Last Thursday I attended the second annual Rosenfeld Summit, the one-day 32 Awesomely Practical UX Tips virtual conference with six experts in user experience design sharing practical advice you can use in your work and projects.
It was a great conference and I came away with tips for improving my sketching, adding play concepts to my work, and strategies for collaborating with others. Below you will find the tips organized by speaker.
Dave Gray on Sketching, Visualizing and Collaborating
- The less you draw, the more the mind will fill it in
- You can draw anything you can imagine, and drawing can help you imagine it
- There are many ways to make a model. Be conscious of your choices.
- Impact effort matrix
You can find Dave on Twitter at @davegray.
Christina Wodtke, Tips from Game Design
- Make your design’s goals full of rich and specific motion
- Don’t shy from the power of negative emotions
- Play styles can be more useful in making choices than personas (use both!)
- Keep your users coming back with loops
- Just in time information beats any tutorial
- The interface should teach you how to use it. Make it fun!
You can find Christina on Twitter at @cwodtke.
Brenda Laurel, Design Research
- Consistent representations of action are superior to interface metaphors
- Focus on designing the action; the design of objects, environments and characters must all serve this grand strategic goal
- UX is experience. Design choices that set up the probability for dramatic action
- Human-centered design research informs your intuition
- Meet people where they are
Learn about Brenda and her work on her website.
Kim Goodwin, Leadership Tips
- Focus stakeholder conversations on goals
- Sell the design before you start the user research
- Design your project plan to fit the culture
- To change culture, focus on values
- To change minds, overcome perceived loss
You can find Kim on Twitter at @kimgoodwin.
Steve Portigal, Interviewing Users
- Frame the problem
- Pain points are not always that painful
- Who you learn from is not necessarily who you are designing for
- The power of silence
- Be a good listener!
- Analyze data on two levels
- Sell research by selling outcomes, not process
You can find Steve on Twitter at @steveportigal.
Leah Buley, Success in Projects and Within Your Team
- It will get ugly
- Research is important. Synthesis of that research is more important.
- Everything that can be a workshop should be
- “User-friendly” is the thin edge of the wedge
You can find Leah on Twitter at @ugleah.
Wait a minute, Deborah, you might be saying. Those tips only add up to 31.
Yes, I know. At one point I lost count of what tip we were on.
Oops, my numbering is off. Looks like the next tip is tip 28 from @ugleah. #32uxtips
— Deborah Edwards-Onoro (@redcrew) April 24, 2014
But I checked my notes, followed up with fellow attendees, and discovered I did write all the tips down.
In the end, there were really only 31 tips.
Hey, it doesn’t matter. These are great tips from user experience experts that will help you improve your work.
I’d love to hear how you use the tips in your work!
