UX clinic 2011 and UX bookclub
For all of us in the London user experience community who didn’t snag a ticket to UX London conference, UPA and UX Bookclub put on a fine show to meet and greet the speakers.
UX Clinic on Thursday night was the annual round table staged by the UK UPA. We decided on the format to be able to offer as many fellow UX enthusiasts the chance to meet with some of the speakers as possible.
Kim Goodwin, Kate Rutter, Todd Zaki Warfel, Russ Unger and Nate Bolt all volunteered to tell us about their failures, superpowers and other assorted questions.
Kim stressed one of my favourite points about personas. You’ve got to keep them alive throughout the product development cycle. They are a communication tool to focus the team around user centered product development, not just a way to make research palatable for the rest of us.
Kate reassured me that there are no silver bullets when facilitating particularly opinionated or novice stakeholders. Let them take some ownership to involve them in the process.
Todd suggested that in 3 – 5 years time, UX designers without coding skills will be in the minority. Their team deliver shippable code, unlike many other UX agencies.
Russ pointed out that trying to do UX in a marketing agency may have been ‘his failure’. That didn’t work out well. Referring back to Peter Merholz’s rant about marketing agencies and UX, it’s an experience I share first hand.
Thanks for all the great feedback, we really enjoyed putting on this evening.
A big thank you to Lou Rosenfeld of Rosenfeld media for his ad hoc sponsoring of nibbles for the event.
On Wednesday night UX bookclub (@leisa) put on ‘speed dating’ with the rockstars. We got to chat to Alan Cooper, Kim Goodwin, Kate Rutter, Steve Baty, Giles Colborne and Matt Jones. Way. too. short. but great fun of course.
I got to thank Steve for setting up UX bookclub and giving me a kick up the arse to finish reading more books. They do look pretty on my shelf, but it’s even better to actually get through a few more than before.
Alan Cooper advised me to slap my boss, which I think I’ll save until I need an exit strategy from my startup… He made a convincing case to stop playing devil’s advocate. There’s enough of them out there. We don’t need to shoot ourselves down.
1 Comment April 17, 2011