Experiencing UX Strat
Since attending UVU, I’ve been given opportunities that I never imagined I’d get! Not only have I grown my skills as a designer, but I’ve been able to travel with my program on what we call, UXpeditions. This summer I was able to go on the very first international UXpedition, and travel to the faraway land of Amsterdam. Every year, there is a conference held called UX Strat, where hundreds of people come to attend workshops and listen to speakers for 3 days. I, along with 6 other students at UVU were asked to attend as volunteers.
On the first day of the conference, my job was to help speakers, which meant I was able to sit in on all the presentations that day. There was one that really stuck with me because it was a topic that I could relate to and wanted to learn more about.
The speaker was from Spotify, her name was Olga Hörding. She talked about personas, and how they were the best way to understand who their listeners were and could be. These personas ultimately were able to help other teams in any stage of their process. Olga highlighted how teams using these personas can create an educated hypothesis, and save time without replacing user research! I loved hearing how a big company like Spotify was being creative with such a simple practice with UX research.
Aside from our volunteering, we had the chance to interact with people in the field and show them what we are doing in our program. I worked on a project with the group that I went with to showcase what our program is doing and how we’re growing our skills. The project was creating 3 different postcards that had 3 different AR codes, which you could scan using your phone to activate the experience. You can read more on this project here.
Our project was announced on the last day of the conference to the entire crowd, we informed them of what it was that we designed and that anyone could come experience it themselves during the break. I can only speak for myself, but I was pretty nervous about showing this, because as a student in front of people who work in the field, I wasn’t sure if they would want to know what we were creating within our program? However, I had no need to worry! Sure enough, during the break a form crowded around the table and I was able to talk about not only our program but who I was as a designer.
As students we are naturally curious and even worried at times, about what life is like working in the real world. Oftentimes the things we learn in school seem like things they just teach us, but are they really practices and processes they use in the field? One of the best parts about being at UX Strat, was that those questions were answered by people who work in the industry, and for big companies like Spotify, Shell, Fjord, and so many more! Being able to interact with them was so valuable for us because they didn’t just see us as students, but they saw us as peers!
