UXLx: User Experience Lisbon

Speaker: Jared Spool

We are in an age where poor user experiences become the focus of nationwide attention. One doesn’t need to look beyond recent catastrophes, such as Apple’s iOS6 Maps, Healthcare.gov, and the demise of Blackberry’s smartphone to see the necessity of getting the experience right.

Yet, what do we know about ensuring our next design isn’t going down the same road as those that have failed before us? We need to understand how design integrates with our organization’s strategy, to ensure we’re supporting and enhancing it, not taking away from it.

In what may possibly be his most entertaining presentation ever, Jared will show you how to integrate user experience strategy with your business’s objectives. He’ll explore the world of business models, demonstrating the role a UX strategy plays in providing significant value to the organization’s bottom line.

You’ll learn:

- How an expanded notion of content is critical to understanding the value of user experience.

- Where to tailor your design strategy to the five priorities every senior executive cares about.

- Which of the emerging business model variations for content might be the right direction for your business.

Speaker: Jess McMullinMany governments are dealing with today’s challenges using tools from the last century. UX design (and designers) can help meet those challenges and make a difference in our communities, in our nations, and in the daily lives of regular people.The public sector needs better design, from making forms, processes, and official websites easier to use to helping decision-makers understand and collaborate better when creating policy.Design can help create better experiences for citizens, more effective service delivery for government, and create better outcomes and more efficient use of scarce resources.This talk will share the need and opportunity for UX designers to help create better citizen experiences, offer some principles and examples, and invite the audience to discuss how citizen experience fits in the European context.

Speaker: Steve Baty

The questions we ask ourselves at the idea generation stage of design play a critical role in the nature of the ideas generated. Bold questions beget bold ideas; and incrementalism begins in the same way.

In this talk we will look at how problem framing and reframing can impact the ideas teams generate, and how problem statements can be ‘tuned’ to better deliver feasible concepts within your organisation. We’ll look at some recent examples from our work at Meld Studios as well as some well-known case studies from around the world.

Speaker: Bill DeRouchey

The most significant things are often hidden in plain sight. In the world of design and technology, it’s the button. Let’s take a 100 year tour of the history of the button to see how it’s changed how we think, understand and interact with the world. Products, movies, advertisements and more will reveal how we evolved from a mechanical to a digital world.

Speaker: Christina Wodtke

The web world thinks of game design as the next silver bullet, and companies are slapping badges and progress bars over every annoying thing they wish users to do. But as users tire of everything looking like a game, “gamification” is starting to get discarded as just another fad.. Games have been core to human experience since ancient times, and the game industry now makes more than the movies industry. If we want to create amazing experiences for our users, there is plenty to learn beyond the tricks of Gamification. I’ve studied game design from the people who actually make games, such as Dan Cook (Triple Town), Mark Skaggs (Farmville), Amy Jo Kim (Rockband) and Erin Hoffman (Sims Edu) and it has transformed my design practice. Let me share what I have learned. Come and hear how mastery, mysteries and meaningful choices can make your site a pleasure for your users.

Take Aways

* When to use game mechanics, and when they’ll backfire

* How to make your personas more powerful with play-style

* Replace tutorials with more integrated and pleasurable teaching.

* Understand key game mechanics, how they work and how to use them

* Learn how to use the power of games appropriately to drive engagement and retention.

* Practical approaches you can use back in the office monday morning.

Speaker: Jason Grigsby

Windows 8. Chromebook Pixel. Ubuntu Phone. These devices shatter another consensual hallucination that we web developers have bought into: mobile = touch and desktop = keyboard and mouse.

We have tablets with keyboards; laptops that become tablets; laptops with touch screens; phones with physical keyboards; and even phones that become desktop computers. Not to mention new forms of input like cameras, voice control and sensors.

One of the core things that responsive design has taught us is that we have to be comfortable with the ambiguity of not knowing what the size of our canvas is going to be. Input has that same ambiguity. It is transient. It is unknowable. Reconciling that understanding from a design and implementation perspective is going to be as big a challenge if not bigger than the one we faced coming to grips with responsive design.

We’ve learned how to respond to screen size. Our next challenge is learning how to adapt to different forms of input.

Speaker: Russ UngerI’ve worked for a lot of idiot managers in my career. And then, one day, after I had become a manager, it dawned on me: Now I’m the idiot! You see, most of my career has been an exercise in “trial by fire.” This process worked well when I was a designer and was trying to master the art of the task flow, site map, wireframe, prototype, persona, and so on. In leadership positions, the option to go back to the drawing board or to iterate hasn’t always been readily available—nor as painless to my pride and potentially my pocketbook.Many of these lessons haven’t been easy for me to learn. It’s been tough to simultaneously remove obstacles without becoming one, or learning how to say “no” (and the flavors of yes and no!) when I’ve also wanted people to be satisfied with me and the work I’m doing. However, these lessons have all helped me become better at managing to some degree, while instilling a strong sense of empathy for those people who either report to me, or bless their souls, manage me in one way or another.If you’re interested in learning from some of the hard lessons I’ve learned, or in just laughing at my folly, there will be plenty of material to provide you with either opportunity.

Startups; coworking; traction; lean everything. Traditional forms of work are breaking down and reforming into new models, and entrepreneurs carry the torch of change. At the same time, the UX field has matured and become more stable and specialized, often pushing UX into an execution function. The costs of starting a new product have never been lower. So why aren’t more designers embracing the world of entrepreneurship?Turns out designers have a way of looking at the world that is an excellent match with entrepreneurship. But we also have some ingrained behaviors that hold us back and keep us tethered to the status quo.Drawing from her experiences moving from designer to co-founder to teacher/startup advisor/entrepreneur, Kate will share observations and lessons learned for how designers can effectively embrace the entrepreneurship challenge and amplify the power of good in the world.

Speaker: Mike Monteiro

Designers have a responsibility, not only to themselves and to their clients, but also to the wider world. We are designers because we love to create, but creation without responsibility breeds destruction. Every day, designers all over the world work on projects without giving any thought or consideration to the impact that work has on the world around them. This needs to change. In this bluntly honest talk, Mike will invite you to consider your responsibilities as a designer and embrace your role as gatekeeper. You’ll learn how to increase your influence and be moved to use your powers for good.

When something new comes along, it’s common for us to react with what we already know. Radio programming on TV, print design on web pages, and now web page design on mobile devices. But every medium ultimately needs unique thinking and design to reach its true potential.Through an in-depth look at several common web interactions, Luke will outline how to adapt existing desktop design solutions for mobile devices and how to use mobile to expand what’s possible across all devices. You’ll go from thinking about how to reformat your websites to fit mobile screens, to using mobile as way to rethink the future of the web.