itself.

In this talk, we’ll discuss how to design speech experiences in the wide variety of contexts that wearables bring to the table. We’ll provide examples and learnings around some fundamental themes in speech design: discoverability, guidance, personalization, and awareness of / integration with context and data.

Let's talk about content strategy. Let's talk about UX design. Let's talk about real-world experiences.

As a content strategist at Mad*Pow, I work with designers and writers, user researchers and project managers, content managers and content creators. We can all do our work independently of one another, but sometimes we get the opportunity - and the challenge - of working together. In this talk we'll look at six scenarios where UX and content strategy combine to make our work better and our lives easier. Participants will leave with concrete tools and processes to follow for future projects.

The boundary between “me” and “the world” isn’t. We effortlessly incorporate tools into our own body image: when I use a hammer, I don’t think about how to move my hand in relationship to the hammer, but how to move the hammer in relationship to the nail.

In this talk I will show that the boundary between a user and a product is fluid as tools - such as a mouse pointer or even a button - become extensions of a users body. I'll let Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Heidegger explain what exactly happens when tools become part of the body - or cease to be part of us. I'll also present mind-blowing new neurological insights by Atsushi Ikiri and others that show that this is a real process we can observe in the brain.

Taking those findings from philosophy and neuroscience, I will show how this boundary between self and world can be manipulated by clever design (or more frequently, violated by careless design) - and moreover, that establishing this boundary deliberately reduces cognitive load, reinforces users’ expectations and makes products easier to use.

The talk assumes no prior knowledge in philosophy or neuroscience.

Talk 1 - Beyond Ladies & Gents: Designing Bathrooms for Gender Fluidity - Patrick Cleary

With transgender rights coming to the forefront of many political messaging, one of the most contentious topics is the segregation of bathrooms.  Are co-ed bathrooms the way of the future? If so, how will signage, layout of facilities, privacy, and other user experience factors come into play to assure that everyone who needs to use the facilities can do so in a comfortable and trouble-free manner?   I will show the various options that have been presented in different parts of the world, explore their pros and cons and invite the audience to vote on various layouts, sign designs, and use factors.


Talk 2 - Microinteractions in the bathroom and beyond - Eva Kaniasty

You might have heard of microinteractions… single-purpose features that make a big difference. You might be skeptical…. can something that small have a big payoff, or is this the case of yet another buzzword?    To answer this question, let’s go inside a place where stakes are high, and a critical failure can turn a routine experience into a horror story. Our whirlwind tour of restrooms gone wrong will show you why you must pay attention to microinteractions, or risk watching your UX go down the toilet. 


Talk 3 - Traveling UX Adventures - Marli Mesibov

Have you ever eaten shrimp with lawyers? Or enjoyed a hot shower, and steamed up the whole mirror except for a perfect square under your chin? Have you been a guest in a home that checks to make sure your pajamas are kosher?    If you have experienced all of these, you are clearly a world traveler, and you have experienced UX (and a lack thereof) on the road. Ranging from menus that don't double-check their translations (in French, avocat translates to both "lawyer" and "avocado"), to hotels that consider the benefit of a non-fogging mirror, but forget to check their visitors' average height (the Japanese are typically shorter than their international visitors), UX on the road is fraught with bumps. (Or sleeping policemen, if you're British.)    There's nothing like a good trip to make you appreciate the little things.

Talk 4 - To pee or not to pee... that is the question - Joan Wortman

I would like to share stories about the bathrooms I've encountered in my travels. For instance, last year when I presented at UXPA London, I took on a pet project to observe bathrooms around England and Iceland. These days, one has to be a magician to use some of the devices encountered in public bathrooms. I took pictures and cataloged good and bad user experiences.  I've share my bathroom stories with my coworkers and friends, but would be happy to share my bizarre interest with people who don't even know me yet. 

More companies are now setting up UX teams without a full understanding of what it entails, and new UX managers are facing unanticipated challenges. This panel brings together a range of experienced team leaders to share their tactics and lessons learned.

It appears that companies have recognized the value of user experience. In 2013, Robert Fabricant wrote in the Harvard Business Review: “The value of UX as a corporate asset is no longer in question.” New UX teams are springing up with existing user experience teams rapidly expanding. However, the growing pains can be significant:

• What balance of skills should your team include?


• How do you scale a team without hiring new people?


• How do you expand and maintain coherent outputs?


• How do you measure the UX value to get the headcount you need? 

You’ll hear from experienced UX leaders from several companies grappling with varying situations. We will cover starting an internal team who are located together as well as growing a globally distributed professional services group who all work at different client sites. We expect to address the challenges of delivering to a common set of standards to figuring out which skills to hire first or how to expand a mature team. We'll get beyond the burning issue of not enough skills in the market place, and explore creative ways to grow a team from within.

The audience will gain insights into the thinking behind each growth strategy, what worked and didn’t work from experienced UX managers. We’re present the reality, together with ways to approach and address the challenges of building a new team or expanding an existing team.