In today’s article, we’re looking at the mouthwatering offer our friends at the Interaction Design Foundation (IxDF) are offering: a $200 discount on UX Bootcamps and a 25% discount on their annual membership.

The IxDF boasts an impressive list of courses by industry leaders including Don Norman, Alan Dix, Frank Spillers and William Hudson. We’ve reviewed one of their courses in the past. Check it out here. Unlike most courses that you need to pay for individually, the IxDF operates on a subscription model—offering all their courses to members at no additional cost. An IxDF membership includes:

• Full access to all 35 courses plus every new course.
• 90% discount on live and on-demand Master Class webinars (over $500 savings annually).
• Exclusive discounts on the best UI/UX design tools such as Balsamiq, ProtoPie and FluidUI (up to $690 in savings!).
• A network of over 117,000 UX design professionals spread 450+ local groups across 99 countries.

Apart from courses, the IxDF also offers cohort-based UX Bootcamps. These mentor-led specialized Bootcamps are entirely remote, part-time, and available at different time zones so that you get individual mentorship without taking a break from your regular work or university.

Here’s a closer at what you get:

1. 25% discount on new and continually updated courses such as these:
   1. Data-Driven Design: Quantitative Research for UX
   2. Design for the 21st Century with Don Norman
   3. Journey Mapping
   4. Visual Design: The Ultimate Guide
2. Practical advice and the chance to get answers to your questions during live Master Class webinars with industry leaders and experts, including Don Norman, Susan Weinschenk, Frank Spillers, Morgane Peng and Mike Rohde.
3. You can also find and connect with your peers locally to learn together and even meet potential employers and clients.

What makes this offer sweeter is that a portion of the proceeds from this year’s Black Friday promotion will be set aside to sponsor memberships for those who cannot afford a quality UX design education.

If you’re not yet a member, you can sign up using this link to get 25% off your first-year membership.

You can also get $200 off on any of the upcoming cohorts of IxDF Bootcamps (UX Fundamentals, User Research, UI Design, UX Portfolio and Careers)—even if you’re already a member!

To get a feel for what an IxDF Bootcamp is like here is one student’s experience of a recently concluded Bootcamp cohort:

Check out all UX Bootcamps here.

Happy learning!

The post Black Friday 2021: Deep Discounts on UX Education appeared first on UX Mastery.

It is part of our series of reviews critiquing online UX courses. Read some of our other reviews or see the full list of online courses.

Course Information

• Course Name: UX Accelerator
• Creator: PeakXD
• Length: The course runs for 13 weeks (previously 12), with three break weeks, and an estimated study load of 8-15 hours per week (flexible). Realistically, it takes a minimum of 60 hours to complete the whole course.
• Intended Audience: Beginners sidestepping into UX from related fields, or intermediate-level UX designers wanting certification with a solid grounding in good UX design and research habits.
• What You’ll Learn: UX industry tools, design processes, and methods, and get practical experience on a real project with Surf Life Saving Australia or Returned Services League Art Union.
• Assumed Knowledge: Some basic awareness or experience in digital projects or the IT world would be helpful, but the course is intuitive and well-paced enough for complete beginners to grow.
• Price: US$3497 USD, with 12 months access to course & materials (see ‘bonuses’ for lifetime access)

Review

This is a brand new course and it sets a pretty high bar for UX educators everywhere. I’ve been looking forward to reviewing it since I first heard it was in the works last year. It challenges participants by providing genuine, real-world project experience, as well as realistic career expectations upon completing the course. Lots of UX courses, including popular ones, miss the mark on both of those.

PeakXD has just had their first cohort of participants finish this course. Because it’s such an in-depth course (60 hours), I collaborated with participant Tamsen Magon for this review to get a true, unfiltered student perspective. This review is therefore a combination of my take as a course reviewer and UX professional, along with her experience as an actual student of PeakXD’s course.

Disclaimer – Tamsen was a beta student and got early access without needing to pay the course fees. However, I like to think her critical approach means she’s got plenty of good insights to share with us about the outcomes and fundamental philosophies of the course. I also want to mention that PeakXD is a well-known agency here in Australia and we know the team personally from conferences and mutual contacts. They’ve been a financial supporter of UX Mastery in the past. Despite that we’ve tried to keep things neutral and honest!

Jump ahead to a review section:

1. First impressions
2. Selective intake
3. Structured but self-paced
4. Assumed knowledge
5. Syllabus & how the course is structured
6. What it’s like to do this course
7. Portfolio building
8. A real-life project
9. Collaborations & interactions
10. Things to watch for
11. Price & financing
12. About PeakXD and the trainers
13. Exam & certification from BCS
14. Bonuses
15. Overall pros and cons
16. Our rating summary

First Impressions

Selective Intake

Our first experience with PeakXD said a lot about how they deliver this program. Unlike almost every other provider, they offer a ‘Career Discovery Session’ upfront.

This is essentially a pre-admission interview where one of the trainers got to know us, talked with us about our background and goals, and looked for the right aptitude and a good alignment between us (the prospective ‘team members’) and the course.

In addition to the listening, Tania responded to us with some free guidance, adjusting our expectations about the industry and giving us confidence about our options. However, there is a maximum of 20 places available for each intake (it’s kept intentionally low to maintain a high quality of interactions). So, there is an element of selectiveness for prospective students. “If our course is not the right fit for you, I’ll tell you,” Tania said.

Structured but self-paced

A big reason for doing this course online, of course, is the flexibility. it allows for balancing the two constraints of structured learning and self-paced access. The course modules were released weekly to help align us with trainers and the other students. The weekly conference calls were recorded too, plus it was possible to get extensions on due dates. This helped things work around our other life commitments.

“PeakXD’s flexibility and understanding of the fact that life gets in the way of study sometimes has been incredible.” 

Tamsen Magon, course participant

Assumed Knowledge

The course has been tailored so that anybody, regardless of their experience, can pick it up. It gave us an introduction into UX that eased us into the course, and then built terminology and understanding while giving us practical experience using a real-world project.

An important reason we see this course as so successful is the amount of feedback, support and opportunities for improvement that are provided throughout the program. 

How the Course is Structured

The course was made up of 10 modules, with an exam taken at the end. It’s intended to take 13 weeks to complete (recently upgraded from 12, to include an extra break week). Each of the modules is broken down into weekly increments, plus a couple of catch-up weeks to allow for flexibility around any lifestyle. PeakXD estimated it should take an average of 5 hours a week, which was true for us; some people finished quicker, and some people took a bit longer.

Course modules (each broken into 8 lessons):

1. Introduction to User Experience Design
2. User Research: Planning & Conducting
3. Documenting Your Research to Build Empathy
4. Co-design Workshops, Stakeholder Engagement & Prototyping
5. Information Architecture & Navigation
6. Interaction Design
7. Visual Design & Information Design
8. Usability Evaluation
9. Usability Testing: Measuring Usability
10. Ready Set Go: Launch Your Site, System & Your Career

The course is full of practical activities, and opportunities to review and compare work and thinking with others in the course. A full copy of the syllabus is publically available from the PeakXD website.

Throughout, they have a strong emphasis on building your UX language, so you have helpful terminology for future use. It is less about creating your own project, and more about delivering objectives all the way through to creating prototypes for a real client.

What it’s Like To Do This Course

Main takeaways:  

It’s flexible: The flexibility in this course is stand-out, and will works for all kinds of people — students, parents, part-time workers, night owls, and probably even full-time workers. The structure of the course has 3 weeks of catch-up time built into it, as well as the option of getting extensions on due dates. The weekly calls are also available after normal 9-5 work hours, plus they’re recorded, so if you can’t attend a session then it’s easy to watch afterwards and still feel included.

Support is taken seriously: With this course having a small intake of only 20 students, it means that the support can be personally tailored to each student, and there is more one-on-one time available than most other courses can manage. Tamsen emphasised that compared to other courses she had done in the past, being able to work so closely with the trainers at PeakXD was a big bonus. The relationships with the trainers and the alumni also last long after you complete the course. It sets you up with a solid group of people that continue to support each other, and creates an environment where you are confident enough to reach out to others for future projects.

The intention behind the course is genuine: This course doesn’t feel like a way of just turning people out and getting money. The team at PeakXD want to make the industry better by putting out genuinely skilled individuals, and you can see this through the level of care they put into their students, and the way they structure the course.

Access to professional resources: The resources you’re given throughout the course are super handy while completing the course, but are also high quality enough to put many working professionals to shame. You have access to the learning videos for a year after completing the course, and the templates provided are easily editable and can be used in future projects. You also have heavily discounted access to world-class tools such as OptimalSort, InVision and Custellance. 

Terminology aware but agnostic: Jargon-busting is a big thing for UXers. PeakXD gives you a glossary of UX terms, which means you can actually start understanding the language and knowing how to relate it to plain English. It also means you’re building your confidence – which in turn will help you with interviews in the future.

Portfolio Building

Compared to other programs, we were pleased that PeakXD takes a grounded approach to building a portfolio that avoids token best-practices and showy bling without substance. They focus on the methodology to showcase: that you should not only create personas and journey maps, but to also show in your unique way how you work with clients, manage difficult situations, and problem solve. 

A Real-Life Project

One of the biggest advantages we see in this course is the opportunity to work on a real project, rather than following a simulated one, or being forced to make your own up. You’re getting a brief from a PeakXD agency client, doing real research interviews with real people, analysing those results, coming together as a research- and design-focussed team to collaborate and share insights, and then creating artifacts that will be used by a real company. It means you get a in-depth understanding of an industry-practiced UX process, and while you don’t talk directly to the client, the trainers do, so you’re still getting real feedback to improve from. 

In a usual week, learning modules are released on Tuesday, and you can then work through the video lessons at your own pace. The coaching call is on Thursday, where you go through the project activity with the rest of the team, get briefings, receive feedback on your previous work, and have time for questions. This coaching call is recorded if you can’t make it. After the coaching call you will plan and conduct your project activities, conduct interviews, create prototypes, etc, and then you generally have 2 weeks before the due date to finish them.

Collaboration & Interactions

While there’s no ‘group’ work, it is a very collaborative course. You are encouraged to ask questions and have discussions in the coaching portal, you there are the shared, live, video chats. There’s also the PeakXD LinkedIn learning group. You upload documents to a shared google drive so you can see what work others are doing. It isn’t dissimilar to a UX team where you do your own work, and then come together to discuss, analyse and build.

Things to watch for

There are aspects of this course some people should be mindful of. As is true with any online learning, staying self-motivated can be a challenge, especially when you are personally better suited to the accountability of being face to face with a teacher.

The course expects attention and dedication from participants—it’s not the kind of course you can sit through and simply pick up some skills. It is sufficiently diverse to keep your interest when you search things out, but without an open mind and some personal enthusiasm for the subject you will be confronted by hard work— as might be expected in almost any aspect of theory learning.

There a lots of videos, and while this can be considered best practice for explaining material online, we remember that reliance on video for communication may not work for you if your only internet connection has a low bandwidth or low data limit.

The PeakXD UX Accelerator course is very flexible with how you choose to time things, but it isn’t completely self-paced. We needed to wait for the modules to be released each week, and we couldn’t just fly through all of the lessons in the first few days. This is intentional on the part of PeakXD; to help participants manage their focus, keep pace with other participants, and to assist with feedback and collaboration.

To develop our own skills in core research activities, we were also encouraged to source our own research participants, though PeakXD do give you guidance and options to make this easier.

These are not drawbacks, but are considerations to keep in mind. You need to be self-motivated, self-sufficient, and hard-working to study in this way. If you can achieve those aptitudes for online learning, you’ll benefit greatly from doing this course.

Price & financing

At almost US $3500, this is not the cheapest UX course available. It does, however, compare favourably in terms of what you pay for the quality of what you get. Other comprehensive experience design short courses, such as those run by Springboard (US$7,195), General Assembly (US$3,950), the UX Design Institute diploma (US$2,511.45), or AcademyXi (US$1,000) arguably have some adjustments and catching up to do now that PeakXD’s offering is in the market.

PeakXD claims there is over US$8,500 in value across the materials, access to senior consultants, professional templates, discounted software, and exam fees. Going through and doing the sums ourselves, this is a reasonable claim. The value is mainly driven by the weekly coaching calls and access to senior consultants (think: UX pros with 10-30 years experience at a leading UX agency).

Financing options

If you need some help with the lump sum, there is a flexible payment option that lets you spread it over 4 payments. The first payment is paid as a deposit when you register. The three subsequent payments are automatically charged every 21 days until complete.

Australians also have an advantage in that a full-tuition loan and flexible repayment terms are available via Study Loans for Australian citizens or permanent residents over 18 years of age. Interest rates on loans are between 9.75% to 14.5% p.a. (which works out to roughly $200-500) so still keep a careful eye on those repayments.

Update Feb 4, 2020: PeakXD say they are also looking into finance options for international students, so watch this space.

About PeakXD and the Trainers

PeakXD has been around since 2003. They’re now amongst the most established experience design and usability agencies in Australia.

Exam and Certification from BCS

At about the week 10 mark you will be provided a practice exam and answer sheet as preparation. The exam itself is conducted in-person at one of 5000 approved independent testing centres run by Pearson Vue in 175 countries. Upon successful completion of the exam – you get an internationally recognised certification. 

The UX Accelerator course is based on the British Computer Society’s (BCS) User Experience syllabus, which was developed to create a standardised UX certification. 

To maintain the integrity of the certification, it is only awarded to those who have achieved a pass in the exam.

Bonuses!

As part of your course, PeakXD usually offers 12-months of access to all of their course modules. This is helpful for students because Peak continually updates the modules as new UX trends and foundations come out.

I think this course is valuable enough for working UX practitioners that I asked if PeakXD could extend that for us. Now, all UX Mastery readers can now get $200 off the price of this course and pay $3,297 USD or 4 installments of $937 USD.

Use the code UXMASTERY when registering to get the $200 USD discount.

Overall, we’d say…

Pros:

• Personal guidance and feedback in a collaborative, weekly, live coaching call
• Trainers are UX industry veterans, not just mentors or teaching assistants. They know their stuff inside out.
• Focussed squarely on practical methods, important principles, and best-practice software and processes.
• Gain experience working on a real project for a real industry client
• Highly detailed course modules, templates, resources, and recorded sessions are all available online
• Continue to access material and resources after finishing
• Gain independent certification from British Computing Society (BCS) after passing an exam
• Smaller class sizes mean better contact with trainers
• Money-back guarantee (if discontinued in first 21 days)

Cons:

• There are only 20 spots per intake and admission is somewhat selective, so competition to participate may be high.
• If you’re expecting a course that does all the work for you, this won’t suit. You need to be self-motivated and work hard.
• Despite the great value and good outcomes, the US$3495 cost of this course will likely be out of reach for some students.
• While coaching call times are flexible (and recorded for catchup viewing), the course schedule may be problematic for people in the UK and Western Europe due to .
• Much of the material is video-based, so slow (under 3MB/s) internet connections may struggle.

Summary

UX Mastery considers this an excellent UX course that provides highly effective outcomes for a reasonable price, offered by a reputable training company.

• Content (how useful, up to date, practical, and comprehensive): 10/10
• Delivery (presentation style, pace, clarity, authority): 9/10
• Production (video quality, audio quality, editing): 10/10
• Online learning platform (reliable infrastructure, usable interface, convenient): 10/10
• Overall rating: 9.75/10

The next intake is open now and modules will begin on 17 February, 2020.

The post Review: UX Accelerator online course by PeakXD appeared first on UX Mastery.

After many user research interviews, tests and pilot runs – the team at PeakXD in Australia has developed a program, in collaboration with the British Computing Society (BCS), that upon completion gives you a UX certification valid in over 200 countries. 

We sat down (or, video called, technically) with Tania Lang – one of the few instructors and writers of PeakXD’s 12-week Accelerator Program – to talk about the exciting new course.

What were the motivations to create a certified course?

It was just something that a lot of our customers were crying out for. It benchmarks professional’s skills to an international standard, and makes them stand out from other graduates. It’ll help their career progression – either by side-stepping or moving up, it attracts better-paying roles and future proofs them by staying current. 

We’d often hear, “Do I get a piece of paper at the end? Should I go back to university and do a three- year, two-year masters, or should I do some course? What piece of paper do I get at the end?” So, it’s largely around customer demand really wanting that piece of paper.

I actually interviewed some employers recently, and pretty much all of them said the piece of paper is nice to have, but the experience is more important. If someone comes to them with 10 years of experience but no piece of paper, that’s probably better than a piece of paper and no experience – but if you have a degree or a certification, that’s a nice extra. I wouldn’t say it compensates for lack of experience, but it brings them extra points, if you like. It’s not critical, but it’s nice.

How is it certified with the BCS?

For many years – 20 even – we’ve been talking about certification in the industry – but no one could ever agree on what that was or what that looked like.  What ended up happening was a lot of vendor certification. You’d do a course and get certified for that specific course – but that doesn’t really mean anything.

To me, I think it’s really important to try to build a certain standard and quality within the industry. The challenge in certification with UX has always been that the answer is not always just black and white – “Do you know this or not?” – The answer to something depends on so many things. It’s a little more challenging trying to do certification when the answer’s often “It depends.”

The British Computer Society have sat down with a team, including David Travis*, in the UK and worked out a syllabus that covers a lot of the basics. It’s foundational. So, this is not an advanced course, but it goes through all the foundations that we would expect a UX person to know. It’s focused more on approach and methodology rather than design principles, which are always changing.

Who is this course best for?

Our main target audience, our personas that we’ve created, are primarily people who have some experience in digital or IT, or marketing or psychology or research who want to sidestep their career into UX. They often have a lot of transferrable skills, but they don’t always have the confidence and realize the value of those skills. For example, if they’re a Business Analyst, they might be good at interviewing or stakeholder management – skills we highly value as UX people. The course is giving these people the tools and frameworks that they need to sidestep.

It’s also for people who may have just sidestepped or are starting out in UX roles, and they get that impostor syndrome. They really just don’t have the confidence, or the knowledge, and they’re making bad design decisions and bad research approaches because they don’t have that good, strong grounding. This course gives them those vital foundations to improve.

The PeakXD online UX Accelerator course is great. I love the artefacts and templates, and the step by step guidance throughout… It has practical examples and advice and working on a real business…
I feel like I am gaining practical knowledge which will help gain a career in UX.

– Tamsen M, Melbourne

How is the course structured?

You’re working on a real project, for a real client, in the program. So, it’s set up with 10 modules over 12 weeks, which includes 74 video tutorials – that’s approximately 60 hours to complete it. One of the things that I do in my face to face training is I tell a lot of stories… because you learn through storytelling. People have said “Oh, online won’t work because we’ve got so much value from the stories that you tell in training,” – so I’ve made sure all the stories I tell face-to-face are in the videos as well.

Each module runs for a week and have six to eight lessons in them. Participants can do them at any time… however, people aren’t always good at online learning. They’re not good at self-pacing. What we’ve done to combat this is rather than it being self-paced, is we have a specific intake date. Everyone in that intake works through the program together. Each week you watch videos, do an activity, and then have a live coaching call where they get feedback on the activities that they’ve submitted and also a chance to ask questions. At the end of the 12 weeks you take an exam (at one of the 5000 approved exam centres across 175 countries) which gives you your certification, and you also participate in a digital showcase.

It’s a global course, so what happens with the live coaching call for people in different time zones?

The live coaching call session is recorded, so if they are at three o’clock in the morning in the US, they can watch it the next day. They can also submit their questions prior to that to make sure, if they’ve got any questions, they still get addressed in that coaching call.

How do the real-world projects work?

One of the things we have designed in our program is the opportunity to work on a real project for a real client over 12 weeks and build up that project, real-world experience and also your portfolio at the same time.

We’re trying to replicate a project where participants are working collaboratively. It’s hard when it’s online, everyone’s remote, working individually. So, each week everyone uploads their content, their interview findings, etc. to a Google Drive, and then they can see each other’s work. Between all of them, they might to 10 or 15 interviews – they can then draw on everyone else’s interview findings as well as their own. That way we’re trying to get collaboration just like we would in an agency, where people go off and do interviews, and come back together. We’re trying to get as much collaboration happening as possible, like you would on a real project. That’s why we’re all working on the same project as well, not all different projects.

What kinds of projects do participants get to work on?

We’re trying to find charities or non-for-profit organizations, because part of our philosophy at PeakXD is to empower others to improve the world through human-centered design. We’re trying to find projects where we can do good.

For example, with our next project we’re working with an organization that supports wildlife rescuers – which is a very emotive. As the whole organization is based around supporting wildlife carers, they’re trying to map out the best approach to do that. First of all research; what do they need? And then what do they need digitally? What’s the digital solution to that? We haven’t worked out what the problem is yet, so the program will first of all work out the problem, and then work out what digital solution is… maybe a Facebook group, a website, a forum, an app… we don’t know yet, but that’s for the students to work out.

How does the course help participants connect to potential employers?

We do two things – a portfolio and a digital showcase.

In week 12 we go through building a portfolio. We encourage people to keep records, journals of everything they’re doing – what was challenging, what was the approach, what went well, what didn’t go well – that sort of stuff. When they go to do their portfolio, they build it based on that – because employers aren’t just interested in a bunch of artifacts, they want to see the approach, the challenges, all that sort of stuff.

The other thing we’re doing to help them get a job at the end of the program is what we call a digital showcase. After their course, they can upload their portfolio or link to a portfolio, and that’s going to be open to a small number of employers and UX recruiters who understand the UX space. It’s a way for recruiters to see that pool of graduates and their materials and portfolios.

It’s just a way to showcase digitally, rather than face to face. UX people aren’t always good at selling their own wares, and selling themselves, so this way it’s a little bit less intimidating, and also non-geographic as well.

Why would people choose this course over another out there?

Asides from the certification, we really wanted to try and create something as rigorous as possible but at a budget that people could actually afford. To do this we decided to go with group coaching, but we’re also giving individual feedback when participants upload activities. So they get the best of both individual feedback and collaborative working.

We’ve also set up an arrangement with study loans (for Australian residents), so that if people can’t afford an up-front fee, they can apply through study loans. It’s basically a $200 up-front fee, and the interest rate is pretty reasonable, and then they basically can pay that off over up to four years. So, they could pay it off in as little as $27 a week over four years. That’s nice to be able to offer that for those that can’t afford it upfront.

How have people responded to the course so far?

We had someone recently who had already done another vendor’s course who did our pilot with us – basically she would do the course as normal, but in exchange for her feedback on what to improve she got the course for free – and she said “I’m already finding this is better than the other course,” which was exciting to hear! We did a lot of work over last year putting this together and that was really encouraging that our first pilot was already hitting the mark.

Bonus!

Normally, PeakXD only offers 12-month access to their course modules, as they continually update the modules as new UX trends and foundations come out.

For UX Mastery readers they are kindly extending that 12 month ONLY access – to lifetime access to the video lessons for as long as their program is running (provided your account remains in good standing).

Use referral code UXMASTERY when registering to gain lifetime access.
Enrol now to be part of the October 21st intake.

*A previous version of this article mistakenly named only David Travis as a collaborator on this project with BCS, when it was, in fact, a whole team. You can read more about the certification here.

The post Interview with Tania Lang, Instructor of PeakXD’s Accelerator Program. appeared first on UX Mastery.

If you were sitting comfortably at UX Australia 2019, then you were not paying attention. Steve and his team deserve great credit for being brave with the themes explored.

The 2019 lineup of speakers was a bold program of diverse individuals, and challenging views. None of us can return to designing and building products and say we are unaware of design’s wider impact and our own responsibilities. What was great about many of the presentations, was that they were also solution-focused. The scary reality of how things are was balanced with solid ideas of collective action we, as designers, can take to change things.

The overriding feeling I had at the end of UX Australia, was that this is a great time to be a UX professional, but we have a duty to rock the boat, to ensure that we are designing ethically sound solutions.

Quick links to presentation reviews in this article:

Keynotes:

• Aral Balkan: Small Technology
• Liz Jackson: Engaging in Disability as a Creative Practice
• Kate O’Neill: The Design of Meaning for the future of Humanity
• Joe Macleod: Ends. A Critical Difference

Long Talks:

• Chris Noessel: Designing Agentive Technology
• Andy Polaine: Design in the Age of Synthetic Realities
• Trip O’Dell: Synthetic Intimacy
• Phillip Hunter: Strategies for Conversational Product Experiences
• Tea Uglow: Designing Around the Brain

Short Talks Highlights:

• Elle Geraghty: Bust the Seven BIG Digital Content Problems
• Pilar Esteban: Relearning to Communicate
• Tim Karioti: Laws to Norms – How Privacy Can Influence Design
• Zoe Green & Sam Frain: Respectful Curiosity – How and With Whom are You Building Inclusion?
• David Di Sipio: How to Beat the Failure Cycle in Ten Minutes

Keynotes

Aral Balkan
Small Technology

If the coffee didn’t wake everyone up on Thursday morning then Aral Balkan sure did. Aral didn’t hold back and gave us a reality check of the world around us, and the impact of surveillance and capitalism on our privacy. He pulled back the curtain on companies such as Facebook and IBM, showing us their past deeds and current business models. Aral painted a vivid picture of how money funds design and development in very specific directions, and which are not always aligned with the greater good.

What I liked about Aral’s presentation was he offered solutions and alternatives. It can be tempting to just bash the big tech players, but it’s always easier to win an argument if you have a credible alternative.

Liz Jackson
Engaging in Disability as a Creative Practice 

Jackson is a force of will. An in-your-face, no-excuses advocate of better design for ‘all’. She asked us why are we designing for disabled people, but not designing with disabled people. Including the end-user could be the mantra for UX design, but how many of us have worked on a project for a specific user group and never met such a person?

This was a talk I’d marked under ‘not to be missed’ and it didn’t disappoint.  Liz Jackson left us all with a little bit of guilt for our past design mistakes, and a lot of inspiration to do better from now on.

Kate O’Neill
The Design of Meaning for the Future of Humanity

If you want to learn more about the future of AI and humans, then the work of Kate O’Neill seems like a great place to start. One of the themes constant in this presentation was the idea that what separates us from machines is ‘humans crave meaning’. The bots don’t care why they do something, but people do. We have to define meaning before we scale the technology.

Designed automation can be a great thing, but we need to guard against losing something important in doing so.

Joe Macleod
Ends. A Critical Difference.

As ending keynotes go, this was a classic. Joe’s talk was a rush of information at a lightning pace. His research into the value of ending relationships with customers is so obvious once you see it. Yet it is such a missed opportunity for many organisations. A proper ending of consumer technology relationships has so many benefits for everyone, and it will become an opportunity of differentiation for those companies that see it first.

There are massive UX considerations and opportunities here, and reading Joe’s book, ‘Ends’ is probably the best starting point.

Long talks highlights

Chris Noessel
Designing Agentive Technology

Chris introduced us to the world of agentive technology, how AI can act as an agent on our behalf. The first talk might have scared some folks, but Chris took us to a world where new emerging tech can do good if designed and built correctly. 

Nobody today would think of spell check as a form of AI, but it is. Over time, tools like this become the norm, they fully integrate into our lives and we can’t work without them. Spelling help used to be a clunky process now it’s something that happens almost without us knowing. 

Agentive technologies sit between something that is fully automated (AI) and something that is a manual process.

See also the pre-conference article Chris wrote for UX Mastery: Design Notes for Ray Bradbury’s Ghost

Andy Polaine
Design in the Age of Synthetic Realities 

I’m sure we all have seen the deepfakes of Obama name-calling Trump, or the Mona Lisa moving. These ‘synthetic realities’ as Andy Polaine calls them, are a cause of much concern in the media. Andy makes the point that what has changed here is less about the technology and more about the manipulation of the narrative. Using technology to fake a story is nothing new. Stalin used pioneering techniques in photo printing to remove executed officials in his ‘great purge’.

We need to start thinking about these things in terms of controlling the narrative and not with a blanket fear of new technologies.

Trip O’Dell
Synthetic Intimacy

This was a super-interesting talk on the broad psychological principles at play when we interact with devices such as Alexa. Conferences are often like a gateway drug to new interests for me, and this talk by Trip has got me thinking more about this area. I really want to explore the mental models users have of how voice interactions work, and how we might design for these. Trip had a great easy-going presentation style that got you engaged straight away.

Phillip Hunter
Strategies for Conversational Product Experiences 

I’ve worked quite a bit designing for Chatbots and thinking about the user considerations in this area, so when I saw the synopsis for Phillip’s talk I knew it was going to be popular with the audience. 

He gave a considerate overview of the mechanics of conversations, how people speak to each other, and what the differences are when we speak to machines. He emphasised the importance for designers to develop writing skills, to get comfortable in written language as much as the visual. There is a move to encourage tech teams to employ people with an arts or journalism background, because art and language are becoming more and more key in emerging systems. 

To highlight the importance of language to humans, Phillip showed us a twitter thread which had been posted the day before. It told of a Speech Therapist on a flight who was seated next to a severely autistic boy. With some pens and paper she used her training to help the boy and his father establish better communication techniques. I consult with a family startup helping Autism Kids develop language using technology. In these cases, understanding language can be the difference between living an independent life or experiencing long term institutionalisation. 

Tea Uglow
Designing Around the Brain 

To be honest, I wasn’t sure what to expect from this talk, but it was for me the most entertaining presentation of the week. Her funny, easy style had the audience hyper-engaged. 

Tea gave us a fast-paced tour of her team’s projects, showing us how free-thinking and encouragement is allowing them to break new ground and create some amazing art and technology. 

If you think that design and creativity is stifled working for big tech, you’re wrong! Track down the work of Tea and her Google team; it will make you think again.

Short talks highlights

There were so many to choose from in the short talks list, it was always going to be difficult to catch everything I wanted. Thankfully there are transcripts and recordings available for all of this year’s presentations.

Here are some of the highlights: 

Elle Geraghty
Bust the Seven BIG Digital Content Problems

So what are the seven big digital content problems? Elle gave us a solid understanding of content and the pitfalls to avoid in creating a good strategy. Also, some practical tips to get the best from what you have available. Elle is also well worth contacting if you need some content expertise.

Pilar Esteban
Relearning to Communicate

Pilar Esteban arrived in Sydney to work as an Experience Designer and didn’t speak English. This was his story of learning a new language and going from the talkative one in meetings to a focused listener, which is a lesson we could all take something from. 

Tim Karioti
Laws to Norms – How Privacy Can Influence Design

Tim Karioti gave a superb talk on privacy and the importance of designing our privacy systems. We have to ensure the rights of individuals are properly protected, while the benefits of aggregating data are also realised. Tim emphasised how communicating which privacy policies are in place is so important in getting agreement. I feel privacy is going to become a very important issue for the design of technologies in the near future. 

Zoe Green and Sam Frain
Respectful Curiosity: How and With Whom are You Building Inclusion?

Zoe and Sam gave us a great insight into their design work for disabled travellers using Sydney Trains. They also allowed the people who help them design and test solutions to speak directly to us. These folks made a great point about how we all make assumptions about people’s abilities that are often way off the mark. Zoe and Sam were very honest about their work and the mistakes they made. We should thank them for doing so. By being so transparent they have taught us a few things that may help us avoid the same mistakes.

David Di Sipio
How to Beat the Failure Cycle in Ten Minutes

David Di Sipio gave us one of the great frameworks to avoid procrastination. Key to his message is understanding the psychology behind why we struggle to do some tasks. He also outlined how to stay motivated and how to recognise the different stages we go through that prevent us from getting to our goals. 

Wrapping up 

The diversity of backgrounds in UX is always a pleasant surprise to me at these events. Each time I meet a group of UX folks, there is almost always someone with a new and unusual backstory about how they got into design. It’s also great to see more and more people attending UX events, who don’t work directly in the field. I met quite a few people who manage teams containing UX Designers and who are motivated to improve their own skills and understanding. 

The Friday afterparty upstairs in the Hilton was the perfect way to wind down from the information overload. It was so nice to have a proper chat with some new friends. 

Our opening speaker, Aral Balkan posted a short video conversation he had with Steve on Friday night. Aral asked if Steve thought his talk was too controversial and might affect sponsors… This was Steve’s response:

“So if people heard the message that you said, Aral, in your keynote and their response was ‘well I want nothing to do with that conference’, well in all honesty, fuck ‘em.”

– @docbaty

So if you are looking at the conference calendar for next year. Don’t go for the safe options. Get after those early bird tickets for Melbourne, and bring on UX Australia 2020!

The post Don’t jump ship! Just rock the boat… Highlights from #uxa2019 appeared first on UX Mastery.

I view conferences as the time to lift up your head and look around. What’s happening in UX Design? What’s going on in the wider business or design world?

As a discipline, UX is constantly changing. As technology advances, so too do the expectations of what design can achieve. The touchpoints where humans and the digital world meet are in perpetual motion, they change and move. Some cease to be, as newer ones emerge.

UX Australia has always kept up with these trends – bringing us the best speakers, exploring the latest techniques, trends, and technology. This year, we have speakers on digital transformations, automation of interactive experiences, AI and the user. We have talks on design and its role in tackling some of the major social issues in our world. Design for accessibility and helping the vulnerable in society, and how design is impacting activism and environmentalism. They’re also looking into areas such as data, privacy, and ethics.

As a recently arrived Sydney resident, I’m really looking forward to this year’s conference. I’ve delved into the program and picked out some of the highlights coming up over the four days.

Keynote speakers

Kate O’Neill
“The Design of Meaning for the Future of Humanity”

Really looking forward to this talk. My most recent UX job was with a team creating a chatbot builder platform. What I learned most in this role, is that designers need to have a high level of understanding of these emerging technologies. The human/computer relationship is still the basis for UX, but the computer part of that relationship is evolving at an enormous rate. If you want to get your head around the world of AI, then this session could well be the place to start.

Kate O’Neill is an authority on the impact of automation on how humans interact with machines. From being one of the earliest employees at Netflix, Kate has gone on to become an author, consultant and futurist. She advises some of the largest global companies on digital transformations and better human experiences at scale.

Aral Balkan
“Think Small”

Aral describes himself as a cyborg rights activist, designer, and developer. He is pushing back against the negative influence of global tech on the person and society. This one will not be for the faint-hearted. As designers we can no longer be passive in what we do, ignoring the wider consequences of the platforms we work on. Aral will challenge us to think about the impact our work has on individuals and society. He suggests new ways to fund and develop alternative ethical and responsible technologies.

Liz Jackson
“Engaging in disability as a creative practice”

This talk from Liz Jackson will provoke and challenge us – “Disabled people are recipients of design rather than drivers of design”. Liz highlights the mistakes many organisations are making when designing for disabled people. Having worked with a startup helping kids with Autism, this one will be very relevant for me.

Joe Macleod
“Ends. A critical difference.”

What is the opposite of on-boarding? This is something that we have likely never thought about. Thankfully Joe Macleod has. His talk promises an in-depth exploration of the history, best practice and potential opportunities of doing off-boarding well.

Joe has a wealth of experience in product design and customer relations. He is also hosting a workshop on this topic for those looking for some practical skills in the best ways to end customer relationships.

Workshops

Looking through the program, it’s going to be impossible to see everything. A good strategy for workshops is to take honest stock of your skills in advance. What’s missing? Which skills do I really need to improve? Or, what would I like to learn more about? UX Mastery have a great guide to assessing your skills here. Think about your current job or where you’re aspiring to be in the future.

This year there are 10 super workshops, covering everything from information architecture and user research, to storytelling and service design. Some of the more interesting ones to me are those on the newer areas of user experience, such as voice interactions and artificial intelligence. If you’re in the job market or just looking for a change, great training in these emerging UX skills is on offer.

Keep in mind the workshops are a great way to meet new people and have some fun. I recommend attending at least one. Roll up your sleeves and get stuck in!

Presentations

In my experience, some of the best value you can get from a conference is in the presentations. It’s worth doing some research on all the speakers their background and the topic. If you have a burning question on some aspect of UX, chances are there will be someone presenting at UX Australia who can help you. The presentations are in two groups; long talks and twenty-minute talks. 

Here are a few I’m very keen to see:

Design in the Age of Synthetic Realities – Andy Polaine, Fjord

Anything I’ve ever seen designed by Fjord has been amazing, this company is at the cutting edge of technology and also the leading wave of design trends. The chance to hear from Group Director Andy Polaine is too good to miss. 

Designing around the brain – Tea Uglow, Google Creative Lab (Australia)

The more I do UX work, the more I realise that those with a behavioural psychology background have an advantage. I want to learn more and more about how the human brain works, and this talk from Tea Uglow fits the bill.

Bite-sized activism for STREAT! Helping reduce our environmental footprint collectively – Fiona Meighan and Harriet McDougall

Do you ever feel like doing more to help social and environmental causes, but don’t know where to start? Well, I suggest starting here. Fiona and Harriet will share their framework for volunteering, donating time and skills, and how to make a tangible difference. 

Getting the most out of UX Australia

Network

• Old fashioned visual designers like me still carry business cards. For me, it’s still the best way to pass on contact information.
• The Linkedin QR code is also super easy to share. If you don’t know how that works read this.
• If you’re sitting in a presentation, say hi to the person next to you. Some of the best contacts I’ve made were from a simple ‘hello’ at a talk. 
• Bring a pen and take some notes – you might be surprised at how valuable noting someone’s name or where they work can be later on.
• Get on social media, especially Twitter. @UXAustralia is their account, there will be some #hashtags around each day. It’s great for the event and also your own profile. Can also be a useful way to connect with speakers and those attending.
• If there is a speaker you really want to meet, don’t just shove a card in their face. Stop them, have a chat, ask some questions – people are really open to this.

Research

• Get the day-by-day program and do your research. Some events will clash so decide which is the most important to you. The worst thing to do is turn up having not seen the program.
• Look into the speaker and the topic in advance. Linkedin and Youtube are great for this. There is nothing worse than halfway through a talk realising that it’s not relevant to you.
• Plan your day.  How to get there, when to get there. 
• Double-check your gear: ticket, ID,  laptop, phone, chargers. A USB power bank charger is also worth investing in.

Post-UX Australia

• Don’t let the enthusiasm die. Block out some time in the weeks after the conference to revise and expand on what you have learned. 
• Make those connections stick! Reach out to those key people you met and say hi. Get on to Linkedin, Twitter etc. Remember don’t just connect, add a personal note, remind them who you are. 
• Take your favourite talk/workshop and do a review. Why was this so good? what did I learn? You don’t have to be a blogger, just write a post on Linkedin, tag the speaker in the post and ad 15-20 relevant hashtags at the end. This could lead to some great connections.
• Showcase UX in your company. Did you do a really cool workshop? Why not organise a group in your office and re-create it? Make sure it’s got a purpose and it’s relevant to the business. Thi is a great way to show the value of UX.

Don’t forget to have fun! Some conferences have a reputation as being boring, but anyone who says that is doing it wrong. Have a look at the social events that are happening. If you’re travelling to Sydney then these can be a great opportunity to meet some fellow UX people in a more fun setting. 

I always come away from events like UX Australia renewed, inspired and with a notebook full of notes, ideas, to-do lists and great connections – and I’m sure this year will be no different. 

Hope to see you there!
Paddy

The post Getting Excited for UX Australia 2019? Me Too appeared first on UX Mastery.

Firstly, we were staggered (and honoured) to have heard from 250 of you. Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts and ideas. Those insights are pure gold.

There were a few common themes that stood out.

You’re growing up!

Our audience (that’s you!) is noticeably maturing. We have a lot more mid–senior level practitioners reading our content, with just under 14% of respondents just starting out, and significant numbers in the 6+ year bracket. That is an expected change if we make the assumption that many of you have been with us throughout your UX journey, but it indicates to us that we need to ensure we create some more advanced content so that we cater to your changing needs.

You love our content but our website needs some work

We hear ya, and we agree. Many of you have suggested that we make our content more searchable, and our IA more intuitive. You know that we have some gold hidden in our coffers that will make you rich, but you’re having trouble finding it. That makes a lot of sense to us and we’re thinking on ways to do just that. In good news, we’re currently undergoing a long overdue redesign of the site so keep your eyes peeled for that in the new year.

You didn’t know that we sold products

Deep down we knew this was a thing but we’re glad you’ve made us think on it. We’re pretty gun shy when it comes to marketing ourselves because we value our reputation and we don’t want to tarnish that. That said, we have some really amazing ebooks (see what I did there?) and it’s bordering on criminal not to make sure they’re on your radar, so we’ll work on making that more of a focus when we roll out the aforementioned site relaunch.

You either hold our community close to your heart or you’ve never heard of it

So this one surprised us a little. Community is at the very heart of what we do, so we need to get this sorted out. Those of you that are part of our forum community are full of praise, but a surprising number of you weren’t aware that we have an active community. We plan to surface some community content onto our new homepage and do something about advertising a little better in the coming months.

You need mentoring

We’ve always known how important the role of a UX mentor is and how difficult they are to come by, so it’s of little surprise that many of you would like us to solve that problem for you. We attempted to do that this year with our peer mentoring program on Slack, and while this program has been a huge success, it hasn’t quite filled the gap so we will put our thinking caps back on.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner

Every year we add a bit of a sweetener to our Readers Survey in the way of a competition. This year we awarded prizes for the best response to the following question: What could we do to make our content or offerings much better?

You had so many great ideas, but the one we loved best was from Canadian UXer Tess Good.

Tess said:

“I’d love a different approach to topic discovery – for [specific] topics. Give me a highly visible starting point and let me refine it as I go for my context. I [also] find the nav overwhelming and segmented in ways that aren’t helpful – when I have a question about research I want everything you’ve got (i.e. article, any resource type, training, etc).

Also I struggle with the UI – I use search to accomplish the above but find scanning the results really difficult.
Lots could be done with hierarchy and layout – even the way the text except wraps around the image in search results and article / resource lists is hard on the eyes. Shorter more curated excerpts would be dope. More results per page for quick scanning would be helpful.”

And here was her response when we told her she’d won:

“UX Mastery has been a huge asset to me as I made a career change to specialize in UX Strategy. Working in agencies I’m always tackling new things and need a flexible toolbox of techniques and approaches – the resources and articles UX Mastery curates continue to help me so much! Thanks for letting me weigh in on the web experience, I hope it benefits the community.”

We loved the feedback from runners’ up Marcelyn T, Liz and Joanne Ginnever.

Liz said:

“Better publicity. I receive your emails (and sign up for the Advent calendar every year), but aside from a few Q&A sessions, I didn’t know you had other coursework available. I’d love a brief weekly or bi-weekly newsletter with your offerings, maybe a reader-supplied tip or two, and user supplied art. I’d read it, and learn, both more about UX Mastery and UX in general.”

Marcelyn said:

“I will engage if I have people to talk to/be held accountable to. It would be interesting to bring different skill sets together – the HCD person (present!), the UI person, the product manager – around specific projects like pro bono work for a non-profit – so we could learn from each other and benefit others at the same time. If we posted our progress and artifacts on UX Mastery, we could build a story for the rest of the community to follow and boost engagement – sort of like an on-line reality show. I think this would work best if teams were based in the same time zone and could nominate and self-select into projects.”

Joanne said:

“There is a lot of stuff and if you are new to UX it is sometimes hard to know what it is you need to be looking for. It might be an idea to categorise content by what stage you are at e.g. UX beginner, UX genius… The Community element could be incorporated a bit more too, possibly have the latest question on the homepage which would draw users in and they could discover yet even more.”

So wrapping it all up…

We’re feeling pretty rapt (pun intended) that we have such an engaged community of readers who are so willing to jump in with constructive feedback and suggestions. If you were one of those people, we are incredibly grateful. If you weren’t, well, we love you anyway.

The post Birds Eye View (and WINNERS!) of our 2018 Readers Survey appeared first on UX Mastery.

Deals included are from Interaction Design Foundation, UsabilityHub, Adobe, Udemy, Envato and more…

Check them out – but get in quick! These offers are only available for a short amount of time.

Take me to the deals! »

The post The Best Black Friday Deals for UX Professionals 2018 appeared first on UX Mastery.

I was fortunate to be able to steal some of Sarah’s time while she was in Melbourne. I wanted to get a broader insight into her book and how Content Design differentiates itself from other specialised fields within User Experience.

Q: How does UX Writing differ from Content Design?

(Laughs) There’s a whole blog post in this! There are two parts to this. One is the UX thing.

At Government Digital Services in Britain where I worked for 10 years, we actually took UX out of people’s titles because User Experience is everybody’s responsibility, right? I mean, what are you doing if you’re not doing UX?

A lot of people will see UX writing as Microcopy in transactions. They don’t do long-form copy. So, they won’t do information pages, they won’t do selling pages, they won’t do landing pages, they don’t do any of that. They just do microcopy in transactions. And for some people, that’s what a UX Writer is.

This is where the confusion comes.

Content Design, as a term was used for the British Government at the time as I wanted to change the conversation around what we were doing. UX writing wasn’t prevalent then and it wasn’t relevant for us because we were doing more than microcopy.  More than tools and transactions. I wanted Content Designers to understand the whole journey. Do all the data, do all the evidence, be present in the research process. Understand all of that information and then pull it across to wherever it needs to be in the user’s journey.

Again, some UX writers do that. But some won’t then go on to write letters, which is very important because for government, the letters that they send out to people are often the first interaction people have with the organisation. That letter then sends them to a website. If those two communications don’t match, then there’s discombobulation going on in the experience.

Q: It’s true that in different work environments, terms and titles can mean different things. Is this a problem for the legitimacy of the practice?

There are in fact different titles we can call ourselves right?

Content Strategist, Content Designers, Content Writers, Editors, Technical Writers, UX Writers. And often we all have mix of the skills. But they won’t be the same. They’ll be a mix of them. Some people are just picking up a title so that they can get paid more money.

That’s a nightmare. It’s a total nightmare! I walked into a new project once, and I had been told prior to that, “Oh, we’ve got a team of established Content Designers.” I was delighted!

So I walked in on the Monday and said to the team, “Right, we’ve got three days of discovery, and then we’re going to do this and we’re going to Critique on Thursday and then we’re going to sketch words on Friday and then we’ll have the best version out by next week…”

They all looked at me horrified. They had no idea what I meant.

I was mortified because I looked like a twat.

It’s all because I just figured that they all knew what I was talking about because they called themselves Content Designers. They were copywriters and they’d just changed their titles. It was literally mortifying. I think I blushed for three days straight.

Q: How does the term fit? Are you a Content Designer or are you a UX Writer, and what does it depend on?

It depends on what you do before you put any fingers to a keyboard. That’s the main difference between any of these titles. A copywriter, for example, would generally be given a brief and say, “There you go. We’re going to do a tube ad in the summer. This is the subject.” And they will create an environment and they will sell and they will inspire and they will make you love the thing. They may be given some language. They may be given some insight. But in a lot of advertising places around the world, you’ll get none of that because you are expected to inspire.

With UX, again, it maybe that you have a lot of insight from your research, but you have edges to your digital sphere that you’re working in. Whereas Content Design needs to understand a lot. For me, it’s not Content Strategy. A lot of people call Content Designers Content Strategists as well. But I think Content Strategy is more about holding the strategy itself. Who’s doing what, when they’re doing it, who’s got governmental control. All of those things. And Content Design delivers that strategy. There’s this blog post on my site explaining the difference and there’s a little tool that you can go through and answer five questions. It will tell you what sort of writer you are.

Q: In your book there is a big chapter on facilitation and collaboration. If you take that out of the practice of Content Design, what does it become?

This just becomes how to write for the web! Very much choosing the format. Is it a tool, a calculator, a calendar, a video, what is it? Then it’s just a bunch of techniques on how to produce content that is most usable to the audience who is using it at the time.

Q: OK, so what does facilitation give it then?

I find that with most content people, actually producing content is like 30 to 50% of the job. The rest of it is talking to people to get their ideas through. Talking to the organisation about why they can’t have four and a half thousand words on how to put on a jumper. Talking to the organisation is actually a huge part of the content person’s job. That’s why the facilitation is in there, because you can have all the best training in the world, you can have all the content techniques, you can do all the discovery and research. If you can’t communicate that to the person who’s blocking you it’s null and void. Which is a shame. It shouldn’t be but it’s just reality at the moment.

Q: Do you think that content on a site should be frictionless and smooth, or should it be enjoyable too, should it be obvious, should it be loud?

I think it depends on the audience. If you are buying Viagra for example, no. You just need to do the thing. As quick as you can. If you want to be entertained, if an author is launching a new book, you need prose and language because you’re pulling people in and you’re selling something and you’re inspiring them.

If it’s entirely transactional, you can still have your tone.

Some people are saying that Content Design is functional and Content Marketing can’t use Content Design techniques. I really hate that and I disagree. As a person who coined the term, I think I get to say that’s utter bollocks. Because it’s a bunch of techniques that you use to find your user, where they are and what channel they’re on and what language they’re using and what they care about.

How can you not use that in marketing?

How can you not use that in advertising and sales?

It’s exactly the same thing. I think it entirely depends on your audience. Where they are in the journey of whatever it is that they’re doing, and you should manage that appropriately.

Q: What was your motivation to write the book?

The book actually came out because I was running courses and I wanted to give something to people to remember the course afterwards. We hammer through a lot. You get very tired because of a lot of it is new techniques, but based on stuff that they’ve already done.

So that can sometimes be a bit harder, because the people you are teaching are in an industry and they understand what they’re doing. They think, “Oh, this is just a bit of a little something on top.” Then they realise that we’re going to take away that foundation they know and then build up.

So it can get quite confusing. It’s really intense. It’s a very intense course. So I wanted to give them something to go away with afterwards, and it just got bigger and bigger and bigger. At one point, I was like, “This is just ridiculous. It’s now a small book.”

It actually took six days to write. Six weeks to muck about with and then two years to publish! I spoke with two publishers and they wouldn’t let me get away with the layout I wanted. They wanted it to look like any other textbook.

So I decided to self-publish because and I’m like, “It’s a book about Content Design. About how content AND design work together. I don’t want it to look like every other textbook.” People are not interested in reading an academic textbook. As a reader you have to be totally absorbed with your subject.

Q: What was the process like for you as an editor and content person, having your work dissected and combed through and critiqued?

I think actually going through a process like that gives you a better understanding of what it’s like to be on the other end of a Content Designer. When they’re saying, “Why are we saying that? Why have we got four and a half thousand words on how to put on a jumper. That’s ridiculous.”

Q: What difference do you hope this book makes for the world of Design

Funnily enough, when I first wrote it, content people picked it up. We do get a lot of Journalists and Copywriters and Technical Writers picking it up to see how different it is from the thing they’re already doing. But now what I’ve found is that content people are buying it and giving it to Designers, Product Managers and Service Designers. They’re like, “This is what we do. Stop telling me to proofread your work. I don’t do that. This is what I do.” It’s a small book. It takes like two hours to read and it’s designed in a funky way that makes people kind of stop and sit back.

I hope people are finding it easier to just say, this is a thing now, because there’s a book about it. Rather than justifying their position all the time. That’s humans talking to each other and they bring all their baggage with them. Whereas, this is an independent thing that sits outside of all that and it can articulate what they do that other people in the organisation wont see because the Content Designers are doing their jobs… Also it if just sways a couple of Product Managers and Service Designers and Designers to talk to their content people, I would be happy!

You can learn more about Sarah’s work and Content Design at https://contentdesign.london/

The post In Conversation: Content Design with Sarah Richards appeared first on UX Mastery.

Forum members, Slack users, course participants, email subscribers and store customers; UX Mastery is a broad community of people.

It thrives on honest feedback and great ideas, and we are keen to know you and how we can help you achieve your UX goals in the coming year.

Please help us to help you with this quick, 10 minute survey:

Start the survey »

Or copy and paste the link: https://uxmastery.typeform.com/to/rli9HE

Survey closes 5pm November 16, 2018 UTC.

Some great UX prizes are up for grabs too

Answers to our bonus survey question also put you in the running for some this fantastic prize pack:

• A $50 Amazon gift voucher
• A complete bundle of UX Mastery books
• A deck of the highly coveted UX Mastery ‘UX Technique Trading Cards’

That’s an awful lot of advice, learning and UX tools up for grabs, plus you get to have your say in how the UX Mastery community should grow.

We have runner up prize packs too!

Cheers, and don’t be shy!

Survey and prize details:

• Survey closes 5pm November 16, 2018 UTC.
• The survey is for research purposes only. Your privacy is respected and no-one will try and sell you anything.
• Prize winners will have completed every survey question, submitted in time, and have the most impressive answers to the bonus question as judged by the UX Mastery team.
• Findings will be aggregated and generalised highlights shared on the UX Mastery blog.
• Individual responses will remain confidential. Winning responses may be shared, with permission.
• No information will be sold to third parties.
• If you have any questions please email support@uxmastery.com

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MUXL 2018’s focus is User-Centred Design and how new technologies are going to change the way we design for these new modes of interaction. This year, the 2018 conference includes topics such as Virtual Reality, Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, connected cars and homes, voice first, and mobile gamification.

When MUXL donated a ticket to UX Mastery, we gave people in our community the opportunity to grab it by explaining how they might benefit by going along to the conference. We got some great responses!

The winning entry is the submission we thought was the most articulate reason for attending.

So, without further ado, the winner of the competition is…

Sam Westwood!

Sam works for Sumdog, which he describes as an ‘an educational learning app that is dedicated to closing the attainment gap in schools’. He is using the opportunity to learn more about AI, voice first systems and mobile gamification to help further the app. What a great reason!

Sam’s entry:

“I’m a UX/Product designer in the UK. Our company runs an educational learning app that is trying to close the learning gap between rich and poor students. You mention a few topics the conference covers. Virtual Reality, Artificial Intelligence, voice first and mobile gamification are all areas we are looking into expanding, already having setup AI and voice first systems in the company. From a personal point of view, I’d love to attend my first conference in London, and would really use the opportunity to learn.”

Runners Up

There were some other great entries that deserve a mention too. For their efforts, they’ll take home their choice of UX Mastery ebook. Here they are:

Anson Wong

“I am working as a UX Consultant in London, and I would love to attend MUXL Conference in London. Living in the midst of 4th industrial revolution, technologies such as IOT, AI, AR will greatly transform the way we live and interact as a society, and UX will play a crucial role in facilitating this transformation. The opportunity to learn from the experts in their field would help me gain further understanding in the evolution of the human-machine relationship.”

Sarah Millner

“I am a UX Researcher with the government. We are just beginning to work through displaying complex content on mobile devices, which is a huge difference from my previous experiences in the private sector. A huge part of my role is simply educating a complex, old-school bureaucracy that the upfront work of user engagements is worth the overall reduction of work once a product is live and used by a global user base. The conference will help me begin articulating the needs for smaller screens.”

A big thank you to everyone who participated!

You can get a 15% discount for Mobile UX London 2018, which is being held on the 21st November, using code UXM15. For more information on speakers and event details, visit https://mobileuxlondon.com/muxl2018/

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