By Leif Roy and Trent Mankelow
In April and May, we spoke at and attended two conferences on opposite sides of the globe – UX London 2012 in London and Service Design 2012 in Melbourne. Here are our highlights.
Service Design 2012
Attended by Trent Mankelow
I liked the intimate feel of this conference. With only 120-ish people it made the whole thing feel really friendly. The local case studies and content (there was nary a mention of Apple) helped to create a “we can do this” attitude. Read more »
The opportunity doesn’t arise for every user testing project, but occasionally the perfect project emerges that is a great candidate for more realistic user testing.
Generally user testing participants are pretty good at suspending disbelief and engaging with ‘make believe’ type tasks in a session, but seeing participants in a more realistic situation definitely returns richer insights. If the opportunity arises to make your testing more ‘real’ and less ‘make believe’ you should take it. Read more »
Out for lunch with a friend one afternoon, I happened to mention the term ‘critical design’. To my surprise she laughed and asked if I had made it up. This lead me to thinking about what critical design actually is and how can it be used to inform design thinking. Read more »
By Kris Nygren
If someone had told me last year that the most innovative initiative we would be involved with in 2012 would be conceived by ACC, I would probably have laughed it off. Yet, for the past four months we’ve been involved with ACC’s Idea Nation initiative and it’s shaping up to be one of the most courageous and creative approaches to a big, hairy problem I have ever seen. Read more »
By Trent Mankelow
Going to Webstock is like eating breakfast. A very large breakfast. Think crispy hash browns, creamy mushrooms, plump poached eggs, grainy toast, small but perfectly formed sausages. And slow-roasted tomatoes. And hollandaise.
Of course, the trouble with so much food is the inevitable food coma that follows. So it is with Webstock 2012. My brain is stuffed full of new ideas, and I’m going to be spending the next couple of weeks waddling around, digesting what I learnt.
There were a lot of highlights: the quality of storytelling (hardly a bulletpoint in sight), the mixture of melancholy and mirth, the down-to-earthness of everyone there. Also, Kapiti black doris plum ice cream. Read more »
You’ve finally got your new brand sorted. It’s taken ages, you’ve had multiple shouting matches with your branding agency, but it was all worth it in the end. Just look at that brand – it’s awesome, it’s different from anything else, it’s a work of art.
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By Trent Mankelow
The first time we conducted usability testing on a mobile device was in 2005 for Vodafone. The technology we used to run the testing was primitive, complicated and fragile. Here are a couple of photos to show you what the setup was like.
These days, our approach to mobile usability testing is very different. The whole process is much more guerrilla and lightweight, and we rarely test indoors. Given our recent growth in mobile testing projects, we thought we’d take a step back and share with you some of the lessons we’ve learnt. Read more »
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By Trent Mankelow
My wife and I went out to dinner recently, and I couldn’t help but notice the couple at the adjacent table both using iPads in-between forking food into their mouths. I’m not passing judgment – I think that smart phones, widespread broadband, and social media are all changing the way I behave too. As a society our attention is fracturing: at the dinner table, while we watch TV, as we shop.
So for our final newsletter of the year I thought I’d share with you some recent statistics that highlight how digital technology is changing our lives Read more »
Are all those mundane, admin tasks sucking your time and getting you down? User-centred design might be that elusive but effective answer.
Have you ever drifted into a kind of zen-like state when you were mowing the lawns? All of a sudden the lawns are freshly mown; what were you thinking about? Or when your Nonna is making that penne arrabbiata for the umpteenth time, it’s like she’s doing it without thinking.
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