UX Camp Spring 2021

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!

Building Character: Creating Unique, Consistent Experiences with Design Principles

Inconsistency is one of the most common points of breakdown and frustration in the interactions and experiences we have. Whether we’re interacting with other people, apps, our bank, our doctor, our government, anyone—we form expectations of what someone or something will do based on our previous experiences and their past behaviors. When something happens that doesn’t measure up to those expectations–that seems out of character–we’re caught off guard. What do we do next? What should we expect now?

Conversations about consistency in design often focus on topics like content and interface design, ensuring that we use the same labels, controls, patterns throughout our creations. But what if we thought about consistency in the relationship between users and our products or services?

Principles act as rules that guide how we think and act. Formed by our motivations, values and beliefs, we use them as “lenses” through which we examine information in order to make decisions on what to do. And because of their persistent influence on our behavior, they influence other’s views and expectations of us. Using these same kinds of constructs throughout the design process we can design unique content, valuable interactions and consistent behaviors that set and live up to expectations for our audiences.

15 minute break.

Siloed organizations aren’t incentivized to improve the space between products, despite the massive opportunity it presents. Seizing that opportunity is as much community organization as it is design.

Enterprise customers increasingly interact with multiple products from the same company. From rapid acquisitions to market opportunities, companies are frequently introducing products and services that are ostensibly interconnected. Users can transfer knowledge of existing product mechanics and flows to new ones, resulting in faster adoption and time-to-value—but that won’t happen by accident.

I’ll show how we’ve managed these efforts at Salesforce: how we built momentum internally, enlisted stakeholders, co-created, made decisions, and set ourselves up for constant improvement.

15 minute break.

Workhorse, data-dense digital products pose serious challenges, requiring compact UI focused on productivity and efficiency. To make better complex apps and software, we must deeply understand the domain expert power user, whose behavior and preferences confound the best digital product designers.

Because mission-critical app users demand compact, crowded interfaces that only a master Excel ninja could love (or use), it can be brutally difficult to make user-friendly products for them. Our UX instincts often lead us to design products hese users rebel against.

But you CAN do it. The best place to start is understanding the user of complex interfaces. In this session, you’ll learn the tips, tricks, and indispensable secrets to help you come to terms with their needs. These principles will change the way you think about constrained interface design. And your power users will love you for it.

30 minute break.

So many of the things we used to rely on to fuel our creativity before the pandemic—meeting new people, traveling, visiting museums—have been off-limits for many of us over the past year. Staying creative can feel nearly impossible—and fear not: there’s hope.

I’ve developed a framework for boosting your creativity no matter the circumstances. I’ll share how to harness your curiosity as a focal point, and how to break that down and to help identify ways to reignite your creativity. The process infused my life with renewed energy that sparked my creativity—from my sketchbook to my day job and even on to receiving a promotion!

15 minuted break.

You did your research, you found the problem. You came up with great concepts and design. But you get to user testing, and all your users can talk about is the content: they don’t get it.

In these days of tight budgets and lean teams, you’re expected to wear many hats. So, in the absence of a content professional, how can you tighten up that content so clients can absorb it?

We’ll go over what content design is, how to incorporate it into every stage of the double diamond process, and mainly some concrete tips to make your UX writing a little better.

15 minute break.

Did you ever wonder why so much of our work seems harder than it should be? Does it feel like you are constantly working at altitude, trying to do more work with less oxygen? Well, Karen’s first job in tech was in 1993. You read that right. 1993. That’s almost 30 years across different roles and companies, all in technology and digital products. And no matter how much more skilled we all get, things just seem to be getting harder. How do we move from barely surviving to practically thriving?

In this new talk, we’ll discuss how we get wicked good: moving through competency and mastery to sustainability, even in environments that seem to be set up for failure, disappointment, and eventual burnout. We’ll explore how to make our work spaces kinder, more inclusive, and more supportive of long term engagement and growth while at the same time encouraging us to be more thoughtful and intentional about the design decisions and career choices we make.

Wrapping up the day.