UX Camp Fall 2023

We'll open the doors a little early and let folks in. Sometimes, we have surprises, sometimes, we play music, sometimes it's a little quiet. Get there a little early to be ready for kick-off!

Starting the event!

Designing for Behavior Change: Using Psychological Frameworks to Design Engaging and Effective Experiences

Digital apps and experiences can support people in making all kinds of positive behavior changes, but in order to do that, they have to be both engaging and effective. That means designers need to focus on creating something compelling that addresses the reasons why people struggle to achieve their goals. Behavior science offers several frameworks that can layer onto a design process to create products that are not just engaging to use, but actually help people perform the behaviors that lead to better outcomes for health, wealth, and happiness. Learn about best practices from COM-B, the self-determination theory of motivation, and behavioral economics to help you design for lasting behavior change.

Amy Bucher
Amy Bucher, Ph.D., is Chief Behavioral Officer at Lirio, where she designs AI-powered behavior change journeys to drive better personal and population health. Amy is a recognized expert on applying the psychology of motivation to design and was named one of Forbes’ Behavioral Scientists You Should Know. She is the author of Engaged: Designing for Behavior Change published by Rosenfeld Media and named a Kirkus favorite indie book of 2020. Prior to joining Lirio, Amy was Vice President of Behavior Change Design at Mad*Pow, a strategic design consultancy, and has also worked at CVS Health in their Digital Innovation Lab and as a member of the Behavioral Science team at Johnson & Johnson. Amy earned her PhD and MA in Organizational Psychology from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and her AB magna cum laude in Psychology from Harvard University.

15 minute break.

Give my product a personality! How to write for products that anticipate, inform and delight

Can products truly have personality? The answer is yes! But how do we achieve this? In this talk, we’ll explore different ways content designers and UX writers can write products that anticipate, inform and delight.

We’ll workshop the process of defining personality for your product. Do products have to sound boring? How can you dial up or dial down the tone of your product depending on the customer moment? How can we use these principles to create strong UX writing guidelines for digital products?

Zinnia Sophia
Zinnia is a Content Strategy Director, Speaker, Women’s Leadership Mentor and 6x best-selling author in women’s empowerment based in New York City.

She has consulted for top digital agencies like AKQA, Razorfish, Organic, Ogilvy and Sapient in New York, San Francisco and London. Zinnia has created digital marketing campaigns, redesigned products and created enterprise content at scale for IBM, Verizon and Ford.

Why content strategy? After designing products and digital experiences for top brands in San Francisco, she moved to New York City and partnered more closely with marketing leaders. Seeing the value of user research, UX writing, product marketing and how content innovation at scale positions brands more successfully in their go-to market strategies, she has been focusing on bridging the gap between product and marketing ever since –seeing the big picture with an eye towards the future while getting her hands dirty and doing the work.

Whether you are writing for tech, fitness or automotive, these exercises will help you create internal processes, documentation and direction as you continue to develop your product’s unique brand. Examples from Shopify, Verizon and Ford will be shared.

15 minute break.

How Object-Oriented Thinking Can Help You Design a Strong Product Information Architecture

Object-oriented user experience (OOUX) is simply a philosophy that respects the fact that people think in objects– as opposed to thinking in tasks or linear book-like pages. Thinking in an OOUX-y way helps us create streamlined and intuitive user experiences by looking at products more systemically and holistically.

This introduction will guide you through an OOUX methodology called ORCA (objects, relationships, calls-to-action, and attributes), which navigates product complexity and helps you deliver simplicity. The resulting design artifact, an Object Map, shows how every design decision is rooted in clarity, resulting in a robust, thorough, and well-documented information architecture.

Upma Singh
Upma Singh is a Lead User Experience Designer at IntelliBridge. She loves the challenge of working through a particularly complex mess and she encourages her teammates and clients to think holistically. Upma is a former cat mom who loves cooking, watching TV, listening to podcasts, and knitting. These days, she also helps organize the OOUX Happy Hour Meetup.

15 minute break.

Design Systems 101: Essentials for All Designers

A comprehensive introduction to design systems for designers. We’ll define design systems and explore their history and benefits. Listeners will also gain insights into some of the world’s best design systems, which serve as great examples. Includes:

The Definition of Design Systems: Design systems are rule sets that ensure uniformity in design elements. They include typography, colors, icons, and components. Think of them as lego sets.
The Brief History of Design Systems: Design systems have evolved from print design to digital realms. Notable figures brands twitter and salesforce have played pivotal roles in shaping their development.
The Benefits of Design Systems: Implementing design systems streamlines design and development. They boost brand consistency and enhance user satisfaction. Real-world examples showcase their advantages.
Examples of World-Class Design Systems: Explore renowned design systems from leading companies. Understand what makes them exceptional in terms of documentation, accessibility, and scalability.

Michael Carrick
Michael Carrick CEO & Co-founder of XDS | Experience Design Systems Inc.

Michael has led groups of talented user-centric UX designers, researchers and visual designers who specialize in helping their partners create beautifully connected experiences. Michael understands how to create impactful, reusable and technology-driven tools that help designers and developers to deliver experiences at the intersection of people, business and technology needs.

Michael brings two decades of expertise designing and developing digital experiences for industry leaders in Financial, Government, Retail, Insurance and Artificial Intelligence sectors.

15 minuted break.

Rewire Your Team: Neurodiversity Inclusion to Improve Work Practices

Neurodiversity in the workplace is more than just expanding your talent pool. It’s an opportunity to build better hiring practices, work environments and team communication habits. I am a Product Designer and late-diagnosed autistic woman. Join me as I walk you through my personal journey and share with you the thoughts and learnings I’ve had along the way. In an age where remote is king, we have a responsibility, more than ever, to work with mental health close at heart.

This presentation will give several examples of key takeaways that can be shared with their teams and generally helps the audience make more insightful team decisions. Neurodiversity is a highly intersectional form of diversity that links hands with mental health awareness in the workplace.

Amy Johnson
Amy Johnson is a Senior Product Designer at Sprout Social in Chicago, IL. She is a late-diagnosed autistic female and a neurodiversity and product accessibility advocate. Amy has experienced several different types of tech work environments through her career and has a unique perspective on what it means to design and work with others while being autistic. She was diagnosed at the age of 27 and has since been on a journey of self-discovery that has led her to speak out about Neurodiversity in creative workplaces.

For more, keep up with Amy at johnsonjustified.com or on Twitter as @J_Justified.

15 minute break.

Tough Talks and How to Have Them

Relationships with internal stakeholders are often the key to planning, creating, and maintaining strategic content that gets results. Being able to have productive conversations, even when the topic is tricky, is a skill every content professional can and should develop.

From having to tell a stakeholder their idea isn’t on-strategy, to critiquing a non-writer’s writing, to approaching a frank conversation about content that is offensive or insensitive, we’ll walk through an approach to planning for and facilitating tough talks with stakeholders.

Using real-world examples from 20 years in the fields of marketing, communications, content strategy, and user experience spanning a wide variety of industries and organizations, this session will give you a framework to:

Determine whether a conversation is needed.
Apply methods we practice with content to plan the conversation.
Facilitate challenging conversations productively.

Meghan Casey
Meghan Casey has more than 20 years experience in communications, marketing, content strategy, and stakeholder whispering. Eight of those years were at Brain Traffic, the consultancy that put content strategy on the map.

Meghan’s book The Content Strategy Toolkit: Methods, Guidelines, and Templates for Getting Content Right has become a go-to guide for new and seasoned content professionals alike.

Wrapping up the day.