Sharing some of the learnings from this year's conference. http://www.uxaustralia.com.au/conferences/uxaustralia-2015/program-speakers/uxaust15-presentations
5. DIVIDED
• Organised in hierarchies
• Business prioritises internal
efficiency over customers’ needs
• Stable environments & clearly
defined jobs
• Staff in silos / isolation
Sketchnote by Dave Gray
6. CONNECTED
• Organised in “holarchies”
• Variable environments
• Jobs require human
judgement, creativity, good
decision making skills
• Move and learn faster
Sketchnote by Dave Gray
47. SUMMING UP
• Judgement, creativity, decision making
• Collaborate, network, learn faster
• Recruit SS & people with disabilities
• Minimalist designs with chunky
48. SUMMING UP
• Build with both staff & users
• Intrinsic motivators, safe place to practice
• Shadow users in context, collaborate on analysis
25-28 August 2015 in Brisbane. 3 (of 5) hot topics:
1. We barely talked about technology or digital interfaces
2. Big companies are grappling with integrating UX
3. And some industries are doing better than others
I’ll cover presentations relevant to both DLR and the whole Library.
Let’s use the stickies & Sharpies to write questions. I’ll collect them and answer in a blog post.
Dave Gray
I’ll focus on a comparison made between the divided company and the alternative.
eg manufacturing companies
eg mobile phone company billing problem: customer gets shuffled from one department to the next, escalated to VP…
Customers are demanding more, sharing experiences on social networks
Eg services
Facing competition from rival connected companies
Parts of the connected company continue to be industrial, traditional, divided, hierarchical, task and process focused but they'll be much smaller and not providing services.
Meera Pankhania
Accessibility focusses on improving access for people with a disability.
Inclusive design includes a much broader segment of users.
3 key areas:
Plain language
Recruiting
Usability testing
Plain language – everywhere (website content, prototypes, scenario / task instructions, usability tests, social media posts, blog posts, etc...)
helps users with cognitive issues
helps non-native English speakers
+1 = helps everyone => inclusive design
Recruit people with disabilities
they're glad to help with testing - recruit them for usability evaluations
easiest and genuine way to find accessibility / usability issues and work out how to improve
When usability testing with them
allow much more time for task completion
focus on uncovering accessibility issues
have an observer, practice good communication
Usability test with their gear
Ask them to bring their own technology
They are experts with it
They know how to drive assistive tech better than we ever will
A specific definition of beautiful…
Case studies of government sites where usability, accessibility and responsive design are the focus without sacrificing function or aesthetics
busy webpages aren’t beautiful
City of Stonnington
Busy, cluttered, undesirable = poor experiences
City of Stonnington with
Simple, clean design and minimal clutter
reduce the number of columns - think mobile first responsive web design
'Above the fold' isn't beautiful -> "We're not trying to fit the whole website into it!"
City of Ryde
'Above the fold' isn't beautiful
City of Ryde when usability, accessibility and responsive design are the focus
'Above the fold‘ is a myth.
First time visitors and returning visitors scroll.
Big touch targets / hit areas = easier to see and easy to navigate.
City of Ryde
think mobile first responsive web design
It’s okay to scroll. Chunky is good! White space is your friend
3 Ingredients for making beautiful website experiences:
#1 Simple, clean design with minimal clutter will go a long way
#2 Leverage technology and design the experience
#3 Designing for everyone, means designing for everyone
>70% of attempts to change fail despite ~20years of change management practice
Failures often due to neglecting the people behind product/service.
Design thinking and tools help deliver successful organisational change by addressing and dealing with underlying organisational cultural problems
When we don’t understand users, we build products and services they don’t understand.
So go do user research.
After user research, we understand users better.
With User Centred Design we create the best product/service … but still our efforts are wasted if people don't adopt.
Who is missing from these pictures?
We build a user centred product/service and staff learn to support it … Really?
Why not engage employees at all levels, actively making them part of the journey?
Build product/service with both staff and customers => customers understand it, staff can support it.
Staff motivators at work
extrinsic: bonus, deadlines, schedules – employees have these, especially in divided companies
Intrinsic staff motivators: purpose, autonomy, mastery – these foster change
Typo on slide: automomy should read autonomy
To further foster change, provide a safe place to practice and a commitment to change.
Attempts at change succeed when these research methods and design elements are in the workplace.
Ben Kraal versus Julia Birks & Paul Blake
Four years of research on what people do in airports. (12 airports, 1 airline, 5 gov agencies, 5 service providers, 6 uni’s, 12 professors)
Showed how to strip customer research and analysis back to the bare essentials without sacrificing quality.
followed people around, used eye-tracking to see if people really do read all those signs.
Advocated for observation and interview techniques which place the user at ease and capture the ‘research gold’
300 hours of video of people in airports – every second coded and analysed
Can do rapid analysis through collaborative affinity mapping to lay the foundation for ideation and conceptual design
http://j.mp/conference-learnings (https://wiki.deakin.edu.au/x/YnKcBQ) is the listing of Conference learnings in the wiki.
Conferences next year – https://wiki.deakin.edu.au/x/BcduAg
- UXLibs 2nd conference in late June (in Manchester)