There were so many great talks at UX Australia last week! The conference focused on inclusivity and ethics in design — how we, as designers, have the power and responsibility to ‘do more good’ and create better, longer lasting experiences.
Here are my key takeaways:
Be more inclusive
Everyone has the right to enjoyable and usable experiences.
Sarah Pulis gave an excellent talk sharing tips on inclusive design and the importance of planning at the start of a project and working with developers to ensure the desired outcome is implemented.
No one wants to SUX – Sarah Pulis
Design should be multi-cultural
What works for some countries will be different in others. Hannah Jung spoke about her experience designing the Google Play App Store for the Japan and Korea markets Vs the American market. She spoke about making sure you have an understanding of the users’ behaviour, needs and culture.
Design is multicultural: Successful story from Google Play – Hanna Jung
Digital transformation
Many organisations have been going through the process of a ‘digital transformation’, and some have looked over an important factor – their users. Ensure the business vision is aligned to the user goals – meet the users facing the problem and find out their specific needs.
Digital Transformation mostly isn’t – Stephen Collins
Content is essential to a good user experience
There was a high value placed on the importance of content. Hazel Jennings’ presentation on ‘Applying Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Rules for Writing to User Experience’ focused on writing for your user – write about what they love, don’t waste their time, pinpoint what they want and think carefully about measures of success.
As UX designers, we are doing an ancient thing in a new way – Hazel Jennings
A content last approach can cause a multitude of problems. Matt Fenwick shared his tips for providing clients with a specific framework for writing content. This framework allowed content writers to write copy in a way that would not break a design or impact the user experience .
No more stork babies: Integrating UX research and content creation – Matt Fenwick
Design experiences that change with life itself
At the heart of every experience, are its users. As expected, there was a focus on what we can do as designers to ensure users are not forgotten. Focus on experiences that have the greatest impact.
What’s the least you can do to get the message across?
Adam Polansky spoke about the importance of presentation value to UX deliverables. Understanding how people learn and knowing your audience is key. An example is working from low to high fidelity design based on the needs of the approver.
Your most powerful tools – Adam Polansky
Design ethics
Many talks focused on what we, as designers can do to ensure values and ethics are upheld in design. What if people became addicted to your design? How will a future generation use your design? How can your design be harnessed for wrongdoing?
Slide from Mike Monteiro – closing keynote
Presentations and audio from the conference will be available soon so keep and eye out on the UX Australia website.
By
Ashleigh
