Sessions

There are two rooms at the venue, so most of the conference sessions will provide one session for the ‘UX Professional’ and one for the ‘UX Curious’ at the same time.

Behavioural Change Case Study

Run by Numiko who would like to share a case study about considering UX and user journeys to effect behavioural change, talking through their work with Time To Change, which involved creating a number of personas to represent particular belief systems, and looking at content and IA to move website visitors from one belief system to another.

Speakers: Chris Atherton (Numiko)

Crafting the User Experience of Financial Systems

Panel session chaired by Peter Bagnall (Surface Effect)

In an age where the concept of money is becoming a digital device, many financial institutions are looking for new ways to help us access and use our money. Each of these new ways brings further challenges to balance the necessary security requirements against the users desire for an simple and efficient experience. Our expert panel will discuss and debate some of the fundamental issues that impact on the areas of Security, User Research and User Centered Design and try to identify potentials ways to streamline the interaction process without reducing user confidence and trust.

Panelists:

Design for just one person? Investigation of personas in web design

Speaker: Alistair Edwards (University of York)

HE Routes to UX Work

The MSc Programme in HCIT at the University of York is a 12-month programme designed to introduce students to a wide range of topics, including: understanding users; requirements engineering; user-centred design; qualitative research methods: design ethnography; quantitative research methods; advanced research methods for human-centred interactive technologies; advanced topics in interactive technologies; web design. Students also undertake a substantial individual project in the latter six months of the programme. Topics covered include a wide range, from interaction in games to formal evaluation of interactive systems. The Department is located in a new building on the Heslington East Campus which incorporates The Home Lab, a home-like environment in which we can carry out controlled experiments into the everyday use of technology, including by older people and others with particular needs.

Speaker: Alistair Edwards (University of York)

Isn’t it about time they took UX research seriously?

No organisation would launch a product or advertising campaign without conducting some form of market research; so why doesn’t this happen in digital? In this session, Fiona & Guy will explore some of their ideas around why usability and UX research is still the poor relation to Market Research – even though its ROI is visible and remarkable.

Speakers: Fiona Harwood & Guy Redwood (SimpleUsability)

Linear Personalisation of the BBC Homepage

Linear Personalisation is a proof of concept developed by Athernet to tailor online content suggestions based on automatic tracking of users browsing a website, and serving time-sensitive suggestions based on their viewing habits. This session will give a brief overview of the concept and the method of applying it to a website to improve the user experience by delivering appropriate suggestions for content that may be of interest.

Speakers: John Muirhead and Tom McCambridge (Athernet)

Open Spaces Discussion

A chance for participants to raise topics of interest and to split off into groups to discuss whatever takes your interest, be it Agile UX, UX Curriculum or any other topic.

The Rise and Rise of Usability, UX, CX

The evolution of usability and its two sisters user experience and customer experience. What the differences are, and why they have emerged only recently, and are beginning to make a symbiosis with marketing and other domains, and diverging away from technology. Why, in 1997, David presented a piece called ‘Repositioning HCI’ to the IEEE and no-one but David was a full time then HCI-er, and why now we have many conferences for many such people, of which this is one. Why the onset of mobile and multi-device computing means that we are the most important people in mass-market technology right now as long as we brand ourselves as right brain creatives and position ourselves not as subsets of technology or marketing, but as experience professionals in our own right, with our own agenda and value.

Speaker: David Hawdale (Hawdale Associates)

Remote Usability Testing: The Usability Lab is Dead

In this thought (and conversation) provoking session Lee and Ian will question whether Lab-based approaches to usability testing and user research are now defunct. Although usability labs have served us well for many years, remote testing is fast becoming the norm for many organisations – with many switching budget to remote only solutions. They will discuss the effectiveness of the two different approaches and will argue that remote can offer everything (and even more) than Lab based testing can provide.

Speakers: Lee Duddell (WhatUsersDo) and Ian Franklin (IFonly Consulting)

Usability of Money

Speaker: Peter Bagnall (Surface Effect)

‘War of the Worlds’ – Where TV and web collide

Based on Decipher’s research of the last two years, the session is intended to highlight the challenges of bringing two separate industries, two competing technologies, and two user contexts together into a 21 century TV experience. It will look at:

  • The clash of STB and connected screen development cultures
  • Combining UX for individuals & groups within the same experience
  • The ‘switch’ – where interface concepts can (and where they can’t) migrate from one screen to another
  • UX for (and within) video
  • Multi-screen /UX and the rise of the multi-device audience

Speaker: Nigel Walley (Decipher)