If you’re just getting your start in UX and you’re hoping to learn more, or you’ve been in the field awhile and want to stay current, UX Camp is for you. A full day–2 full tracks–of UX talks, surrounded by impressive keynotes and all for a great price that includes your lunch.
All those job postings and career pages that taut the fun of working on a multi-disciplinary team… to solve the world’s greatest problems… in the trendiest office space you’ve ever seen… are full of it. It’s hard. It’s easy to sing kumbaya and talk about togetherness on your culture blog. In reality, effective cross-function is a daily struggle. But it’s critical to building successful products. Increasingly, the role of the designer on a pod/squad/scrum seems to be peacekeeper, translator, or even therapist. “Empathy” takes on a whole new meaning when it’s a fussy internal subject matter expert and not your idyllic external user. As a group, we’ll share real examples of working across domains and the macro and micro approaches to building consensus in order to make real progress day-to-day.
Storytelling tools and methods help throughout the design thinking process, while executing a UX practice, and sharing deliverables. How can we share design choices with clients or stakeholders? How did we arrive at the design decision we made?
You’ve done the work and now need engaging ways to frame or present your findings. Being able to tell a good story supports and enhances your presentations, deliverables, and meetings. We’ll also look different mediums used to tell your story, from verbal to visual and how to engage and effectively communicate with your audience.
By the end of this presentation, we aim to leave the attendee with actionable strategies to tell better stories, anecdotes to share over dinner, and a fierce desire to get around a campfire and tell a tale.
Personalization is hot: Whether you’re a designer, a developer, an information architect, or a marketer, you’ve probably had *someone* tell you your next project will need it. Beneath the products and the hype, though, there’s a tangle of complex assumptions and challenges that can make the difference between success and failure. In this session, Jeff will explain the basic conceptual building blocks shared by most personalization techniques; explore two projects that used those techniques in simple and complex ways; and give you a checklist of things to ask when your boss – or a salesperson – tells you Personalization Is What You Need.
This presentation will deal explicitly with domestic violence and may be triggering for some attendees. Please do not hesitate to leave the room at any time should you need to.
These days it is not enough to simply provide an interface for the users to reach their goal: users expect so much more from products. It’s essential to address user needs in a smart way, and sometimes there are needs which the user hasn’t even expressed yet.
Anticipatory design and smart data help address this. We’ll explore a practical way that shows how to identify and use data that can help users reach their goals by boosting their journey with useful and helpful information.
Information architecture is the art and science of organizing information in the digital world. A lot of times, UX designers and researchers take the responsibility of understanding and improving information architecture of a product. However, it is tricky because users may categorize information differently. This presentation will cover the research methodologies, tools, and skills to study and refine information architecture. Also I will cover the common biases on IA research methodologies.
If you’re not leveraging interface animations to influence your users, you are missing a critical component of UX design. Like body language, motion design supplies a rich, often-subconscious layer of meaning and personality to every micro-interaction. Digital products can leverage the same techniques used by cartoon animators, actors and dancers to convey personality, improve comprehension and influence behavior through movement. Learn the right animation styles for your brand, users and product.
When conducting research with users, designers are always thinking one step ahead. “Should I take them down that thought path? How much more time do I have? What’s the next question I should ask?”
Unfortunately, this is how most people have conversations in their daily life as well—completely one-sided, selfish, and focused on the next time they get to talk. That just doesn’t work when you’re trying to get genuine stories out of people.
Using the Constructivist Listening Dyad (a tool developed for educators), design researchers can uncover greater insights through listening, and not just thinking one step ahead to guide the conversation. By forcing yourself to remain silent and fully dedicate yourself to listening to your users, you will empower them to speak their truth. In the end you’ll have honest insights from your users that will guide your design.
In this session, participants (anyone from designers, researchers, and strategists) will walk away with a refreshed empathy for their research subjects, a new method to apply to their generative research, and refined skills in active listening.
The human brain is so complex that understanding it has proven to be arguably the greatest challenge of modern science. It exhibits patterns that are integral to how we perceive and process information, which we’ve evolved for survival over thousands of years.
An understanding of these patterns is fundamental to designing human-centered experiences, and we can use established principles from psychology to guide us. Instead of forcing users to conform to the design of a product or experience, we can use this knowledge to design for how people actually are.
A solid recruit is essential for good research—UX cannot exist without research, and research requires participants. And yet, recruiting can seem like a daunting or insurmountable task. As the foundation of successful user research, recruitment deserves careful attention.
In this talk, we will focus on the many possible (and varied) ways to secure research participants. We’ll share the pros and cons of each approach, from scrappy DIY methods to outsourcing your recruit to the professionals. We will also discuss best practices for defining your target audience, writing a screener, and compensating participants. You will leave with an understanding of the tools and techniques necessary for a successful recruit, putting you in the best position to conduct successful UX research.
It’s time to dispell these misconceptions about building design systems, their role, and issues with maintenance. This talk will also propose new ideas in the industry in regards to building a design system that is integrated into the production development workflow. After all, the more you can involve the whole team in a process, the more likely you will create a process that outlasts the members of the team.
This talk will cover conceptually what a design system is and how to best abstract UI elements from a design and apply to an application. Tools such as Fractal and Pattern Lab will be reviewed, while integration tools like styled components and React Styleguidist or Storybook will be discussed in detail for how to properly weaponize and maintain your UI across your whole team.
Animation in applications and on the web are much more commonplace, however, whether or not they are an enhancement to the user experience is suspect. The first question we need to ask ourselves is “do we need animation?” and if we decide the answer is yes, then we need to know where to begin to craft an effective animation experience.
Animation has become a strong way to telegraph intent to users and give personality to products. There’s an amazing world of principles to learn from and rich history to investigate that will shape your vernacular and purpose when working with animation. We’ll start with the beginning of animation usage and move into the foundations that lead to believable and useful animations. Then, we’ll get current and learn about how to implement UI/UX animations and the Web Animation API that leverages a more performant approach to dynamically animating UI.
There will be animation, code and friendship!
Nerditees
Lead Honestly
Boxes and Arrows
