UXcampCPH sessions summarized

I attended UXcampCPH, a barcamp-type conference on user experience (UX) design in Copenhagen, last weekend. It was great! There were about 270 people from different countries and different professions, but all of them passionate about UX and willing to share what they knew in sessions and discussions.

Huge thanks to the local organizers who were incredibly dedicated and competent all through the event and pulled it off without a hitch! And thanks to the sponsors who made this all possible.

Below is a summary of some of the sessions I attended. I’ll have more to say about what tech comm can learn from UX and the differences between the two professions and between a barcamp and a conference, so watch this space. (There’s RSS and e-mail subscriptions to the right to remind you when new posts appear…)

Navigation as cross-channel sense-making

Andrea Resmini‘s keynote on Friday was a dense conceptual talk about navigation. Whether on a web site, in an app or in a city, navigation helps use to make sense of our surroundings. We use paths, of edges/walls and of nodes/intersections to choose from available options.

Andrea Resmini starting his keynote, being photographed by Eric Reiss; photo by @kmdk

In our navigation, our perceptions may differ from the physical reality as a city map never matches our personal idea of a city. But maps still are good, sharable representations of quests in which we act our personal narratives.

On the web and in apps this means that we need to learn to “navigate the database”, for example, by perceiving Facebook as our regular bar: It’s probably not a perfect place, but it’s where all our friends hang out. So as we use navigation, we create our own choreography across several channels which makes our experience cohesive and meaningful.

– I thought Andrea’s talk was a bit academic, but certainly thought-provoking. I was glad that a friend of mine had previously tipped me off to one of his earlier talks about “Pervasive IA” which I found a bit more pragmatic and a good introduction to Andrea’s work.

Prototyping user experience

Leisa Reichelt‘s opening keynote was a well-argued, convincing plea for prototyping. Iterative prototyping beats waterfall projects – if you can afford it.

Waterfall-model projects, Leisa said, are often more orderly than the projects and the real world which hosts them: They “require your best ideas while you still know least about the problem.” But if you start out the project with an assigned front-end developer and real content, you can start with a good idea and iterate your solution until it works in terms of quality and volume and until it satisfies the customer (or time/money run out).

Photo by @Berlinertorte

Prototyping, according to Leisa, beats abstraction, will expose stupid ideas quickly and helps to make good decisions based on real content and real solutions. It makes the strategy live in deliverables, not in meetings.

There are two potential issues with prototyping:

• Some companies find it more difficult or more expensive to throw away a prototype development than a solution design. But in either case you will most likely throw away something during a project.

• It’s an artisan model that doesn’t scale well: It’s great in one project, but it’s very difficult to assign the same developer or designer or technical communicator to two projects at the same time.

– I enjoyed Leisa’s talk thanks to her way of presenting: Very lively, emphasizing stories and anecdotes, but her main points are well supported by her slides. It inspired me enough that I will try prototyping in the near future – I have a small in-house tech comm project for which this might work well… 🙂

Pattern recognition

In my own session, I talked about pattern recognition as an essential mental strategy for acquiring and disseminating knowledge, even though most of us are not aware of it. When applied consciously, UX designers can employ pattern recognition processes to develop effective user experiences more efficiently and help users orient themselves.

– I sincerely thank the 100 or so people who attended my session for their kind, attentive reception. I am especially grateful for the engaged discussion we’ve had how pattern recognition can be applied to UX design. You can find my slides over at slideshare.

Simple drawings

Louise Klinker in her presentation showed the many ways how just about everyone can use sketching. First, she walked us through the basics how most people can draw basic shapes like a line, a circle, a rectangle, a triangle, a wavy line and a 5-pointed star. Then she showed how you don’t really need any more shapes than these. Put them together, and you can sketch people (a 5-pointed star with a circle instead of the top arm), place (houses or meadows) and process (using arrows, clouds, symbols).

Second, she showed that sketching can be useful in many areas of business. You can, of course, sketch the obvious, such as GUI and web site designs, but you can also sketch plans and workflows. You can sketch processes and agreements and from them whole business models. Here’s the basic business model of AirBnB:

Photo by @isa_157

– I’m habitually very much a words guy (hey, I’m called a tech writer, not a tech sketcher…). So I really enjoyed that session, because it got me over the fear of sketching and the thought that I cannot draw… I’m nowhere near the 30 days or so it takes to anchor a new habit, but I’m not such an “un-drawing” guy as I thought…

Expert reviews

Rolf Mölich showed how expert reviews of web sites are as reliable as and not more expensive than usability tests with users – IF they are done right. Because data trumps opinion any time.

Photo by @saevarsson

To get expert reviews right, you need actual experts in both usability and the subject domain, these experts need solid methods, and the test needs open discussion to avoid dismissal of the experts’ results as mere opinions.

– I liked Rolf’s interactive mode that had us signal our collective opinions about expert reviews using green, red and yellow (the latter for undecided). And I appreciated his candor when he admitted that he’d had second thoughts about the heuristic method he invented with Jakob Nielsen about 20 years ago.

Beyond responsiveness

Eric Reiss‘ closing keynote summed up many threads and ideas of the day, among them:

• Anticipatory design can improve upon responsiveness. Responsive design often focuses on the device more than on the user. For anticipatory design, extract patterns of use and behavior and make the application situationally aware. The situation includes not just location, but also time of day: Around midnight, show me the bars close by, not the barbers.
• More isn’t better. A portal with 49 links and zero focus is not useful. 20 pages with a good story beat a thousand pages.
• Big data, bigger insights. Spot patterns in user data and decide which are meaningful and relevant to your user experience to derive value.

Photo by @mortenriis

• Create uniqueness. The “A” in IA (information architecture) is not only about structure and usefulness, but also about having a personality and beauty. Don’t worship form: Design patterns are mere templates, not design in itself. Don’t enslave yourself to the process.

– Eric brought the barcamp to a great close with his lively presentation. I didn’t mind much that it was a collection of points rather than a coherent narrative, because I could recognize and connect to several of them as he summarized the last one and a half days.

If you’ve attended one of the sessions, feel free to leave a comment or question!

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