Comparison with other creative industries like music and film. Rules are necessary to let creative fly.
Nancy:Claire Rowland: Creativity myths (everybody uses both left and right sides of the brain) ,Tips to make a Uxer more creative. Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in creative work.
Viv: Hanna Donovanexplained what improvisation can teach us about design. Improvisation; spontaneity; something done in the moment that is done in response to your immediate environment. In doing this, in getting feedback, in having our work repurposed by other team members, or even other friends and peers, we're helped to see our work in different lights. Mastering your tools so that they don’t inhibit the pace or process of creativityThe necessity of structural frameworks to guide and constrainThe importance of roles and mutual respectSpecific techniques for trading parts (call-and-response)
Nancy: Tell the story in as many words as you need to tell it in, don’t cut copy length just because JakobNeilsen told you to. Usability should never be sacrificed for the sake of style. ‘User driven design’ should be advocated at every stage of the project. The Dogma rules aim to separate best practices from technology and fashion (to avoid the faith of the Dogma 95 movement that was tied to 35mm)
Viv: Brendan Dawes, magenticNorth’s creative director. Boil: fill your head with as many ideas as possible, then Simmer: consider and reflect and finally Reduce: remove things until there is nothing you can’t justify. Be ware of your sense of play as a designer.
Viv: John Gruber said that the quality of the finished product ‘tends to approach the level of taste of the person who has the final say’. So someone with the highest level of vision should control the project. Stanley Kubrick and Alfred Hitchcock had very absolute visions of their films and created methods of execution that meant the final cut never strayed from their visions. Hitchcock used storyboarding to ensure that the footage could be edited in only one way.
Two camps: one thinks is all about the end consumer and the other that you have to ignore the consumer (a bit) to be able to truly innovate
Nancy: Eric Reiss: UX Dogma to aid creativity, but it’s OK to break the rules, Peas in cat food (don’t bow to the ego of the designer or the stakeholder)
Viv: Can you attend a ux or design conference and not hear the name Steve Jobs? Martin Neumeier talked about the need for an innovative brand to be able to succeed in today’s market. Ford said ‘If you asked people what they wanted they would have said faster horses’. You need to win a category (iPhone won the samrtphone one) Two factors: good and different. Herman Miller’s Aeron chair is a good example of product that is different and good. I performerd poorly in the initial tests because people thought it was weird and initial sales were sluggish.
Nancy: Rory Sutherland: Details make the difference. Big strategy not always right for UX. Would pay someone very little but give them loads of power to be in charge of detail
Many talks touch in the principles of branding and how these should be applied to create better products and better experiences.
Nancy:Jeroen van Geel: Product personality, let copy tell the story.Childlish washing machine & happy website.How we, as designers, need to consider the personality of websites as we make them. Learn from the field of branding to create likeable products.
Viv:Samatha Warren urged us to consider our typeface choices, saying ‘A typeface can say a lot more than the copy spells out’. Compared the role of the designer with that of the casting director choosing actors. She considers different typefaces like different shoes, Helvetica being a pair of black flats.
Nancy: Harry Brignull talked of the tricks designers use to control you actions. Example of a supermarket manager sticking something in your shopping trolley. Personality of a dark pattern. Uxers should stand up against dark patterns? Crusade to name and shame companies that do this: darkpatterns.org
Testing is extremely useful but only when used wisely
Viv: James Page and Sabrina Marsch talked about how labs skew the results of tests as it’s not a natural environment for the users
Nancy: John Dodd: Think about how & when you ask questions, users post rationalise (watch face, healthy hamburger). Eye-tracking only limited use and only useful when carried out appropriately.
Nancy: Graham McAllister talked about measuring emotion of game players using biometrics.
How business make good design difficult
Viv: Eric Reiss: danger of designing around business structure
Nancy or Viv: Rory Sutherland talked about the danger of the obsession with numbers and predictability by business men. Karl Popper’s clock and cloud systems. Clocks are predictable and mechanical and clouds are more complex systems hence unpredictable and difficult to adjust. Worst mistakes are made by people treating clouds like clocks. It’s the accumulation of small actions, and an oblique approach to fixing a problem, that often proves successful.
Nancy:Julian Hirsttaled about changing the methodology so Uxers are involved from the beginning helping to discover the problem and not only to provide a solution. Business are not good at identifying the root problem.
Claire Rowland: Creativity myths (everybody uses both left and right sides of the brain) ,Tips to make a Uxer more creative
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