UXLx Talks

When something new comes along, it’s common for us to react with what we already know. Radio programming on TV, print design on web pages, and now web page design on mobile devices. But every medium ultimately needs unique thinking and design to reach its true potential. Through an in-depth look at several common web interactions, Luke will outline how to adapt existing desktop design solutions fo...

Learning to design is, first of all, learning to see. Designers see more, and more precisely. This is a blessing and a curse — once we have learned to see design, both good and bad, we cannot un-see. The downside is that the more you learn to see, the more you lose your “common” eye, the eye you design for. This can be frustrating for us designers when we work for a customer with a bad eye and str...

Big data is helping many industries discover new insights creating smarter companies, and now it’s empowering UX practitioners to see patterns in mountains of data. Customer feedback, trends in support issues, analytics, usability test notes, customer interview transcripts, tweets, blog comments and more can be connected and searched to find serious flaws in designs or inform the next design.  Res...

What is it that delights users? And how can you measure the return on investment of creating interfaces that make users smile? I’ve interviewed experts and users and come up with some surprising findings that will help you plan and design better user experiences and focus your attention where its really needed.

You don’t get to decide which device people use to access your content: they do. By 2015, more people will access the internet via mobile devices than on traditional computers. In the US today, nearly one-third of people who browse the internet on their mobile phone say that’s the only way they go online—in many countries, those numbers are even higher. It’s time to stop avoiding the issue by sayi...

“The details are not the details. They make the design.” — Charles Eames 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 on mute 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 feat...

Addiction or devotion? The complexity of our relationships between connected experiences, devices and people is increasing. Design ethnographer Kelly Goto presents underlying emotional indicators that reveal surprising attachments to brands, products, services and devices. Gain insight into the future of UX and understand the importance of designing user experiences that map to people‛s real needs...

Our material is less then 25 years old. HTML was invented in 1990, and most of us have enjoyed building with it since. Many of us actually helped invent it, or parts of it: the HTML specification, advancements in client-side scripting, new device platforms, new possibilities. We have an intimacy with the material, in the same way that a potter knows her clay. This technology – this powerful force,...

“Siri, did I leave the oven on?”  The idea of the connected home has been around for 40 years or more, but has never taken off as a mass market proposition. But this is changing. Mainstream retailers are starting to bringing out connected home hardware and services to help consumers understand and control their energy use and heating, secure their homes, know who’s in and out, be alerted to any em...

In 1991 Mark Weiser published what is now a classic paper, The Computer for the 21st Century. In it, he laid the foundation for what has become known as Ubiquitous Computing, or UbiComp. Ironically, by having the word "Computer" in the singular, the title of his paper is at odds with the content, since the whole point is that we will not have just one or two computers; rather we will have hundreds...

Designers have long relied on heavy documentation to communicate their vision for products and experiences. As technology has evolved to offer more complex and intricate interactions, the deliverables we've been creating have followed suit. Ultimately though, these deliverables have come to serve as bottlenecks to the creation process and as the beginning of the negotiation process with our team m...

Why the tiny tasks in the Long Tail get in the way of the top tasks of the Long Neck—and what to do about it. All websites are made up of a series of customer tasks. Some—the top tasks—are much more important than others—the tiny tasks. Unfortunately, many organizations spend more of their time on the tiny tasks than on the top tasks. This talk will give you a way to prove that the top tasks are w...

Mobile user experience is a new frontier. Untethered from a keyboard and mouse, this rich design space is lush with opportunity to invent new and more human ways for people to interact with information. Invention requires casting off many anchors and conventions inherited from the last 50 years of computer science and traditional design and jumping head first into a new and unfamiliar design space...

If you want a team to see the world through users' eyes, there's nothing quite as powerful as involving them in ethnographic field studies. However, teams can still struggle with translating their field experience into product features and design decisions. Journey maps help teams structure and share field data, identify opportunities, and determine what kinds of tools and information to offer and...

Responsive Web Design is just one of the tools we use to create better designs. In this session, we'll explore what "better" design is, and apply that in new ways as we craft interactions between people and web sites and applications. In this talk, Derek looks at content, context and design, bringing them together in ways that show us what we can do to create truly responsive sites that meet the n...

The difference between a happy user and a confused one is small…many times our success using software hinges on the smallest of interactions. In this talk Joshua Porter will discuss microcopy, or the tiny bits of copy that helps users in times of need. Examples include reminding people to use the right email address, informing them that their credit card is not needed, or that they don't have to c...

Some of the most effective ways of understanding what customers want or need – going out and talking to them – are surprisingly indirect. Insights produced by these methods impact two facets of innovation: first as information that informs the development of new products and services, and second as catalysts for internal change. Steve discusses methods for exploring both solutions and needs and ex...

Peter Morville's User Experience Honeycomb, one of the most popular visuals in our discipline, encourages us to go beyond usability by creating products and services that are also useful, desirable, findable, accessible, and credible. Now, for the first time, Peter explains why we must go further by creating "architectures of understanding" -- and why designing for insight and inspiration is in th...

Complexity is not only good, it is essential. Our lives are complex as are the activities we do. Our tools must match the activities. People think they want simplicity, but they are wrong, as evidenced by the fact that when offered the choice between a very simple product and one with more features, they opt for the feature-laden one. We don't want simplicity: we want understanding. Complex things...

Clay Shirky coined the phrase "cognitive surplus" to describe humanity's untapped mental energy, energy being put to spectacular and beneficial use in collaborate efforts like Wikipedia. User experience designers are rapidly learning how to tap into this surplus through social and psychological insights into human behavior, inviting users to channel their intellectual energies into technologically...

Get ready to rumble with this mobile battle royale: native app vs mobile web. Your referee Josh Clark pits the polish of native apps versus the accessibility of the web to help you choose the right platform for your app and audience. It's a decision that hinges not only on tech specs or audience reach, but also on subtle cultural differences, user needs, and audience personalities. (Hold onto your...

The way we talk about our content has significant impact on the way we treat it within our organizations… and, therefore, the quality of the content we produce.  How can we make the shift from treating content as a commodity to valuing it as a business asset? With a little storytelling and the help of a few powerful metaphors, you can begin to turn the tides.

Love creative problem solving, but need something more practical— something specific to User Experience? Stephen P. Anderson will share with you the exercises he uses to solve the REAL problems.  You'll flex your critical thinking muscle through a series of jump starter activities. Even better, attendees may be encouraged to participate, if not embarrass themselves in front of a room full of their...

No matter how many departments your organization has, to your customers, it's all the same business. They expect a cohesive experience across all touch-points with your company, regardless of whether it's related to advertising, customer service, social presence, or the actual product or service you provide. The satisfaction of your customers, and thereby the success of your organization, depends...

These days everybody talks about game mechanics, badges, points, and leaderboards, but less attention is paid to the role of play in digital experiences. After childhood, play rarely "just happens," but you can design for it.  Taking ideas from game design, musical instrument design, and play-acting techniques including improv and bodystorming, Christian will address the role of play in digital ex...