Notes from Talk Day of UXLx 2018 — Things to remember
Main topics I saw floating through all the talks was behavioral design and change of culture. This tells me that we as UX designer are getting close to business people and we also feel responsible for leading and supporting the culture change in our companies.
Some of my notes are quite obvious, but it’s convenient to think about some topic repeatedly. If something is too vague, feel free to ask more in comments. 🙂
Things to remember
„Adults and kids are different. When adults fail, they stop trying. Kids stand up and keep fighting. They don`t stop trying. And that’s the best way to learn.“ — Richard Banfield
- Sometimes a failure is our fault. These things happen, but when we accept responsibility for the failure, it frees us and can stop haunting us.
- Talking about screwing ups doesn’t make you a screw up. Talk about failures.
- Success isn’t usually only our product; it’s the product of more people.
- We should realize that failure can be a viable option for any project. Sometimes the project just isn’t worth it, and we should move to different one, with more potential.
„AR is a nice and shiny toy, but if you don’t connect it to the business soon, it fails. Talk about measuring success early.“ — Boon Sheridan
- We don’t need AR tools for prototyping AR. There is a lot of more elementary techniques, starting with paper and pencil.
- Options of AR are limitless; it’s good to narrow scenarios soon and embrace their constraints.
- When building AR, build it for users that are already mobile-friendly. Like any other product, this doesn’t have to be for everyone.
- Always consider the personal impact of AR product. Ask questions like „How it will affect people when they use it?“ or „How it will change their behavior?”
- When planning AR project, use halftime for building it and halftime for testing. Lot of things is still uncharted territory and testing will generate lot of insights and post-builds.
„The more important the decision, the less the person making it will know about it.“ — Dave Gray
- When talking to business people, it’s important to have a different set of vocabulary and lenses. It’s not only about language but about culture as well.
„If you don’t apply to your value when it’s inconvenient, it’s not a value. Be honest about that.” — Kim Goodwin
„When your values are clear to you, making decisions becomes easier.“ — Roy Disney
- Always ask question „Do we really need all that data?“ and “What will we do with them specifically?”
- We shouldn’t be afraid of creating new behaviors and making them more fun and enjoyable. That’s how we can change something.
“Most generous and useful thing we all can do is to share our practice with people who are already working in the government.” — Cyd Harell
„The way people imagine things affects how they act.“ — Dan Lockton
- The metaphors we use are our way of understanding. Can we design new metaphors to help people (or our own team) to understand things in new ways?
„Great ideas often look weird (at first).“ — Scott Berkun
- All ideas are made of other ideas. Anytime we have creative block, we forgot that everything can be broken into pieces and rearranged again. We don’t need to start with empty canvas every time.
- We should study old interfaces in exploration phase more, we can find interesting patterns there. Don’t assume that only because it’s old, it’s also bad.
„Creativity starts when you run out all obvious solutions. Brain is creative when it’s suitably motivated.“ — Scott Berkun
- Most of the constraints are only in our head. It can be a good idea to create a list of all assumptions that we have in our current projects. We may find that most of them are false constraints.
- We should improve our receptivity for the weird and not be afraid of it. It limits us.
Books to read
- The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson
- The Dance of the Possible by Scott Berkun
- Digital Transformation by Lindsay Herbert
- Leading Change by John P. Kotter
Other resources
- Very detailed notes from most of the talks by Scott Berkun
- Another detailed set of notes from Bruno Amaral
- Information Architecture Lenses
- Toolkit Design with Intent
