ConveyUX Boston 2019
I was lucky to be sent to Boston last week for a UX conference. Here are my notes:
Day 1
How Product Management Plus Design leads to Product Success
Speaker: Dan Olsen (Olsen Solutions)
Slides: https://www.dropbox.com/s/iqwtqjsp86zm53h/olsen%20-%20opening.pdf?dl=0
Notes: https://boston.conveyux.com/notes-for-how-product-management-plus-design-leads-to-product-success/
This talk was about developing ideas. There were 2 main concepts:
The "four Ds"
- Discover (Who is this for, what are the needs)
- Define (How does it meet their needs, how is it better then other solutions, what is the feature set)
- Design (What is the best solution, UX, Details)
- Develop (Build the ideas)
"Diverge before converge"
- Think of many problems then converge on the most important ones
- Diverge on possible features to solve the solution then converge on the best ones
- Diverge on many designs and converge on the best ones
Conversations to Great Products
Speaker: Cindy Alvarez (Microsoft)
Slides: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ee2vayzhphxidp3/alvarez%20-%20opening.pptx?dl=0
Notes: https://boston.conveyux.com/notes-for-conversations-to-great-products/
This talk was about how we often talk past each other and spoke about strategies to get to the core of an issue.
"The curse of knowledge" - We often forget the other person doesn't have context to what we're saying.
Good phrases to talk to a designer or a project manager if they don't agree with the solution proposed:
Common project manager to designer problems:
Example 1: PM - "Just let me mock up what I’m thinking"
Between the lines: This can be interpreted from the designer as the PM not respecting their work. The PM might just have trouble expressing their ideas.
Better solution: Think of why you'd mock it up that way, what are you trying to do
Example 2: Designer - “Let me walk you through our design process...”
Between the lines: The designer is rejecting the feedback and saying what they do is important and they put thought in their work.
Better solution: Bring the customer in earlier in the design process
Example 3: Client - "Make the button bigger"
Better solution: Find out what the client wants the user to do here. If it's a call to action problem, maybe there's too many things to do on the page.
The 30/90 design review
Do at least two reviews, one when you're only 30% done. In this review, we're only looking at large concepts, ideas, not specific design details. There can be major changes here. The 90% review is to put the finishing polish, no major changes.
ThingProvisation: Creating Value though Design Beyond Scripts and Plans
Speaker: Kristian Kloeckl (Associate ProfessorDepartment of Art + Design, School of Architecture)
Slides: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ipa3lsx0w6jlrj6/kloeckl.pdf?dl=0
This talk was pretty theoretical, but the concept is interesting. It was about creating systems when the user can "improvise" interaction. By "improvise", we mean that the result of the interaction was not planned ahead of time by the creator. Example given: The hashtags in twitter were not originally a feature developed by Twitter.
The 4 types of interactions
- Interface (fixed physical spaces)
- Conversation/negotiation (co-created between user and computer - contextual or configurable UI)
- Theatre/performance (UI looks at intention of user to determine how to react)
- Improvisational (Result is not programmed explicitly by programmer and has 4 tenants)
- Design for initiative and ensure openness
- Awareness of time ensure the relevance of actions
- Actions are understood, analyzed and responded to in real time, focussing on cues from the user
- Interactions themselves are other than expected
Real world example: Starbucks has decided to no longer have scripted responses to customers. Instead they focus on how to handle certain situations, like an aggressive person, without specific lines to say.
Example of improvisation in a structured system: Waiters at a restaurant. They have a menu, they have certain specials to push, but the exact way they are to do so is up to them.
Get Emotional! Connecting Products and People in the Digital World
Speaker: Patricia Palmer (User Experience Director at TIAA)
Slides: https://www.dropbox.com/s/qpctcm3cemuzugf/palmer.pdf?dl=0
Products are more relatable, transparent and engaging when there's emotion in the designs. People can relate, connect, get curious and engaged with a product through emotional design.
"Emotions are not weakness, they are powerful."
How to do it?
- Identify moments that matter - when someone pauses and thinks
- Discover the emotions people feel in that moment - try and convert negative to positive emotions. At least, if it's difficult, try to get them curious. It's a better emotion than a negative one.
- Brainstorm what you need to support the desired emotion. Always think "What can the product do for me."
You can influence people's emotions in 3 ways:
- Content
- Interactions
- Visuals
In-Depth: Conversations to Great Products
Speaker: Cindy Alvarez (Microsoft)
This was a workshop and continuation of the talk in the morning. A few interesting takeaways here:
Verbal padding
When giving feedback, it's important to add verbal padding:
- yes. and...
- Just to be clear...
- May I ask what lead you to ...
- To confirm I'm understanding...
Problem solving technique:
To problem solve she recommends teams of 4 to 6, no bigger and no managers. The team must identify the problem(s) and suggest an experiment they can try out for a week or two to see if it solves the problem.
Code words
Find code words that fit in your team for common problems that might be a little uncomfortable to say flat out. Examples:
- Need more info
- What you delivered is not what I expected
- Need scope changes to finish
- That's not what was designed
Challenging ideas
It's much easier to challenge writing than what's in someone's head. Get people to write down their ideas.
Day 2
Elevate Your Product Design by Unifying UX and Brand Strategies
Speakers:
- Bill Flora (Chief Creative Officer at Blink)
- Geoff Harrison (Chief Design Officer at Blink)
Bill Flora and Geoff are veteran designers and shared their process for designing.
"The experience is the brand"
Bill Flora worked on Microsoft's "Metro" redesign. This design ended up affecting their marketting and even Microsoft's own logo.
There are 3 levels to their "design pyramid":
Bottom level: "Effective" - Simple, learnable, easy to use design
Middle level: "Emotional" - Beautiful, crafted, alive design
Top Level: "Expressive" - Enhances the brand, has personality, embodies the brand
According to an InVision study of 2,200 organizations on design practices, the top 5% of companies with strong designs had much better company performance. 4X the revenue, 5X the cost savings, 6x time to market.
They use "continuums" to figure out what the stakeholders want. Example: they had a contract with Atari and they wanted to know what the stakeholders were looking for. They had several continuums, like "retro to futuristic" and the stakeholders could put a pin where they wanted to be.
The examples and portfolio were impressive, but it was given by employees of the company whom created the conference, so it was some self promotion.
Digital Transformation: Going Beyond Buzzwords
Speaker: Jaime Levy (UX Strategy consultant • jaimelevy.com & author of the book UX Strategy: How to Devise Innovative Digital Products that People Want)
Notes: https://boston.conveyux.com/notes-for-digital-transformation-going-beyond-buzzwords/
Jaime Levy devines "UX Strategy" as the intersection between UX design and business strategy.
We lived through "digitization", making digital copies of analogue media. Next came "digitalization", making money from the digitization. Now we're in a "digital transformation" stage where the whole business is digital. More than just a paywall, it changes how the company operates.
Acronym "B.U.I.L.D." to explain the concept from the book "Digital Transformation":
Bridge gaps between company and people (talk to customers and employees)
Uncover barriers, assets, needs
Iterate in short cycles, test with users, improve and test like a scientist
Leverage success, resources
Disseminate share new innovations with the public and test
From the book "Digital Transformation Playbook", we look at the Netflix vs Blockbuster case. Netflix has been constantly changing. They originally sent movies through the mail, personalized recommendations. Then they became all digital, gathering of even more data for recommendations. Now as more streaming services are starting to popup, they're shifting to being a big content producer to own their content.
Levy's most excited about companies that had no digital component switching over. She gave an example of "Princess Cruises" whom developped an app to provide information about events, dining, etc. Disney tracks the position of all their customers are in their theme parks. The New York Times requiring their journalists to use their phones to shoot video. Porche track their vehicles for roadside assistance, integrated Waze, etc.
Designing Up the Confidence Curve
Speaker: Yohanes Frezgi (Worked for Audible, Alibaba.com)
Yohanes is a project manager and was giving practical advice to designers to get their ideas done. Basically, he has 2 big questions he asks designers:
- Will you design work? - Internal validation, Stakeholder support, Customer validation
- How did you validate your idea with data? - (i.e. the confidence curve)
The steps of the confidence curve are:
- Problem (quantifiable, solve critical pain point, is a KPI or important to someone other than you)
- Internal Validation (Behaviour data or business metric frequently monitored, gain support from stakeholder)
- "If your problem isn't tied to someone's bonus, it probably won't get made"
- Research (Interviews/surveys, get pull quotes or video to put a face to your data)
- Prototyping (Survey customers to help quantify improvements)
- Dev/Refinement
- Live Testing / Optimization
- Launch
Apple now takes 30% of all in app purchases, including substriptions. Many companies have removed their in app purchases all together. Yohanes worked on improving subsription numbers for Audible, when they can't have direct in app links to subscribe. The used to upsell with an e-mail and with his research and work, they switched to giving a free book, which you sign up for by linking to the site.
The big message here was have data to show your bosses to validate your ideas.
Conducting Competitive Research and Analysis for Devising Innovative Products
Speaker: Jaime Levy (UX Strategy consultant • jaimelevy.com & author of the book UX Strategy: How to Devise Innovative Digital Products that People Want)
Spreadsheet for research:
Link to 4th chapter of book:
Workshop where we practiced doing research on direct and indirect competitors.
The four tenets of UX Strategy:
- Business Strategy
- Value Innovation
- Validated User Research
- Killer UX
UX Strategy is NOT:
- Finding the "North Star"
- "Strategic" way to perform UX Design
- Product Strategy (can be, but only subset)
- Tied to brand strategy
"Instead of telling someone what to do, have the data support you idea and have them come to the same conclusion".
Resources
Site to find information about companies: https://www.crunchbase.com/
Also, if you sign up for at least one university course, you'll have access to a lot of business data you wouldn't otherwise.