UX Australia 2016 Takeaways - Driving the UX revolution

At Bourne we live and breathe UX.

We lead with human-centred design and recognise UX is core to creating exceptional experiences.

After UX Australia last week the team was pumped. There were so many insightful presentations, interesting conversations and different perspectives.

Bourne Digital’s goal is to educate and create great experiences for customers, employees and partners.

We wanted to share some of our team’s highlights and key takeaways to help fuel the UX-first revolution.

Amirul Nasir’s 5 key takeaways:

1. Collaboration

Collaboration is not an “add-on”; there is a need to collaborate at every stage of the project.
Creative collaboration is essential to bringing people together and making something new.
There is a need to keep an experimentation mindset instead of an implementation mindset when collaborating.
As tempting as it may be to do things right the first time, having an experimentation mindset allows you to explore, generate ideas and get into a creative, idea generating flow.
Don’t be afraid of stupid ideas.
Fear is what blocks individuals’ creativity.
Celebrate stupid ideas and encourage them in your organisation.
Note that every breakthrough idea once started out as a stupid idea.

2. Becoming customer-centric

Instead of building the products right, we need to question ourselves if we are building the right products for our customers.
Look into making the biggest possible impact for the customer experience.
Be curious and always question if we are making a difference? Are we actually helping the customer?
"There's nothing worse than in an organization than getting better and better at doing the wrong thing.” Barriers to Innovation: Personal and Organisational. Steve Baty.

3. Building trust

Building trust among customers is both challenging and rewarding.
Every transaction should be a win-win scenario. A win for the customer and a win for the company.
Trust is more than just adding new functionality.
Often the problems we see from our customer actually reflect the culture of an organisation.
But how do you measure trust? The currency of the new economy is Trust.

4. The psychology of waiting

Customers overestimate waiting times by 20%.
The problem is not in the device we are designing for; the problem is our way of thinking about it.
Re-imagine how you can redesign the clock for people waiting in a queue.

5. Framing better questions

When conducting research transform questions we want answers to, into questions asked by triangulating through multiple perspectives.
There’s always an opportunity to ask all sorts of questions, “What would you expect to...”
Instead of asking if the users like a solution, frame it as “What does this solution enable?”
Ask users to demonstrate their behaviour as compared to asking them how they do something. “Show me how you do...”

Some favourite quotes from our Lisa Fu:

“Experience is more than interface. It’s about context, meaning and expectations”. Andrew Wight

“When you’re designing for governments and corporations it helps to bake cupcakes”. Patricia Moore

“We can’t be caught up in implementation and delivery and not spending enough time on why we are designing for the people”. Daniel Szuc

“If you want to design for people to participate, design for the spectator”. Andrew Barrie

“Worry about the information the person provides, the decision the person makes, but not the mechanism by which things happen”. Kim Goodwin

What inspired Via David during the event:

“When you design for the device instead of context, you miss the big picture. It's worth exploring how our designs can respond to our user's changing priorities, not just the devices they're using”.

Designing for context not the device. Derek Featherstone.

Create a design experience that can work as a relationship between a persona and a brand through a range of touch points in the context of a story (which follows structure where there is a Hero, Mentor and Gift) - where the Customer is the Hero, the Mentor is the Brand, and the Gift is your Service. This creates a district experience that can't be copied, because it's specific to what makes that brand different from the rest.

Beyond best practice: crafting purposely-distinct experiences. Andrew Wight.

Create experiences that are better, not just different. Tell a story through the experiences you create: one that provides meaning communicates the brand's purpose, values, and role in the customer's life.

Beyond best practice: crafting purposely-distinct experiences. Andrew Wight.

Use psychology to persuade and NOT trick. As UX designers we have the abilities and skills to create experiences that provide more value than just aesthetics and usability, we can create value through our ability to empathise and understand the power of persuasion.

Under the influence: Exploring dark patterns and the power of persuasive design. Ben Tollady and Gareth Roberts.

When structuring content, don't just resort to FAQ pages. Content should go where it logically belongs.

The FAQ of IA, Donna Spencer.

Dani Natividad loved the following speakers:

Products are people. We connect with products in an emotional way. While designing for emotional engagement is important, there will always a risk of polarising people. Always take this into account as a designer.

The details are not the details. Ash Donaldson.

Stories are currency in UX. Stop and immerse yourself in a story and determine its themes, translate your findings, and turn these into observations. When you’re listening to a story, have a structure for note taking. Make interviews conversational and natural, because they’re easier to understand and much more valuable rather than completely scripted.

Analysing research and identifying patterns. Dan Szuc.

Don’t expect that people will want to participate with your product in a range of different contexts. If your product will live in a social, collaborative, and public place, design and test it in a social space.

Designing for real world participation and social interaction. Andrew Barrie.

Square off corners if you want to save pixels. Desaturate your designs to account for accessibility. User-test your competitor before you start your client’s designs.

A 45-minute talk about designing a single button. Ollie Campbell.

Alphabets are learned sequences. When people see lists, they think there’s a structure to it – so it’s only ever to appropriate to alphabetise lists when users know what they’re looking for, and nothing else.

The FAQ of IA. Donna Spencer.

We are all about UX led design innovation.

How are you approaching creating exceptional experiences for your users?

If you are interested in building trust with your communities then email info@bournedigital.com for more details on our upcoming Lunch n’ Learn on 16 September, sharing insights into the secrets to the currency of trust.

Give us a call and we can show you how.