UX Is Everyone's Responsibility with Tom Bradley

Thanks to Tom for taking the time to give us an incite of some of things he's up to at the BBC and Code Computerlove for hosting. Here's some of my notes and thoughts from the talk.

I really enjoyed the talk Tom gave, it was informative, interactive and it got me thinking.

I liked his approach of confidently leading into a question or interactive debate, leading us down a certain path whilst everyone (or me at least) were perhaps a bit uncertain as to where it would lead. But he'd then come full circle, explain the rational behind it and a light bulb would go off in my head, ahhh… got it, nice one.

Part 1

So, to start the talk, we went right to the end (obviously! :wink:):

Was it worth it? - let's move to the end of the talk:

Well that was a waste of time

Think about the future and what happened:

• Wrong title
• Nothing new
• 40 powerpoint slides
• Didn't agree
• No interaction
• Too quiet
• Never ended
• Not thought provoking
• Not enough real world examples

The best talk ever:

• Inspiration
• Exceeding expectations
• Something you can apply
• Wanting to hear more
• Audience part of the presentation
• Video
• New way of thinking
• Entertaining
• New methods / tools / techniques

Tom also briefly mentioned here a bit of a psychological nicety about asking open ended questions. Rather than ask a question that someone can answer 'no', phrase the question to encourage more from them.

"Nice idea! We'll get our developers to take a look at it" === Rubbish idea, I hope someone else can work out why we don't have to do it.

My opinion / your opinion / their opinion (venn diagram slide)

Facilitator, designer, editor, researcher - each having certain job roles, but all always involved.

• 1st Day = Understand - "We spend an entire day not trying to think of an idea" :smile:
• 2nd Day = Diverge
• 3rd Day = Converge
• 4th Day = Prototype - Working out lo-fi prototypes, but with hi-fi ideas.
• 5th Day = Test

Tom mentioned a nice thing Jacek Barcikowski did once when demoing a paper prototype:

Someone mentioned they wouldn't proceed as they didn't have a Twitter account. Jacek simply drew a Facebook button added this to the prototype and bingo! On they went.

Part 2

5 day design sprint in 45 minutes

Day 1 - Understand

Make sure you've got the brief right.

Be part of a world-class design community - “Why not?”

• Learn more skills, to improve my practice
• Raise profile, respect from peers
• Ego
• Offer clients more, attract better clients
• Collaborate with the best
• Legacy (something you can look back on and be proud of)
• Lol, no one said more money :p (to have nice things)

So, what's stopping us?

• High competition
• Internal politics within a company
• Difficult to apply
• Time restrictions
• Wrong project
• Maybe don't have skills / talent

HMW = How might we? (another nice way to phrase something)

• If we had more money, we'd have more time.

Day 2 - Diverge

We're handed paper and pens, what could possibly go wrong?

Fold into 8 sections, then answer the above with, how might we… (then questions above).

• We had 5 minutes to do this. “dicking about is part of the process”, relax people, so for example if you were to do it again it would be a lot easier.

Volunteer - someone talked through what they wrote down in 1 minute.

UX is a team sport

Does anyone else want to have a go? Another volunteered.

From 8 ideas - Adding coloured note-its on if you're interested in it. Then take 1 idea and work the idea up on one page.

Then combining the 8 ideas / 1 idea and again get stakeholders to ‘dot vote'.

Day 3 - Converge

A this stage we now have some ideas worked up.

1-7 yellow slide - life span centred around this talk

Questions from someone who had never been to NUX before:

1. Word of mouth
2. Casual mention, said no
3. Tram / talking about work, checking twitter
4. Contributions, talked to tom
5. Etc..

Same questions to someone who has been to many NUX:

1. Works at code, linked to the venue
2. Promotion to other teams internally
3. I was here :p
4. Etc..

We now have the beginning of a script for testing, looking for gaps

Day 4 - Prototype

Didn't quite get day 4 I'm afraid, hopefully someone can write something and I'll get it updated.

Day 5 - Test

Test quickly, take notes in a structure e.g. went over:

Positives

• Participation
• Interesting
• Cool to see completed process
• Learned something new

Opportunities

• Try it out
• Be more hands on
• Further reading

Issues

• 5 days in 45 minutes, glossed over a lot
• Wifi code was missing
• Agenda was wrong
• No one mentioned the #nuxuk hashtag

New Thinking (Even though we looked at some negative issues, we can look at solutions to them)

• Add a poster with wifi details
• Flexible agenda
• Drinking game? - more relaxed, more participation?

This is the end.. oh no it's not..

Some time in the future.. You / That Guy = This will never work.

Q&A

Q: What if you don't think the initial brief isn't good?

A: Sometimes you may have asked the wrong question at the start. Might be too specific or vague, so go over this in day 1.

Q: What would you do if after the diverge day, you don't feel that you've get the best idea.

A: If you've done 2 or 3 of them, be honest with yourself and work out why, trust the process.

Q: What if your stakeholders are distributed over 4 contents.

A: Take a photo of everything and email over and explain the process e.g. of dot voting. If the team (working on the process) are distributed then this is a lot tougher.

Q: Do you find that most people enjoy this?

A: Yes. It's easy and difficult at the same time, but with good results.

Q: What if the stakeholders ask for a better prototype?

A: Car crashes will happen with first sprints, then next sprints can be better, then good, then bad again. "start keep stop"

Q: How much work do you put in before a sprint?

A: Quite a bit. Good things to think about beforehand: incites, real data, the more you know about your audience before hand the better.

Q: If there was one thing you'd recommend reading after this, what would it be?

A: Google ventures document.

And, finally to finish, if a client doesn't agree with your ideas you can always create a hadouken and nuke them.