Sessions at WebVisions Portland 2012 about User Experience on Thursday 17th May

A vital lesson for all web professionals is that “you are not your user”. With this in mind, we constantly observe differences in perception, habits, abilities and background knowledge between us and our audience. Those differences usually live on a scale from “designing for myself” to “designing for the sensory impaired” - but what lies on the true extremes of that scale?

How do you design for someone who sees the world in sonar? What about in smell? How would you make something a plant could use?

And, if we ever send a probe to a habitable world, how can we make sure that any real aliens who find it know what to do with it?

The gap between how design firms operate and how products actually get built is wider than ever. Join this panel of UX and development vets in a conversation + Q&A around what the world looks like when everyone on your team stops consulting and starts building. Developers: learn how to think (and hire) through a UX lens. Designers: learn how to work best with the types of people who can make your ideas actually come to life.

User Experience Design–have we figured out what this is yet? Or, for that matter, where it is going in the future? What are unicorns, why does everyone want to hire one, everyone claims it impossible to be one, yet still aspire to be one?

While you may not find yourself with a specific answer, you will be taken on a journey of exploration through challenges, definitions defining yourself, and what it means to fake it. You'll explore a variety of brilliant, different thinkers and what it takes to get to know them and start down the path of becoming one of them (hint: you're already on your way!).

And finally, you'll be introduced to a new methodology of UX that hearkens from depths of innovation not seen since Miami in the mid-80s.

How do you know if the user experience your team is slaving over is succeeding or failing? How can your team use data to make better decisions? Quantitative measures can help answer these questions and can complement more traditional qualitative research methods like usability testing.

Like many things in life, quantitative measurement relies on good preparation. To effectively measure a user experience it must be divided into discrete pieces that can be measured against their objectives. In this presentation Richard will provide a framework for thinking about measurement along with techniques and tips.

He will describe in detail how to create a Capability Strategy Sheet that defines the goals and measures of an experience (along with a complete example based on a fictional pet store website). He will also share some common measurement patterns that have emerged from his team’s work.
To conclude, he will describe some of the cultural and change management challenges involved when an organization uses data to inform design decisions.