It is quite scary when you have been in an industry for more than 20 years and you are seen as expert in the field, and you see a job advert that has a role that you have never heard of before.

This happened to me about 18 months ago and people are still advertising for that role. The role in question was a UX Architect. What the hell is a UX Architect? Is it someone that designs the user experience of a solution architecture. Is it someone that only focuses on information architecture. Who knows? …

One of the key components of the Lean methodology: the Build, Measure, Learn cycle is a way to gather and analyse feedback. First seen in the Lean Startup Book by Eric Ries. The process is all about learning fast, so you can build fast. This is done by measuring early and using the outputs to enhance your learning.

The process is best described as a cycle approach. In the inner circle you have the stages: Ideas, Code and Data and on the outside you have the steps to move from stage to stage: Build, Measure and Learn.

The overall purpose…

It’s the week of the conference and the countdown is well and truly on. Hope you enjoy hearing about the week ahead and the conference it self. If you missed part one on the preparation then go find it here.

Monday

Today’s job is to finish off a prop. I know you should never use props. But as I am speaking after lunch on the second day I need to inject some fun into the talk. That’s why, with the help of my 6 year old daughter, I have been making a giant magnifying glass.

Due to time constraints and a…

It’s one month until the UX New Zealand conference and we have had a great session with a speaking coach. While in the session I thought it would be a good idea to do a blog post on what it is actually like being a speaker, and so here it is.

NOTE: It’s now the week of the conference! so time to post the blog.

The beginning

It all started back in mid-March when the call for speakers was announced. Now comes the first hard decision — what talk do I put forward. Do I put forward a story based…

UX Research is an important part of all projects. When and how you do the research should be planned. But what types of UX research should you plan?

In general, UX research returns two types of data Qualitative and Quantitative, often shortened to Qual and Quant. Because, I don’t know about you I often add a couple of extra t’s in Quantitative!!!

• Qualitative — observational findings, emotions and human behaviours.
• Quantitative — metrics and actual data.

Here are some examples:

• Qualitative — During the user testing it was observed that some of the participants had to re-read the first paragraph…

It is always important to celebrate success. Here at Siso we have a neat little way to do this. Mini figures.

Our successes range from new clients or projects. New product releases or hitting a target in the number of sales / downloads. Depending on the level of success we get between two and five mini figures.

For recent work we secured with Westpac we got Gizmo and Stripe from Gremlins, and Predator. When our founder, Dominic Rogers, secured a speaker role at UX New Zealand we celebrated with Thanos and Godzilla.

Whether you have a live website, mobile app or just wireframes, an Expert Review can help identify areas that could have improved user experience.

So, what is an expert review? An expert review is conducted by a Senior UX consultant who uses their knowledge and best practices to identify usability problems. An Expert Review can be also called a UX Audit. It covers six main focus points:

These areas are then evaluated based on the Nielsen Norman Groups usability heuristics – a set of guidelines and principles that cover user experience best practices.

Accessibility

Accessibility is not only about a…

Working with different clients you see lots of different methods of managing risk, and we always get asked our opinions. So I thought we should share how we manage risk on our internal projects.

Here at Siso we use both the ROAM and RIDA methods combined.

What is ROAM?

ROAM is a method for managing risks that categorises them based on their status. The traditional acronym stands for:

• R — Resolved — The risk has been eliminated or is no longer a problem
• O — Owned — The risk has been assigned to someone and has not been resolved
• A…