Entertainment and Edification: World Usability Day @LexisNexis Raleigh
By Archana Shah and Teresa Whitley (UX Researchers at LexisNexis, Legal & Professional)
What is World Usability Day?
Make life easy. It really is that simple — that is the point of making products usable. World usability day (WUD) is a day of celebration, meant for us to reflect on the strides we have made, challenges we have overcome all while spreading the UX good word.
World Usability Day (Nov 8th) was a big deal for the UX team in Raleigh — it was also a great opportunity for us to celebrate with our colleagues and spread the knowledge we had gained. 2018’s theme was designing for good or evil, which helped us add some spice to the day long activities — especially since we chose not to restrict ourselves to just products that we had built 😊 We had a blast putting a successful event together.
Read more about https://worldusabilityday.org/portfolio-item/2018-theme-design-for-good-or-evil/
The hype
The UX team created posters that were hung up all over the building. We had event displays on the TVs near the elevator banks, and of course, used the good old grapevine to get word out. Raleigh’s leadership were very supportive as well — our site lead mentioned the day-long celebrations in the townhall, inviting the entire nearly 700 strong employee body to attend. Invites went out to the entire site with the agenda shortly after.
That said, actual meeting invites so folks remember and can schedule around activities are a great idea.
The activities
Being the enthusiastic bunch that we UXers are, we planned many events all day long.
Our not-so-secret motivation all along was to encourage design thinking, so most of the “stations” we set up were interactive, but we purposefully kept it light. All of the activities were designed in keeping with the theme of 2018’s World Usability Day: designing for the good and the bad.
The talks
Session 1: We started off with a salon around AI and ethics, hosted by UXers working in that space. The intense discussion that ensued was one where AI’s decision making and recommending abilities were debated: is it helpful or hindering? Does it empower you with the right information or lead you down a pre-designed path? From conversational voice assistants to smarter search engines, this is becoming an important topic for most organizations. You’d be surprised at how much you can learn from people with varying perspectives on this!
Session 2: This was followed by a powerful discussion on the importance of accessibility in the products we build, the impact it has on our users and how far we still have to go. This was also an opportunity for us to proudly showcase the accessibility toolkit that the team has built.
The displays
We then had multiple info sharing sessions at different parts of the day in an exhibition style for a moving crowd. Displays included:
Upcoming changes to a product based on user centered design that gave us a glimpse of how complex the duties of our end users can be, be it exchanging information with their colleagues or simply organizing the immense amount of research and resources they put together for a case
The process and examples of journey maps, how they could effectively be used, their value and when they are best built. The best part about doing a display like this is that it does not have to be elaborate; a simple interactive example was plenty useful!
Voting machines. One of our researchers had actually written a thesis on the usability issues with the voting machines and resulting errors. Of course, the timing of WUD being close after the elections helped.
Our brothers-in-arms (we mean partners-in-crime) also pitched in:
Our data science team pitched in with some great examples of how data visualizations could be designed for the good or bad; there were some great interactive displays of misleading visualizations as well as knowledge sharing on building good data visuals, covering aspects like the data to ink ratio.
Outcome driven innovation (ODI) is becoming an increasingly popular buzz word in the industry. One of our product managers set the stage on ‘thinking in the language of jobs to be done’ while sharing some great examples of how they could be used, what we have learned and the merits of this very user-centered methodology itself. He also showcased how UX partnered with product on the discovery process for innovative changes in our AI and machine learning space using ODI.
We decided to put a little twist on the ‘designing for the bad’ part of the day and had a poster board of examples of bad UX; while these were funny, they were also thought provoking and spread the message of why navigation, function, users’ context and needs, are fundamental building blocks in any great design. We have left this piece up in our hallways, both to lighten up every passer-by’s day and to spread the good word. Or maybe the bad word?
The highlight
The main intent of this session was to give our audience a chance to learn about our users, but we did throw in a few questions that may have scored us a few extra brownie points. When asked how they had made a positive impact to the community, each of the panelists share heartwarming stories from helping struggling students to hurricane victims; knowing we contribute to that in whatever small way left us with that nice warm, fuzzy feeling. There is no usability without the user; having some sort of user interaction for WUD — in our humble opinion — was the icing on the cake
The most publicized and attended event on the day was our user panel interview. We arranged for some of our locally based users to spend an hour with us talking about their duties, their future and the influence research tools had in their roles. We were lucky to have a panel with diverse backgrounds, and each of the panelists captivated the audience with their quips, insightful thoughts and war stories.
The outcome
A successful day that became the most talked about event for the longest while. Most importantly, we planted little seeds of design thinking across the organization.
The credits
This was the easiest part to write up — our awesome UX team. We say this genuinely with no doubts in our minds. The entire team pitched in, helped each other out, put in the extra hours it took to pull this off. Thanks to this passionate team, we had variety, humor and depth in the knowledge that was shared. Of course, none of this would have been possible without our leadership standing firmly with us, encouraging and enabling us each step of the way.
All in all, we had the best ingredients and the right recipe to have an enjoyable and educational World Usability Day. We can’t wait for the one next year!
