UX newsletter — November 2018Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser. Message from the EditorHi {!email} I attended a UX conference last month. This is a rare event for me: I'm introverted by nature and find the pressure to network at these things a little overwhelming. The conference itself was well organised and useful. But my lasting impression wasn't about the the talks I'd heard but the people I'd seen. The field of UX (or UX design to be more specific) has had an enormous influx of young people when I wasn't looking. On the surface, that's a good thing. It shows the discipline is thriving. But as I looked around the audience, people weren't just young: they were also predominantly white and well educated. It was a monoculture. I remember that we used to characterise developers as Aspergery types, unrepresentative of their users. But there's also a lot of truth in the stereotype of "UX Designers" as the Shoreditch hipster. They don't reflect the society they serve. This lack of diversity is important and not something I've seen addressed. One glimmer of hope is that UX designers have a process for counteracting their monoculture: UX research. UX research requires designers to get exposed to their users and see these differences first hand. I just hope that's enough to counteract the inevitable bias towards self-design that I see in many development teams. In this month's article Philip Hodgson picks up this theme with suggestions on how we can see differently. I hope you find it useful. — David Travis See differentBeing able to see things through the eyes of someone else is one of the most important abilities a designer can have. But it's also very difficult for most of us to do. Could a rather dramatic break with convention put designers into the shoes of the people they design for? Read the article in full: See different. From our archives: Why you shouldn't ask "Why?" in a usability testThis year marks an important anniversary for people who moderate usability tests. In a classic study carried out exactly 30 years ago, psychologists showed that people are very poor at explaining the reasons behind their choices. This is why usability tests focus on what people do, not on what people say. So why do so many usability test moderators continue to ask participants, "Why"? Read the article in full: Why you shouldn't ask "Why?" in a usability test. What we’re readingSome interesting UX-related articles that got our attention over the last month:
Like these? Want more? View our posts on Twitter or Facebook. Upcoming UX training coursesFoundation Certificate in User Experience, Jan 15-17 2019, London.In this fun and hands-on training course, you'll practice all the key areas of UX — from interviewing your users through to prototyping and usability testing your designs — while you prepare for and take the BCS Foundation Certificate exam. View the full syllabus: Foundation Certificate in User Experience. UX quotation of the month"Statistics are human beings with the tears wiped off." — Paul Brodeur. Did I mention I'm writing a book?It's titled Think Like a UX Researcher and you can help shape the book, get sample content, and find out when it's published at uxresearchbook.com. Hungry for more?Want to receive your own copy of this newsletter?Join our community of people interested in user experience. Sent monthly. No spam. |