Every month we have fun and informative “bite sized” presentations to add some inspiration to your lunch break.  These virtual events allow us to partner with amazing speakers, community groups and organizations to share their insights and hot takes on a variety of topics impacting our industry. 

Join us at the end of every month for Lunch n' Learn.

Sign up now to stay in the loop.

Anh Duong

In this Lunch n' Learn our guest Anh Duong drew on her proud Vietnamese heritage to explore how UX practitioners and advocates can consider non-native English speakers in UX. Ahn shared her personal experiences to show and discuss how empathizing with people who don't have English as their first language in your UX approach can really make a difference. This fun and interactive talk surfaced some really valuable takeaways including how considering a non-native English speaking point of view in your UX can actually improve digital experiences for everyone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8nrSW1dvK0

Speaker Bio

Anh Duong wears multiple hats at Catalyst IT as a Business Analyst, UX consultant and Accessibility Specialist. Practicing in different disciplines has helped her see how accessibility ties into every part of the product life cycle. Anh is passionate about helping others and is always looking beyond the rules and standards of UX or WCAG to find practical ways to create awesome accessible web designs. She has delivered web accessibility training and audits to many clients and actively participates in creating and maintaining a culture of accessibility and inclusive design throughout the company. Anh is proudly made in Vietnam with a healthy obsession of Banh Mi and Ca Phe Sua Da.

Grab your lunch, invite your colleagues and we hope to see you at our next Lunch n' Learn

We've launched a brand new series of 'bite sized' presentations to make your lunch break more inspiring. Together with speakers, community groups, and organizations from around the world — these virtual events dive into a variety of topics impacting our industry today.

Join us at the end of every month for Lunch n' Learn.

Sign up now to stay in the loop.

Clara Kliman-Silver

In our first Lunch n Learn, Clara Kliman- Silver, Senior UX Researcher at Google unpacked some of the barriers to effective designer-developer collaboration.

In her talk "UX in a distributed world", Clara discussed various workflow stages, the role of design systems, common pain points, and mitigation strategies — all based on UX research studies with designers, developers, and product teams over the last three years.

Clara also covered research on UX tools, how tools have transformed workflows, and where a perceived tooling problem might actually be a process issue (and what you can do about it). In addition, she considered how tools and workflows might evolve in the future.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4sYWOdROBM

📹: UX in a distributed world.

Speaker bio

Clara Kliman-Silver is a Senior UX Researcher at Google who studies design teams, design systems, UX tools, and designer-developer collaboration.

She specializes in participatory design and generative methods to investigate workflows, understand designer-developer experiences, and imagine ways to create UIs.

In previous roles, she has conducted research on developer tools, artificial intelligence, and healthcare. Clara holds a Bachelors of Science in Cognitive Science from Brown University.

Grab your lunch, invite your colleagues, and we hope to see you at the next Lunch n' Learn.

Making a difference through UX was a shared passion among an impressive line-up of 7 researchers, strategists, and designers from the global UX community at this year’s 100% virtual 3-day UX New Zealand conference.

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1. From bombs to bots: the evolving landscape of frontline research

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These days Darya Pilram, Senior Researcher at Twitter, spends her days trying to understand the motivation and techniques of groups who ‘hire’ technology to spread harmful narratives.  The desert of Mogadishu and the urban conflicts of South Africa are just some of the unlikely places she’s leveraged the power of frontline research to create change.

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"I realized the only way to influence change was by bringing folks along with me - and so I did.  I bought them right into the field with me."

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2. Beautifully accessible: why embracing inclusive design shouldn’t hold back your creativity

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Experience Designer Beth McPhail refuses to buy into the mindset that ‘accessibility is a creativity killer’. She challenges her peers to view accessibility as an opportunity to grow creatively while making technology more inclusive.

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“Accessibility is making it possible for someone to attend the party…and lose themselves in the music.”

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3. Innovating within the Justice sector | Part 2: For a fairer start - design’s role in shaping mana enhancing social & systemic change.

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Kelsey Gee is back challenging designers across all levels to think differently about how design can be used across different mediums and constraints to generate meaningful experiences and meaningful change.  In this session, she explores design’s role in creating empowering experiences that break both cycles of crime and institutional racism. (If you missed Part 1 from Mini Con head over here)

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"I truly believe that our superpower lies in our ability to redesign society, especially for our whanau and our most vulnerable communities…and once again explore design’s role in creating equal opportunities across safe, seamless, and healing public services."

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4. First do no harm: make your designs more trauma-informed and survivor sensitive

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In 1985, a researcher botched an interview question which led to a new understanding of trauma and its long-term effects. It grew awareness of the need to be trauma-informed in your work but what’s it actually mean?  UX Researcher Melissa Eggleston explores what it means to be trauma-informed and shares practical advice on how to achieve it.

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"Trauma is everywhere and something for us to think about…regardless of whether we’re working with people we know are dealing with traumatic events…it’s really all over the place."

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5. Changing the way we design high-risk products to make meaningful impact

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One in five people experiences “mental illness or significant mental distress” in New Zealand.  It’s a problem the Government knows needs to be addressed but how? In her powerful presentation, Rachael Reeves reveals what’s involved in balancing the complexities of Government with the need to rethink the way we design health products.

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"Be warned you can’t please everyone and it can be tough to keep product vision aligned when you’re talking about serious consequences for people."

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6. Remote research with new internet users (yes you can!)

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One billion new internet users (NIU) will come online for the first time over the next 5 years. These NIU's are using their first smartphones, with most of their online activities focused on communication, maintaining social connections, and entertainment. Tiane Lee, UX Research Lead at Google outlines the challenges and considerations behind adapting research for varying levels of digital literacy, including practical ideas for planning and conducting remote research with NIU.

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"NIU’s are typically less digitally literate, they may show lower confidence in digital capability, and they may perceive lower value of the internet for things like chatting and entertainment.”

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7. Conditions Design: weaving the invisible threads of service design, value orchestration, and culture building  

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Michael Tam introduces us to the niche field of conditions design and cites a purpose built high diving board on Wellington city’s busy waterfront in New Zealand as a good example of conditions design.  Find out why in this fascinating talk.

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"What really impressed me here…hats off to the council because they didn’t design an experience that would discourage people from doing it. It’s designed for people to have fun (vs Hong Kong where public spaces are designed for Tai Chi not fun like this). The design allows it to happen by influencing human behavior to stay safe but encouraging fun and exploration.”

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For a taste of what even more speakers from UX New Zealand 2022 had to share, head over to our highlights reel

An impressive line-up of researchers, strategists, and designers from the global UX community shared their ideas, experiences, insights, and approaches to effective ways of working at this year’s 100% virtual 3-day UX New Zealand conference.

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We introduce 7 speakers, highlight what they had to say, and share their full video presentations.

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1. How to design for designers at scale

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Designers focus on creating great experiences for customers but who’s looking out for the designers themselves? Marine Bucher, Service Designer at Humankind shared how a Design Ops approach is creating and maintaining a healthy environment for 170+ designers globally and 40+ locally in New Zealand, to thrive at ANZ bank.

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“The goal of Design Ops is to remove all operational headaches so designers can focus on designing and researching.”

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2. Human centred design in crisis

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An impressive trio from Deloitte Digital: Carol Yung, Georgia Chetwynd-Talbot, and Matt Cobham took us through what it was like to be part of the agile team tasked with designing and piloting a core service of the UK’s pandemic response in just weeks, and delivering it at scale in just 2-3 months.

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"Our lifecycle from design, to build, to deployment was extremely quick, learning as we went.  We had to think and act like a start-up’."

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3. Using one pagers to communicate research findings

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Have you ever had a stakeholder ask you to present the findings of your study one hour before a meeting?  Michael Ryan, User Research Director at Liberty Mutual Insurances shared his solution to this and other challenges researchers face presenting their work in a practical and entertaining talk.

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“Can you present the findings from last week’s study now? Scenarios like that used to stress me out as a UX researcher so I came up with 1-pagers.”

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4. Research Ops at Trade Me: Building a shared approach to research

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Sarah Goforth, Senior UX Researcher at Trade Me considers herself and her fellow researchers, Kaitiaki, 'guardians of our people'.  Sarah shared the challenges and wins of building their particular type of UX research operations (ReOPs) at Trade Me which includes everyone, (researchers and non-researchers), in the process.

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"Not having an impact with your research really sucks as a researcher…and should not be wasted." 

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5. The design of policy and the policy of design

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Phil Balagtas, President, and Founder of Futures Thinking believes designers have a responsibility to design better futures and policies for generations to come by embedding a future-thinking mindset into the products and services they design.  He referenced the confusing, often intelligible world of Terms and Conditions to illustrate the need for designers to take a more human-centered approach. 

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"Policies are not always designed as a dialogue.  Yet it's a gateway to using a service."

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6. The 4 day week in the digital age

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After introducing the four-day week at Perpetual Guardian, Andrew Barnes, Founder of 4 Day Week Global, actively advocates for its adoption by others as part of the future of work.  He talks through the issues, challenges, and opportunities of embracing a 4 day working week in the digital age.

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“When we started back in 2018 we were a pretty lone voice…The 4 day week has been given rocket fuel by Covid-19.”

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7. Tackling complexity with object oriented UX

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While many avoid or despair when faced with UX complexity, Sophia Prater, Founder & Lead UX Designer at Rewired UX embraces complexity, untangling it with an approach she calls Object-Oriented UX.  She shared four tough questions to ask early on to help wrangle complexity to benefit the user.

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"I see portfolio pieces like this a lot. I can tell complexity has been completely swept under the rug and the end-user ends up handling it.”

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For a taste of what even more speakers from UX New Zealand 2022 had to share, head over to our highlights reel.

One of the great things about being in the UX field is the UX community. So many inspiring and generally all-round awesome people who are passionate about what they do. What happens when you get a big bunch of those fantastic people all in the one place? You can practically watch the enthusiasm and inspiration levels rise as people talk about ideas, experiences and challenges, and how they can help each other solve problems.Luckily for us, there are lots of events dedicated to getting UX people together in one place to share, learn, grow, and connect. CanUX is one of those, and I was fortunate enough to be there in Ottawa to speak at this year’s event.

CanUX is the annual big UX event for Canada. Started 8 years ago by volunteers who wanted to create an opportunity for the Canadian UX community to get together, it’s grown from a small event to a major conference with top speakers from around the world. Still run by two of the original volunteers, CanUX has kept its focus on community which comes through clearly in how it’s organized. From the day of the week and time of year it’s held, through to details such as a yoga class at the venue to kick off the second day of the conference, there are countless details, small and large, that encourage people to go along, to meet others, and to catch up with old friends from previous CanUX conferences.Aware that there are natural energy lulls in conferences, as people’s brains fill up with inspiration and knowledge, the CanUX team have a regular MC, Rob Woodbridge. This is a man who bounds across the stage, encourages (and actually gets!) audience participation, swears, cracks jokes, and generally seems to have a lot of fun while being the most effective MC I have ever encountered. (Naturally, he’s a bit controversial — some people love to hate him because of that unbridled enthusiasm. But either way, he sets the tone for passionate, engaging presentations!)

With all the attention to detail around the rest of the conference, it’s not surprising that the same care is shown to the conference programme. All of the main presenters are seen ahead of time by one of the organizers, and then invited to be at CanUX. A very small number of short presentation times are set aside for an open call for submissions, to help encourage newer speakers. Presentations are chosen to cover research, design and IA topics, with both practical and inspirational talks in each.The talks themselves were fantastic, covering everything from the challenges of designing spacesuits for NASA, tips for overcoming challenges of being the lone UX person in a company, to the future of robotics in services, and how to get design systems up and working in a large organization. Two of the themes that came through strongest for me this year were inclusivity and empathy — for all of the wonderfully diverse people in the world, and also for people we often forget to take the time to understand and empathize with: our peers and our colleagues.

I feel very privileged to have been able to be involved in a conference that was so full of passion and dedication to UX, and to share the stage with so many inspiring people. The topic for my presentation was a subset of the outcomes of qualitative research I have been doing into who UX people are; in particular, the different types of challenges we face depending on our roles, the type of team we are in, our experience level, and (if reasonably new to UX) where our UX knowledge comes from. My talk seemed to be well received (yay!) — although some of the enthusiasm may have been due to the shoes with squirrel heels I was wearing, which got a lot of attention!

Overall, CanUX was the best organized and most thoughtful conference I’ve ever attended. The passion that the volunteer organizers have for the UX field comes through clearly, and really helps build community. Here’s hoping I’m lucky enough to get back to Ottawa for another one!