The UX Conference

In this talk Richard will argue that AI systems offer tremendous opportunities for an expanded role for UX research work because of the ethical issues that many experiences raise. They require both that engineering disciplines become more multi-disciplinary, addressing human issue face on, and that designers and researchers participate more fully in the engineering of systems, both from a data and algorithmic perspective, to ensure fairness and accountability throughout.

The probabilistic nature of AI systems require that designers and researchers change the way they think and work, as the relationship between person and machine shifts from the predictable to the probable, so while opportunities are expanded, they can't necessarily be approached with our existing tool sets.

We are in the age of machine learning, artificial intelligence, natural language understanding, internet of things and robotics all brought alive by ambient assistive companions. Everything is talking, everything has a brain...and we respond to these "presences" with many of the same feelings and reactions as if they were sentient beings. It's not our fault. It's 150,000 years of human hardwiring telling us that a speaking thing is not just an “it,” it’s alive and aware and connecting with us.

How might we design for Emotional Intelligence to make people feel that these experiences are useful, familiar, comfortable, positive, supportive and trust-worthy?

Being able to iterate and reiterate fast is key when it comes to UX. You might apply every single UX rule you know, but that doesn’t mean it’ll work out the way one might expect or hope, especially in games.

Working closely with a UXR team to validate a design at an early stage is important and time-saving. Also, making sure that a UX design works both on PC and console might require a different mindset and be able to look at the same problem from two directions.

Nathalie has been working on the Battlefield franchise for 6 years. She started out as a UI Software Engineer and moved over to UX design 3 years ago. Understanding technical limitations while designing features as well as working closely with UXR, gives her a head start when challenged with new design problems.

User experiences are less about technology than you might imagine. Understanding the impact of technology on people’s behaviours and desires is more challenging in design than ever before. As designers, it’s our role to understand the user, immersing ourselves in the experience we seek to improve. Are our traditional methods of research enough?

In Formula One we’ve been optimising our performance by blending qualitative and quantitative data for years from car set up to driver coaching. Now, we’re applying this approach to other industries, not just motorsport and automotive, but health and public transport.

From unearthing insight to inform clinicians when to perform patient surgery to using data to predict the health of a rail fleet, McLaren’s Applied Technologies’ design strategists will discuss how working for over 3 decades at the intersection of data, technology and human ingenuity to deliver quantifiable performance advantage in motorsport can transfer cross industries to push the boundaries of UI design, all for the user.

Eye tracking in user research has gained a lot of attention lately, and much due to the fact that the technology has become more accessible. But far too many are using it to gather large chunks of data, without proper research questions.

In this talk I will talk about how to use eye tracking in user research and how it can bring you extra insights – but also, when not to use it. I will talk about why using it in the wrong way could actually give misleading insights.

The presentation will also include my personal experience with using eye tracking as a lone UX designer in a small, agile product development team. I will talk about bringing insights to your team and how to involve them in design decisions.

While some regard process as a four-letter word, the best processes should enable more efficient and effective work. We'll walk through a case study of design and research working together, with strategies on how to excel both as individual disciplines, and as a collaborative force.

Organisations such as the BBC often have a greater ratio of UX designers to UX researchers, so embedding research into the design process can be a challenge. To integrate UX research more fully requires close collaboration.

In this talk we will outline a 6-month Rapid Research Program between designers, researchers, product managers and external agencies. Twelve fortnightly cycles across BBC News and Weather technologies allow for experimentation of early design ideas sometimes from low-fidelity prototypes that can clarify user needs much earlier in the design cycle.

We will highlight key tips and tricks, what worked well and key lessons learnt from running a rolling rapid program.

At Dropbox, our research team often uses workshops to share findings with stakeholders and bring the findings to life. We've found them to be very impactful. In this talk I'll present the best practices on running these.

Hotels.com is part of the Expedia Group, one of the largest online travel company in the world. We’re currently live in 90 points of sale, in 41 languages. We have hundreds of thousands of properties on our website and apps, ranging from hotels, holiday rentals to resorts, apartments and many more.

So, how do we make our designs work across the globe? In this talk, we’ll give you an overview of our approach to global research and testing. We’ll talk about different research methods and how our product teams work together to include these insights and learnings into our processes.

Tim has been working closely with the diabetes unit at St Mary’s in Paddington. He is applying new research methods to probe how young adults with Type 1 diabetes can have better conversations with their clinical care team.

He will share the novel research methods like co-design using games as the foundation for digital products, in this case, between clinic tool that helps promote better clinician-patient conversations.

Here our guests had fun composing and singing a song about their day at The UX Conference.