If you’ve attended a UX talk or conference recently, the chances are you will be very familiar with sketchnoting, the art of making visual notes whilst listening to a speaker. Some of the better known sketchnoters are Eva-Lotta Lam and Mike Rhode. I was an avid sketcher as a child and used to spend at least a couple of hours a day sketching, using my family and our pets as subject matter. I studied art [...]

Last month I was lucky enough to try out a completely new approach to running a stand at a software tradeshow, in Texas. Over 3 days we designed and developed a prototype for a new software tool. Using rapid prototyping techniques (paper and HTML/CSS prototyping) and Agile development methods, we were able to get feedback from prospective customers and iterate our designs during the tradeshow. Our stand was specifically designed to provide a UX area for [...]

In a recent 3 minute video interview with the Illinois Foundry, Don Norman advocated a systems thinking approach to design engineering education. Rather than educating students in narrow, deep specialisms, Don suggests that Universities also need to educate students with a broad knowledge of social sciences. Educating systems thinkers will, he feels, ensure user needs are considered and help solve social problems. We need people whose understanding goes beyond science and engineering to encompass history, [...]

I’m doing some research into design principles for a project at work, with some colleagues. Design principles help focus and guide the design process to align product development with organisational objectives, brand values and user needs. Design principles provide strategic direction for design work, particularly for larger organisations with a number of products or services. But they can also work for start-ups and smaller organisations, who want to ensure they don’t stray from a clear [...]

I was really excited to come across a recent post from Analisa Lono at Adaptive Path about a new course they are putting together with the University of San Francisco: Our goal with this course is to provide the opportunity for students to gain exposure to concepts, methods, and professionals outside of their academic disciplines while getting first-hand experience creating a digital product for the purpose of serving their community. Young Rewired State and Apps [...]

On Monday the Cambridge Usability Group welcomed Rahel Bailie, all the way from Vancouver, to give a talk titled ‘The Content Strategy Paradox’. There’s been a lot written about content strategy recently. I’ve read articles and books that promote content strategy (too many to list here) and some articles that question the existence of content strategy as a standalone discipline, like this recent one. So I was keen to hear what Rahel had to say. The first [...]

The talk I presented at UX Cambridge 2011 was filmed by InfoQ and is now live on their site, together with my slides: Winning hearts and minds: how to embed user experience from scratch in a large organisation The talk is about 45 minutes long and includes several lessons learnt and the findings from a survey I conducted on UX maturity in other organisations. I also wrote a blog post summarising the talk last year. [...]

I’ve been in my new job for almost three months now and I’m really enjoying the new challenges. Anyone who reads my blog will know I used to work as a Web Strategy Manager within a local authority. Towards the end of last year I switched to a User Experience Specialist role in a software company. I was keen to develop my UX skills and an opportunity came up at Red Gate, a local software [...]

It’s not often a presentation is funny, original and communicates something as well as Lucy Spence’s presentation ‘Designing for Bears‘. I picked this up off my Twitter stream from Product Camp London (#PCampLDN) and it’s well worth a look. Superb drawings Lucy!

When I first heard that UX Cambridge 2011 was being planned I was thrilled on two levels. Our city’s first dedicated UX conference offered a  great opportunity to learn new skills on home turf and meet up with fellow practitioners in the area. I’m part of a group that organises UX talks in Cambridge and in the last year have noticed a steady growth in the local UX community. UX Cambridge was well attended by over 100 people and both days [...]