10 notes from UX LIVE 2019, London
Last week, I attended UX Live in London, a conference for UX professionals organized by TechCircus. Here are 10 random ideas that I found most interesting:
1. ABR — Always be recruiting
All of the speakers, coming from agencies, consultancies, small or established companies and organizations seemed to have 2 things in common: passion for users AND open roles. If you’re in the user research field or product design, you shouldn’t have a problem finding a job today (at least in the UK), across all levels of seniority! One talk was specifically focused on building a design team (Long story short: British Telecom created much broader roles covering multiple specialties and then only hired “Product Designers” and “Content Designers”. Not good for people who insist on fancy business card titles, though! :) )
2. Processes
This was discussed a lot. Efficiency and how to deliver value as designers within an organization was a big topic. The “double diamond” seems to be standard. EY Seren, a consultancy, is currently practising going through the loop every. single. day. 😳 In the morning they have a very short admin and stand up time, and then go through what they call “Daily LESS” — Listen, Explore, Sketch, Share. Focus was on the sharing part, which, according to Chris Thelwell of EY Seren, was often identified as commonly underestimated part of the design process (sharing updates and progress with other stakeholders regularly).
“I scheduled our stand ups at 9.47, and guess what, it really screws up people’s agendas!”
— Chris Thelwell on disrupting 10 a.m. recurring meetings
3. How designers and methods can get misunderstood within an organization
Through these actual quotes, Noel Lyons of Barclays made us realise how wide a gap between theory and practice can get:
“We need a half-day Design Sprint!”
“We did two rounds of customer testing in my team!”
“This is our Job to be Done”
“We need a prototype for our presentation”
“It is customer-centric because 1M customers are already using it!”
4. “Be an ally, not a resource”
This sentence really spoke to me. It is a tip for designers by Morgane Peng of Societe Generale. She categorised the usual “annoying” stakeholders into 3 groups, and even gave them names:
Hostile Jean — For them, the usual questions would be “Can you make it pretty? I know what they need. Can you make my logo bigger?”
Contemptuous Paul — Their signature questions would be “Can you do the UX? I just need a quick review. Show me your design tool, I’ll do it myself.”
Manipulator Audrey — Likes to say things like “Please add a wow effect. I want a mix of these apps. I need screens for a big meeting!”
… no surprises here, but Morgane shared her tips on how to approach all three. Go read her article on this topic here on Medium!
5. Strategic research
Alexander Muir of John Lewis shared his expertise on how to become real partners for product managers and decision-makers when it comes to finding insights. In order to succeed, you’d need to understand what’s on the PMs’ mind and to know what decisions are keeping them up at night. Few tips on this:
• What KPIs are important for them
• Details on milestones and major decisions
• Be clear on deadlines
• Dig out areas of most angst
• Probe for areas of unknowns
• Collaboratively agree what the project actually needs
• Show how your measurement and findings will support their decision and timelines
• Don’t baffle them with details
As a summary: good questions lead to really useful insights which lead to better business and design decisions.
6. The cutest example of differences between what people want, and what they actually need
… was shared by Paige Bennett (Dropbox) and her toddler:
7. Free time passion fuels work
Tired of spending hours on producing research finding documentation only to see that nobody ever uses it fully and doesn’t come back to the finding? Renato Verdugo of Youtube used his passion for photography and implemented it in his workflow: now, instead of tediously feeding insights software, he creates “A day in life of…” Youtube creators. These stories are then even put up in Google/Youtube offices around the world and allow any employee to see insights, rather than read about them (if ever).
8. 5G is not just a faster 4G 🤯
Just some food for thought on a topic I am not too passionate nor knowledgable about. Even though many things can be automated, and our machines will start autonomously communicating together to get what they need, sometimes, humans still need to be in control.
If a printer runs out of ink, it’s safe to say it can automatically order a new one because you’ll need it soon enough. But what if your fridge can’t see any fresh milk? How safe it is to say that you would want to order another bottle?
It’s humans who should still make the decisions!
9. Putting your users in the centre of your focus changes everything
… nicely illustrated by this animation where you look at the Solar system either from the Sun (Heliocentrism) or from an Earth perspective (Geocentrism).
10. “Eyes expect uniformity. Ears expect variety”
People hate hearing the same thing twice. People hate hearing the same thing twice. It’s a key learning from “Designing voice interfaces” by Andrea Muttoni of Amazon Alexa. Keep this in mind when creating scenarios and scripts for your voice UI!
BONUS: I thought this was a fun coincidence. The UX Live conference was happening right next to LUX Live, so for a split second, I hesitated with the navigation hints :)
Thanks, London (and Algolia, and Paige Bennett!), and see you next time! 👋
