Interestingly Jared M. Spool waxed on recently about slowing down and changing the design process, from one large change to just hundreds of small testable alterations. Now this is nothing really that new.

In the early days of the web (1995 to 1997) I remember it was all about making small changes, validating them.

You know the drill make small changes, implement, test response, respond to test. These can be from changing a typeface, moving a heading, changing the location and size of a button.

Seeing what worked for your audience and what didn’t, sometimes you rolled back a change, other times we just tweaked the change a little to gather a greater improvement.

Advantages

Overall this staged approach to designing and presenting a web site allowed for a:

• Very rapid response to influencing forces
• Defined focus on the changes being made
• Ease of validation of changes
• Ease of customer acceptance

A change happened over weeks or even months not overnight. Most of the time users never noticed.

Somewhere along the way we lost sight of this and started making websites like print brochures and software releases.

Guess we applied the wrong processes that we knew to the (then) new medium.

Still need to Plan

Only issue with the continuous approach is that you have to plan and prioritize, and continuously ensure you plan is still valid with your customers. Without this you’ll just be rolling out outdated or ill timed aspect to your product.

Remember all this is pointless if you don’t have your customers involved in the process.

Of course if you wanted to be really trendy then it’s just all about Agile based Continuous Delivery. Which really isn’t anything new in the web industry.

But in reality it’s all just part of process in stopping the constant redesign cycle.

It amazes me suddenly everyone is a UX designer, what next UX postal workers.

I suspect that most UX designers don’t really know what is involved with a real customer centric process.

When discussing User Experience with people that have only partly encountered the term, I unusually first clear up the  myth that User Experience (UX) is just the User Interface (UI).

Often they are surprised at the extent of UX Design and the degree of scientific rigor behind it.

Now it is good that the term UX is starting to mainstream and all sorts of people outside of the IT, marketing and communications industries are realizing its importance.

Still we need to remember why User Experience is not the User Interface:

• User Experience is Wider in Scope.

  The User Experience covers a lot more than just the visual presentation layer.  It can be sound, information organization, behavioual response, environmental conditions, service presentation and so on.

• User Interface is usually just Visual.

  The UI is just the visual design and the interface design. With maybe a little interaction design, but that is it.  It’s very easy to forget about the people aspect of this.

• It’s more than Design Patterns.

  While design patterns help in the building of a UI. Understanding the behaviours around that pattern and the aspects of the micro interactions is important.

• UI Rules are not critical.

  Often User Interfaces have rules or guidelines for use.  These are often seem as common solutions and are quoted in support of the UI solution.  This is a good starting point; however the UX context and customer behavior may take the final solution in a different direction.  More work that just applying the “rules” will be required.

The Stuff Before and After the UI

Around the development of any User Interface, ideally there should be a fair amount of UX techniques.

Be this from the initial problem verification, customer research and solution proposals, to the final iterative prototype development and validation.  As you can see there are a good deal of processes that can occur before the UI is even considered.

The UX process around the Interface Design

Sure usually a good UX professional can do the UI if required, however limiting their skill set to this alone would be a complete waste of a resource.

The External Lens View

We know we have a problem as UX design is invisible.

It’s not a thing you can point to and say – that is the UX design.  With UI design however, you can point and say – “see the sexy User Interface”.

From a external view point, outside of the industry, UX is this magical – almost snake oil like role, that is seen as a luxury item.

After all it doesn’t help in the delivery of the product or making people use it? Or does it?

It could be said that all UX people do is confirm issues, and direct others like developers and designers to the right solutions.   In reality does the role exist at all?

Ask most Project Managers, Team Coaches and Project Leads and they will tell you they aren’t really sure what UX people do. But they are sure that an existing team member can fill the role anyway.

Yes all this is all an education and justification issue, you would think after 10 years we would have nailed that one.

Muddying the Roles

There are a good number of Visual Designers and Front End Developers moving into roles as UX Designers, most by simply changing a position title.

I have no problem with this if a complete customer centric empathic UX Design, as detailed above, is being conducted.

However I have found time and time again this change is just a window dressing at best.

The reality is the only empathy that is expressed is in the statement – “I’m a user, therefore I understand user experience”.  Only a marginal consideration is given to the issues of the customer at all.

This leaves people such as myself with a fair degree of UX consulting experience, in a bind.  As now I’m just seen as a UI designer.

Others in the UX industry, have become more specific in defining what they do, morphing into Interaction Designers, Human Behaviour Consultants, Customer Research Analysts or just Experience Consultants.

This doesn’t help anyone in the long term, as now outside the UX industry is watered down and truly a bit muddy.

Supporting Skills of UX Design

You know in a way maybe UX Design doesn’t really exist. It’s just a term afterall to group together all our skills used to produce balanced solution.

When you’re building for a good UX design, you don’t really go out and apply your skills in UX design. You tend to instead use on of the following supporting techniques to bolster up the UX design solution in context of the overall process; of which the User Interface is just a component.

Proceses supporting User Experience

Whether you are a recruiter, an agency director or a project manager; remember there is a distinct difference between a UX and UI designer. If you advertise for a hybrid I’m going to expect to see some skills cross over not just front-end designer skills.

What do you do when you get feedback from a client or customer.

Do you file it away, never to see the light of day. Read and delete it. Dismiss it, or look for justification to defend the actions /proecess raised. Pretend it never arrived. Run and hide!

All of the above?

If you are like me, and everyone else, you will have found feedback somewhat painful at some point. Although I have learnt to detach myself and revile in any feedback, good or bad.

Feedback can be painful to the point that we just don’t really seek it out.  We even shy away from it, when it is given.

This is okay, it’s human nature, just our defensive ego doing its job, nothing really to be concerned about.

However we should be concerned if it’s a constant stream of denial of the issues raised.

As UX professionals we need to consider any feedback on its merits that it was given. We need to be constantly checking our motivations and actions especially in relation to comments and feedback from peers, clients and customers. We need to maintain a sense of objectivity.

Comment and Feedback Mining

This is especially true as a trend is approaching in the area of customer feedback and comments.

Previously this customer content was just considered to be an add on, maybe an annoyance, just a supplementary commentary. Something that would not be seriously regarded.

It was a just mirror game of make-believe letting the audience believe that by letting them comment that they were engaging and making a difference.

Yeah we all played this game of engagement and social media to push people to the clients products.

Overtime the enlightened organisations have listened and acting on these comments and customer feedback. Improving their services, products or at least their customer research.  Based firmly on this level of real customer engagement.

They have effectively mined and used this free resource, of customer information, as any other analytical research tool for the benefit of their business.

When there are large quantities of this type of information trends can be seen in the feedback, this content can then be analysed, evaluated and given due consideration.

Empathise!

Remember people are going out of their way, on social media, blogs or the like, to comment on your service or product, it’s a simple matter to consider these comments even if you don’t agree with them.

Try and put yourself in the customers place. Empathise with them over their situation and the issues they are encountering. Customers may have taken a considerable time to gather their feedback, type it up and send it to you – we need to start respecting that.

It’s a good idea to also remember there is often a secondary motive behind all comments and feedback people submit.

I used to consider that this level of analysis was only viable for very large organisations with correspondence levels that requiring full time staff.

I was wrong, enquiries, feedback and comments can still be used to give effective insight into the issues, personality types and process of the customers, no matter what the volume.

So ask for feedback, comments and don’t ignore them – use them!

Generating a culture of responsiveness could provide your client with a competitive edge.

Web Standards and Web Accessibility aren’t that important. There I said it.

When normal people (non technical, non web industry) use a website, app or online service, they only consider their experience, they don’t for one minute consider how the site was constructed, if it follows standards, if it is responsive, if it is accessible to all people.

People are very self centred, you have to remember that.  They don’t care if the site is going to work for anyone else, just them, and them alone.

They just consider, “does this work for me!”

They just want to have a seamless good experience with no issues.   A site that works as they expected and from which they can find the information they want.  If they get this then they will be reasonably happy.

We are not the Customer

It is only us, the technical community that considers web standards and accessibility to be important.

For the customer on the website, as long as it works, they don’t care.  This is especially important to remember when developing web sites.  The technical aspects aren’t as important as the overall customer experience.

If any customer can use and get access to the content and functionality of a website then what is left to improve.   What aspect can customer  engage with that can be improved.  You will find all that is left is just the experience.   The experience is the differentiator.

It is this quality of the experience that is for the most part considered important.   Even if there are error messages, it doesn’t matter as long as the issues are quick and easy to resolve without  time wasting or frustration.

Now the experience doesn’t have to be perfect. Yeah that’s a kicker, it can even be bad.

The Low Experience Bar

Sadly, people using websites have become very tolerate of bad design and bad experiences.   The classic examples of this are often sites that have something that you covent. Like concert tickets.  These sites often get way with a good deal of dark patterns and bad UX.

People will put up with a complex registration process, ticket selection, booking process and then ticket ecommerce systems, designed by the Data Base Administrator;  just to get those tickets.

Customers grit their teeth and just get on with it. In some cases even they have come to expect this level of bad design, as the norm, and just the way it is.

The only reason they put up with this bad experience is for the end goal of the process.

People will even tell you after a bad experience, that it “wasn’t that bad, I’m used it it.” or they may even declare it to be a “good experience overall” – mainly because they achieved the end goal.

This degree of cognitive bias on the outcome must be remembered when surveying or interviewing people.

For the most part people are just glad the service is online and available.

Yes the bar is still set that low for exclusive items.  The experiences people expect is little more than a site being functional or just usable.

Sure great visual design is important, and this helps hold a person, but the functionality still needs to work.   If it doesn’t they just consider the site broken,  and as you know people then move on.

Raising the Bar

So next time you are designing for your customers, let’s try and raise that bar a little.

Get the website functional, visually appealing, designed for a good experience (that includes good content), not an average one. And then you can consider web standards and accessibility.

Of course I know a lot of you will do the web standards and accessibility stuff without thinking about it anyway as part of your process.   And power to you, but designing for a good UX comes first.

A few years ago I proposed that we stop wireframing everything and that we do some sketches and then prototype.

I’m really glad the message has got out and people are considering that wireframing is just a transition to the prototyping.

However there is still a good number of issues when designing to support a good user experience that we need to get rid of.

We have become oppsessed with the artefact – the final report or diagram.  A good deal of resources is just wasted producing them.

Well I can tell you they are not important. We need to take a lean approach and stop producing them.

It’s not about the Results

These 400 page reports and pretty diagrams are the issue.

We have created a world where we have an excess of reporting. Where is it now expected that management will front up to the executive with an expensive looking report to show how “busy” they have been.

Partly this issue has it’s roots in our outdated concept that “more hours worked” = “greater productivity”. We now know that to be complete crap.

On most projects the UX is never really considered ideally, at some point there is always a compromise taken. This is usually due to lack of resources (budget).

Now what would happen if you could find, 10%, 15% or maybe 25% more budget for supporting a good UX, clearly you could use that extra budget on those techniques and methods you discounted to confirm you design or research.

What if doing all those pretty reports was taking 25% of the budget. Would you question why they are being done.

Consulting Reports

Now I get that from a consulting basis the big report or the pretty diagram is usually an end of line item, a solid deliverable for the client.   Something you get paid for. I live and work in this UX consulting world, so I get that.

I have to produced these reports or diagrams that very pretty and extremely over detailed, just so the client felt like they got their moneys worth. When in reality the money was spend on knowledge transfer previously with their team.

Also the reality of the matter is only the summary of the report is ever read.    

Maybe as consultants we need to be looking at producing a MVP in the form of the usual pretty report.

So why bother with the Artefacts of the Process?

If we took all the extra effort and redirected it back into the project surely that woud be of benefit.

The entire point of the final products, is really just to focus the team on the information or design and start a conversation or feedback.  The conversation can be from customers, stakeholders, product owners or colleagues.

Now if you are working solidly on a project, then you will be constantly sketching, researching or the like. 

Producing low-fi items, that can help serve as daily discussion points.  As opposed to the traditional “over the wall approach” when we hid ourselves away to produce wonderful shelfware reports.

It’s just a matter of the way we are working.

What if we just used those sketches, the workshop posters,  that review video of the testing session.  What if we kept the reporting artefacts to the core of the information with maybe a summary of findings.

It’s About the Discussion

It’s this discussion that is the important aspect, the information that comes out of this discussion: the requirements, issues, directions, possible solutions – these are the important aspects. Not the pretty outdated management reports.

To often it’s these comments or discussion points that are forgotten or put aside with our headlong obsession to produce 400 page reports on the matter.

We need to change the focus.

What better place than at the source.   Stop producing the shelfware and focus on greater productivity for the project overall. Get the team collaborating effectively.

Keep the outputs lean.  Generate the discussion and move the project forward.

Over the last weekend, 2-4 November, I participated in the first ever Perth Sustainability Jam, as part of the Global Sustainability Jam, 48 hours, 59 locations saving the world.

The Jam was a fun, if not an exhausting experience.  

It showed clearly how to bring together a room of strangers, from different backgrounds, and forge them into a cohesive quality team producing outstanding results in less than 21 hours (working time) out of the 48 hours allocated.

One of the refreshing attitudes was not discussing how to do the processes and techniques around the jam, but to just get on and do them, learning on the fly in most cases.

The reason I signed up for the jam was to practice a series of tools and techniques with people I don’t normally work with and maybe learn a few more.

I must admit that by Friday afternoon I was a little sceptical of the entire affair; the call to have the usual relaxing evening and a refreshing climb on Saturday was very strong.  

However I went along anyway, if for nothing else than to meet new people from completely different industries.

I’m glad I did.

Theme – Heartbeats

The theme for the 2012 Jam was ((Heart)) Beats.  Which lead to some very interesting issues around which projects where designed and possible solutions produced.  

The outcome of the Perth Jam was four distinct projects: reducing package waste, reducing consumerism, promoting communal food production, and a way to make work environments energy neutral.

Designing without a Net

One of the liberating aspect of the weekend was the rapid development time for the solutiuons using a very much Lean and Agile approach to the interactive prototype of the solution.

Plus the bonus of not having to use a computer, sometimes you just need a break from the digital!

However all weekend I had lot of niggling questions about various aspects of our solution.  Fine details, some of which could trip the project up, especially in various contextual reference points.  

The lack of initialising research, was for me personally and professionally a little off putting.   However for most groups at the Jam this lack of research was supplemented by the expertise of the local sustainability people at the Jam.

Lessons Learnt

The outcome of the Jam was just amazing.

It was rewarding to see how far the solutions had come in such a short time with just a focused collaborative effort.  

Although for me personally  due to my UX  research and design background  I did find the Jam a little like another day at the office.  In reality I didn’t really learn any new techniques.

Thinking back on the weekend there is one thing that did really become apparent – some aspects of UX and UCD are just broken time silos. More on this to come.

I also had a wonderful opportunity to work and collaborate with some very talented people.  Some of which I would gladly work with again anytime.

The next Perth Sustainability Jam will be in March 2013 – this time a Global Service Jam (thanks Adam), I recommend people get along to this unique non-digital creative experience.

As a UX Consultant I see a great deal of disconnection between providers and customers all the time.

In large respected organisations I have often seen support people, call center staff, BAs, developers,  managers, directors, and the like laughing and making fun of an email from a customer.   With no regard for the customer, or their viewpoint, or the issue they are having.   The customer in their eyes is just an idiot, to be discarded.

This has to stop.   After all aren’t ‘customers’ still people just like you and me, even aren’t we customers.

It seems as if everyone in  service provision has been taking customer service lessons from Basil Faulty (from the TV program Faulty Towers).

Now in the area of User Experience there has to be a degree of real empathy and understanding of the customer.  This is critical culturally for improvement of the user experience from an overall service to product delivery.

The attitude against the customer is a typical very common defensive response,  we are wired you see to respond negatively against others that aren’t in our immediate group (like a customer) especially if they upset the status quo.

Be Honest, Do You Have a Disconnection

Too often there is a distinct denial that this behaviour exists at all, or the assurance that it’s only an isolated incidence.  More often than not I find that this behaviour has become sadly entrenched in the cultural of the provider.

Now we really need to be honest with ourselves,  what do you feel and what do your collegues do when you get correspondance from a customer.

Do you sit around and laugh at the comment, considering the person pointing out the issues as being a bit of a “dickhead”?

Ask yourself this:

• When you get an email or phone call complaining or pointing out an issue – what is your first emotional response?   What is the response of the team?
• When you get a comment or feedback from social media  - again what is your response?  And what is the team’s response?

Too often we have an initial negative feeling ranging from “Damn interruptions” to “Stupid users”.

This represents an undercurrent in the emotional detachment from the person you are responding to.

After all they aren’t really there, they  are somewhat displaced,  just a name on paper, just a email address, just a bodiless voice, or a mindless post or tweet.

The complete abstraction of the subject does tend to happen regularly within government and larger organisations.

There is hope, however, I have seen that it’s a little harder to build this degree of detachment when the interaction is face to face.  But it can still happen.

Why is this Occurring

There are a number of behaviours at play here.

All of which are centered around your self or group survival instinct.  Behaviours that we should keep in check in our modern peaceful society.

They’re not bad behaviours, just you need to be aware of them and when you reverting to use them.

Survival Mode

There is a tendency to want to reduce the more intense emotions in our lives such as anxiety, fear or disgust.

This comes from our internal responses in these emotions.  In the longer term, we need to help reduce the overall adrenaline feedback response and reduce stress.  To maintain a level field of homeostasis.  As we know a little stress is good a lot of stress is bad.

If customer feedback or contact is generally  spikes a degree of anxiety, be that from fear of failure,  of not having a solution, or having to enforce a policy you don’t like,  then we will naturally supplant this with a degree of disconnection.  It just makes things easier if you suppress the association with the other person; less stress.

Now put that in the pressure cooker environment of a support or call center, were a person will be bombarded day in day out with negative issues or even abuse, and you can understand why people become emotional detached.

Of course to promote this survival behaviour, your mind places itself in a feedback loop that feeds on the degree of disconnection, after all you can’t possibility be wrong, can you. Welcome to a little cognitive dissonance to help it all along too.

Tribalism and Dehumanisation

The survival of the individual works better when we are in groups, be that your team, the division, industry or social group, we like to be identified, for the most part, to belonging to something.  Even if it’s just behind closed doors.

Hence we tend to categorise people into labeled attribute groups such as user, customer, junior, IT, marketing, them, us, black, white, asian, bogan, hipster, geek and so on.  Yes the categorisation helps us deal with  people, sometimes by applying stereotypes.

Now if you consider a group response to a threat upon the general homeostasis of the group, then you are going to  want to make it easier for people to justify their actions against the people in the other group.

This behaviour starts out as phrases like – “they are just users,”  ”it’s just a customer,” then it starts to shift to “another complaint email,” “oh, a complaint ticket”.  Notice that the terms over time become  dehumanised, less about the person, till the point they are just an object in the process.

You see its very easy to dismiss and not think about the consequences of object.   And all along the group tribal dehumanisation of the customer helps support it.

Always Guilty Until Solid Proof

Now if you layer the disconnection and avoidance of the emotion state with the dehumanisation and add a delusional tendency to consider a pessimistic view of a situation, then this completes the mix.

We are predisposed to tend to see people in a negative light with only just the hint of evidence.  Untruths like – “they mustn’t have  followed procedure”, “they’re trying to rip the company off”, or “they’re just plain stupid”; all can be  firmed up as reality and reenforced by the group culture.

Reality maybe completely different, but until we are willing (or force) ourselves to really listen or see solid evidence, our minds will enforce that the customer is basically at idiot.

Why Should You Care

First off you need to consider the customers time and effort. Unless the customer has a major issue they want fixed, then  any correspondance they have given you is a blessing.

They have in fact invested time and money in your organisational brand, in your service.  All this to tell you of a problem, from a tweet, to a feedback from submission – they are trying to help your organisation.

Also consider, for a moment, the low percentage of people that do report issues, then, frankly I wouldn’t be promoting any culture of  disconnection at all.

If you really are looking at providing a customer (user) focused environment then you need to  understand and empathise with the customers issues, and problems.  Sometimes a little understanding of the overall bigger problem can help reframe an issue.

Of course your behaviour responses can just as easily be flipped when you are on the receiving end of bad customer service a few times.   For the most part you need to remember these feeling of frustration, avoidance and false lip service.  This is the initial gateway to building real customer empathy.

So let’s be a little more honest, we all have these moments of disconnection.   The important thing is what are you going to do about it.  How are you going to approach gaining an empathetic understanding of your customers.

The home button is very important for the navigation of any large website (discounting blogs here).

It’s used by people for lots of reasons, but more often that not, after they have got lost.  When they need to restart or reset their perception or browsing of the sites’ navigation.

At this point people are often at their most confused.  So you want to make finding the way home easy.

Now there has been a trend of late to move the home button from the top left of the page to all over the place,  I have even seen it, as the first instance, in the footer of a page.   For a small sites displacing maybe okay, but for a large site with a complex navigation systems this tends to be an issue.

I have often suspected that people had difficulty  finding a way to get home with a lot of websites.    I had seen anecdotical evidence over the years, but nothing solid.

Testing Home

So over the last few years I have been testing this issue every time I conduct a series of UX evaluations (user tests) on a website, just adding a series of small observations on how people interact with the home button on a site they are not familar with.

It came down to three types of scenarios:

• Home button not clearly defined, but not easy to locate (displaced).
• Home button defined, but not easy to locate (displaced).
• Home button defined, in its usual place.

When the home button is not that clearly defined  the results are surprising.   Depending on the audience segments the methods used to get home are mainly via the back button and the logo (note technical audience).

For instances where it was highlighted, but displaced from an expected location, people tended to again use the back button and the logo, with small percentage finding the home button.

When the home button is in it’s expected place (top left on the primary menu) – there was an almost 100% usage of the home button.

The really interesting aspect of this was watching people track their cursor to where they expected  the home button to be and the confusion that resulted when it wasn’t in the expected location – top left on the menu.

Yes highlighting and making the home button standout did help when it was in a new location, but not much.  People tended to almost instinctively move towards the top left.

Why Go Home

Why is this occurring.   Shouldn’t people be adaptable and “see” a home button even if it’s just been relocated.   Well in this case we are dealing with a very deeply entrenched learned behaviour.

The basic web page structure of a few commonly located items – such as the home page, contact, menus, gives people a framework to hang the rest of the every changing element onto.   This framework acts as a grounding for the rest of the design.

The simple rule is when designing web sites take into account this type of learned behaviour.   Don’t mess with the location of the home page on complex web sites.

I’ve been back from UXAustralia 2012 for a few weeks; some elements have faded, while some have been reinforced. This is the reality of work life.

There were a number of talks that kept coming back to the theme of “making a difference”. This really struck a cord with me.

Maybe for too long we have been engaged in the day-to-day mundane projects, you know the ones they pay the bills. They are subsistence, and that is all, there is nothing in them that allows for us to grow as people.

Sure you may improve your skills from time to time, but they are like just eating rice and water, it just helps you survive.

Reality and Changing Track

Unless these projects can make a real change; then really what is the point.

For example if a project can influence the right people to kick off a cultural change, or mentor a group to use user centered principles, or solve one of those really hard issues – then that is something substantial, something with meaning.

Otherwise aren’t we just painting some corporate wall just to have it overwritten by another team a few years later.

I have been thinking about this a lot lately. As a freelancer I often can’t be too picky at the projects I choose, after all I have a family to feed.

Still I can’t help think I’m doing this all wrong. I need to be looking for something in which I will really make a difference, or at least put a team on the right path.

Before I attended UXAustralia I was a little despondent with the state of things.

I just that my career and the projects I did seemed to be destined to be endlessly affairs were all I seemed to do was throw documents over walls. Even the projects were I worked closely with the internal team, there just wasn’t enough time to really instigate any real change. You just planted a seed and hoped.

The Light of Change

However UXAustralia has reenergized me!

I has given me a new direction, something to aim for besides the endless cycle of finding more work for hungry mouths.

Now I don’t know what it is that I’m look for yet, let’s hope the next few months will guide me to the right project that I can feel passionate about, and not just another “rice and water” affair.

You know I have been musing over this for a while; I would even give up the freelancing lifestyle for the right project. After all it’s not like I haven’t had a good crack at it after 17 years. You can’t say I haven’t been successful as a UX freelancer.

So with this article, I’m putting myself on the market.

Let’s see how long this lasts.

Going to UXAustralia is more that just another conference, it’s like coming home to old friends.  It’s a time when the UX community comes together for a brief 4 days (2 days of workshops, 2 days of the main conference).

For most of the year I don’t have a lot of contact with the main stay of the UX community on the east coast of Australia. You have to remember it’s like we are a separate country over here in the west.

This means these 4 days with UX people, is my reset and recharge point for the year.  I get to talk about issues, war stories, techniques, argue over concepts and just see colleagues face to face. Feed my brain on UX goodness that sometimes can be otherwise lacking.

This is something I suspect people on the east coast take for granted.

What’s so amazing about UXAustralia is the wide range of topics and speakers that are present.  Speakers from within the UX space to those doing a UX like role under a moniker that’s a little strategic or a little more design.   After all design influences everything.

Themes and Enlightenment

Every year at UXAustralia there are themes from the community, these aren’t designed by intent, they just happen. A kind of wisdom of the crowds thing.  Reflecting on the core of what people have been thinking about over the last twelve months.

In 2011 at UXAustralia it was clearly mobile, and contextual UX.

This year it’s looking at the bigger picture, the humanity of what we do, questioning why (hat tip Bill DeRouchey) remembering that we are just human (hat tip Stephen Cox) and not prefect (hat tip Ruth Ellison) and that we really should just try are push things, innovate, disrupt and take those world changing steps (hat tip Steve Baty). But still remembering the little things, as these aspects are central to good design (hat tip Harriet Wakelam).

It was wonderful to see the attendees, who were new to UX, suddenly have that classic light bulb UX moment.  You know the awakening moment when you know you have just been shown a better way.

That moment of pure clarity occurring with these people was just magical to see.

This was especially true of the developers who thought they were across the subject. I could see them slowly discovering that they only had a few pieces of a much bigger puzzle, that was refreshing to see.

Adhoc Research

Lisa Herrod’s talk on Gatekeepers was inspirational if nothing else than to remind us that sometimes we just have to research with what we have at hand, and make do.  Lisa however took things beyond this, stressing the moral issues and the importance of community gatekeepers.    Makes me wonder, does the UX community have gatekeepers as well.

Design Space

An interesting aspect was the discussion over a number of talks on the influence of the environmental space on design, be that from using war rooms, design walls (in all their flavours) or the controlled corporate cubical city. The outcomes of these talks confirmed what I have always suspected, good design only happens when there is equal parts separation and collaboration.

Lean, Agile and UX

There were also a good number of case studies on the use of Lean, Agile and UX, showing that these approaches can live and work happy together. It seems that maybe the naysayers from some developer communities may just be misguided.

Language of Discovery

You know when you come out of a talk and your mind is just reeling from the topic you have just heard.

Well that was what the talk by Joe Lamantia was like. It was amazing his process on development of “Task Patterns” was truly inspiring.  Just looking over my sketchnote and my head is still spinning!

Considerations

After all the work we do from a technical view, its all just comes down to people. After all people are the most important aspect of our work, not some UI or process.

I will be talking more about UXAustralia 2012 in the coming weeks, in the meantime a few links of more awesomeness:

• My UXAustralia Sketchnotes
• Ruth Ellison’s Review
• UX Mastery UX Australia Takeouts 
• Matt Mcgain’s Sketchnotes