As we squint into a bright future, let’s first glance back at the user experience industry’s well-meaning, but mostly murky past. UX’s foundation is a sordid mix of lies, shams and idiocy: We never designed experiences and things like mobile have always been adjectives, no matter how many times we sold them as nouns. Now we’re hyperventilating about designing responsively across channels, like that will change everything. We’re still talking about users and those bald apes haven’t changed in tho...
Oct 17, 2013•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast This presentation will argue that as digital matures and becomes one again with physical, immersion in cross-channel experiences will be rather achieved through abstract navigational grammars and place-making, rather than through literal, skeumorphic, in-your-face representations of the real, and will offer a few rules of thumb for turning information patterns into navigable space and actionable places.
Oct 17, 2013•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast This presentation will give an introduction to two dominant models of design-driven innovation – hypothesis-led and insight-led. It will look at the advantages and disadvantages of each; and look at the issue of localised optimal solutions and what this means for innovation.
Oct 14, 2013•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast There are literally hundreds of techniques available to UX practitioners – but which techniques are the most effective? We all have our favourites, but how do you know if you’ve chosen the right combination for your project? We chose to answer this question by tackling a project where time was largely a non-issue – not a Mickey Mouse personal project, but a real ecommerce redesign project for a real client: the Mathematical Association of Victoria’s online bookstore. We managed the client’s expe...
Oct 14, 2013•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this presentation, I will be talking about a unique user research project which sought to explore the user experience of public spaces in New York City. I will describe the challenges we faced in adapting research methodologies traditionally used in the digital space to the physical world, dealing with hostile stakeholders, the mistakes we made along the way, and ultimately the success we achieved. I will also describe the methodology we developed (loosely described as ‘agile ethnography’) an...
Oct 14, 2013•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast Growing consumer businesses in search of new markets need to take emerging market users seriously. But designers often have problems empathising with emerging market users – we can be blinded by what we want them to have, instead of seeing what they really want. In this talk, I draw on the learning curve I went on in my time in emerging market research at Nokia, and give you a new framework to understand and design beautiful and relevant experiences for emerging market users.
Oct 14, 2013•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast The touch device landscape is diverse, fast paced and changing every week, providing new challenges to designers with each new incarnation of device or operating system. But there’s more to challenge designers… thinking about inclusion of people who may have visual, cognitive, hearing, motor or speech impairments…or some of all of them due to age. So what do we mean when we say “designing for all” in the world of touch devices, what makes it so darn hard to do and how can we create user experien...
Oct 02, 2013•25 min•Transcript available on Metacast As the complexity of our digital world increases with tremendous variety in screen dimensions, resolutions, dots-per-inch and input methods, appropriate navigation design and use of proportion is more important than ever. Through better balancing of navigation element sizes, use of space, positioning, appropriate iconography and use of responsive design, a more frictionless user experience can be achieved for competitive edge.
Oct 02, 2013•18 min•Transcript available on Metacast This is the story of Tatts Group’s digital revolution, peering into the last five years of the company. It covers the struggles and successes encountered on the way to turning the group’s fractured online presence into one of Australia’s most visited websites.
Oct 02, 2013•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast How does a major government department with over 60 completely different sites trying to be ‘all things to all people’ transform its web presence into a something coherent and usable? This project was a case of real life being messy and User Experience imitating life! Come along and get the inside track on how we got over our first reaction of throwing our hands up in horror, and after various false starts and mistakes, developed an approach that has valuable lessons for any large-scale web proj...
Sep 22, 2013•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast All UX projects have a community of some sort associated with them. Whether we’re referring to our communities as users, audiences, stakeholders, or people our techniques are focused on engaging with those communities to ensure that we are designing the most appropriate solutions. It is not surprising then, that it often emerges that a UX or concept design job is as much a community management strategy piece as a UX piece.
Sep 22, 2013•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast In co-design those impacted by the proposed design are actively involved as partners in the design process. Co-design is being used in government, community and health sectors to extend traditional consultation methods and increase program reach and impact. Co-design approaches are also being used by corporates to engage internal stakeholders and customers, identify new service opportunities and improve existing ones. But what is it, why do it and how?
Sep 16, 2013•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast …getting 100% participant compliance and delivering meaningful results. On a recent project we undertook a cultural probe as part of our research activities. It turned out to be very successful in that every participant turned in a completed diary and camera full of photographs but most importantly, because of the way we structured the participant activities, we were able to take the data collected and formulate very meaningful results that drove our design decisions. We’ll explain how we achiev...
Sep 15, 2013•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast Jaro is a “Gamified Crowd Funding Platform” that launched in April this year. Users of Jaro pay to play in the knockout tournament for a cash prize that is split between charitable causes and one lucky winner. Chris will take you through the Journey from the first patent lodgement in 2008 through Jaro’s launch in 2013 and beyond: How they got started, how they got stuck and how they learned from failing fast and failing hard. They’ll wrap up with lessons learned after launch.
Sep 15, 2013•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast The difference between a good product and a great one are its details: the microinteractions that make up the small moments inside and around features. How do you turn the ringer off on your phone? How do you know you have a new email message? How can you change a setting? All these little moments—which are typically not on any feature list and often ignored—can change a product from one that is tolerated to one that’s beloved. This talk provides a new way of thinking about designing digital pro...
Sep 10, 2013•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast Just as the medical profession knows what needs to be true in and around a person to have a healthy body, what if businesses and designers had a way of thinking about what makes up a ‘healthy’ service experience? I will explore the beginnings of such a model.
Sep 09, 2013•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast If you’re new to mobile usability testing, fear not. It is not as hard as you might think but there are some key differences to testing a traditional website in a lab that you need to be aware of. This talk will outline 10 things about mobile testing tools, technologies and methods that I’ve learned from testing mobile sites and apps over the last year.
Jul 05, 2013•21 min•Transcript available on Metacast This presentation will describe some of the current challenges in retailing – showrooming, comparative shopping, intelligent agents – and describe how to provide value and gain customer loyalty.
Jul 05, 2013•11 min•Transcript available on Metacast As the number of types of device grows, each with their own interaction model, designing and developing becomes more complex. How can you deliver a consistent interaction design across devices? With mobile design patterns.
Jul 05, 2013•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast Smartphone penetration is growing exponentially in New Zealand and the banks are leading the charge at the ‘enterprise end’ of mobile design. I will present a thorough assessment of New Zealand mobile banking offerings against a clear framework of user experience and interaction design principles.
Jul 05, 2013•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast So everyone’s got smartphones these day yes? But not everyone who has a smartphone can see, hear, move or handle cognitive loads without impairment. So how can we include everyone in our mobile design? This talk shares some top tips on how to create an inclusive mobile design and reveals some things you may not know people with disabilities can definitely do on a mobile device.
Jul 05, 2013•16 min•Transcript available on Metacast Voice controlled interfaces and natural language processing are becoming normal. Major mobile platforms now have voice integrated into the operating system, and Google has been engineering its voice search experience in leaps and bounds recently. Voice interactions will transform how we interact with computers and – just like the touch interfaces that came before them – mobile devices are driving the change.
Jul 05, 2013•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast Mobility has exploded in the consumer space, and this has forced companies to respond, delivering mobile apps, or responsive web designed website. Hidden within organisations, an equally large sea change is occurring. Bring your own device (BYOD) policies are being forced on IT by staff whose personal phones and tablets are better than corporately provided devices. This session shows screenshots and examples from the innovators around the globe, and provides a framework for planning enterprise m...
Jul 05, 2013•46 min•Transcript available on Metacast The precursor to designing successful tablet applications is to gain a thorough understanding of how people use those devices today. This talk will detail my original research in this domain as well as review other user and market research to highlight when, where, why, and how people interact with content on tablets. Insights are drawn from various research using surveys, diary studies, interviews, and observations. The talk will also discuss trends that are starting to emerge, challenges, as w...
Jul 05, 2013•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast The proliferation of mobile device form factors has prompted a re-evaluation of how to best support mobile device users. Responsive Web Design is a promising technique for cost effectively responding to this challenge. However, to date most discussion has revolved around content-driven websites. But how might this approach apply to web applications? How does it compare to other approaches, such as device-specific workflows? In this talk Saasu’s Chief Design Officer, Grant Young, will explore the...
Jul 05, 2013•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast This presentation will explore the navigation challenge for large sites being used on small screens. It will go back to first principles and look at the purpose of various navigation types then explore ways of achieving the same goal via a small space.
Jul 05, 2013•13 min•Transcript available on Metacast Over the past 10 months we have conducted over 78 user interviews and test sessions, resulting in around 60 hours of footage from our mobile ‘sled’ and wireless testing setup in the Boomworks lab. We’d like to share some of the insights we have gleaned from these sessions, punctuated by actual video and commentary from users as they interact with mobile and tablet interfaces.
Jul 05, 2013•25 min•Transcript available on Metacast I love Axure RP as a prototyping tool – it’s in fact one of my favourite software (jeez that sounds geeky). But I want to talk to you about why it can be dangerous (it sounds harsh, but yes – dangerous) to use a prototyping tool such as Axure.
Jul 05, 2013•6 min•Transcript available on Metacast 100 years ago ships in England were being sunk for money. Hundreds of people were dying. Enter Samuel Plimsoll; champion of the common man. His mark, a painted circle with a line through it, persists on ships today. Showing that idea driven solutions, that solve problems, outlast technologically driven ones.
Mar 27, 2013•8 min•Transcript available on Metacast UX work can be hard enough when you have to educate external stakeholders about its value within a truncated timeframe and the constant drumbeat of innovation faster now. But what if your challenge lies within your organisation? How do you develop, much less maximise, the UX capacity of interested supporters, while also engaging those who don’t see UX as their responsibility (or worse, see it as frivolous)? The key is to use tried and proven community organising strategies to develop an internal...
Mar 27, 2013•22 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
