A summary of the key things I learned at UX London conference 2013, created to share internally with others at Cyber-Duck.

1. UX London
10 - 12 April 2013

2. Tom Hulme
@thulme
Design Director, IDEO

3. Don’t fight desire
‣ Don’t be frustrated if users “do it
wrong”
‣ Find and embrace unhandled desire
paths

4. Launch to learn
‣ Find the minimum viable experience
‣ Launch it
‣ You will be wrong
‣ Learn from that
‣ Don’t be precious

5. Two pizza team
‣ A concept from Amazon
‣ Teams small enough that everyone
can be fed by two pizzas
‣ Everyone has line of sight to the
customer

6. Jeff Gothelm
@jboogie
Author of Lean UX

7. Requirements are
assumptions
‣ Articulate them as such and they can
be rethought
‣ When the CEO says “do this”, you do
it; when the CEO says “I think this”,
you have a conversation then test the
hypothesis
‣ "We believe building [this] for [them]
will result in [this]. We will know we're
successful when [this] happens."

8. Julia Whitney
Head of UX & Design
BBC

9. London
Olympics 2012
‣ 30,000,000 timeline scrubs
‣ 25,000,000 full screens
‣ 21,000,000 chapter markers chosen
‣ 18,000,000 pauses
‣ Sport guides were conceived during
user testing
‣ Bookmark titles were written manually

10. Ben Terrett
@benterrett
Head of Design, GDS

11. .GOV
‣ Heavy bias for designing in browser
‣ Very little wireframing
‣ Launch and test attitude
‣ gov.uk/designprinciples
‣ gov.uk/service-manual
‣ github.com/alphagov

12. Chris Heathcote
@antimega
Creative Lead, GDS

13. Schelling Points
‣ Focal points; places that things find
themselves
‣ That table by the door with your keys,
wallet, phone...
‣ Personal Schelling points are wrists,
shoes, necklace...

14. Always design a thing by
considering it in its next
larger context - a chair in a
room, a room in a house, a
house in an environment,
an environment in a city
plan.”
Eliel Saarinen
“

15. Russell Davies
‣ russelldavies.typepad.com
Homesense bikemap Internet of middle class things

16. Jennifer Brook
@jenniferbrook
Independent UX Designer

17. Prototyping Touch
‣ Prototype ≠ code
‣ Step away from your desk
‣ Get on a device early and often
‣ Prototyping is a great way for us to
get OUR heads around the client's
service
‣ bit.ly/uxl_touch

18. Genevieve Bell
@feraldata
UX Director, Intel Interaction &
Experience Research Group

19. Genealogy of
Talking Technology
SiriFurby Skynet?

20. Luddism
‣ Luddites were not anti-technology but
anti-technology-that-replaces-people
‣ We fear tech that challenges notions
of what's human
‣ We fear tech that challenges political,
social or racial order
‣ Chart fear against wonder to find
great experiences

21. Paul Adams
@padday
Global Head of Brand Design,
Facebook

22. Social Web
‣ First 20 years of the web were beta
‣ It’s being rebuilt around people
‣ The word social will go away
‣ Information published (and access to
it) is going up exponentially, human
memory capacity is not changing fast
‣ People are turning to their friends in
the sea of information

23. Mobile
‣ The time when more people use your
product on mobile than desktop is
approaching - it has already happened
on Facebook
‣ 4.5 billion people have never used the
internet - when they do it will probably
be on mobile

24. Photoshop lies
‣ You can't design a dynamically
changing social system by drawing UI
or screen states
‣ Build real prototypes with real data

25. Hypothesise, build, launch,
measure, repeat
‣ Research may not be wrong, but it
can't compare to real data
‣ You can’t predict social behaviour, so
build and ship as soon as possible
‣ Use existing research - someone has
already done it better than you can
‣ Build simply and quickly
‣ Ship daily or weekly

26. If you're not embarrassed
by the first version of your
product, you’ve launched
too late.”
Reid Hoffman
“

27. Peter Merholz
@peterme
Vice President of Global Design,
Groupon

28. The Disciplines of
User Experience Design
Dan Saffer
Graphic by Envis Precisely

29. UX
‣ ...is not all of these disciplines, it's
what's in between; it’s the discipline of
corralling those into one whole
‣ ...should not have its own department,
it’s everyone's responsibility
‣ ...uses design approaches, but not for
design outcomes (akin to design
thinking)

30. UX as Direction
‣ Facilitation as a skill is not appreciated
‣ A director ‘does’ very little - they lead,
co-ordinate and inspire
‣ This doesn't mean UXers can't do the
work
‣ Define your own role
‣ Lead, don’t follow

31. Jeremy Keith
@adactio
Founder & Technical Director,
Clearleft

32. Wireframes
‣ Once about hierarchy, now it’s all
about layout without much thought
‣ Fundamentally you are going back to
the fixed canvas
‣ Jeremy/Clearleft try to avoid
wireframing altogether
‣ Consider tablet-first design, it's close
to both desktop and mobile

33. API-first design
‣ Think about functionality first
‣ Build a command line to your website

34. URL-first design
‣ URLs should be readable, guessable
and hackable by humans
‣ Design your URL structure and you will
have your website structure
‣ Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY) principle
‣ RESTful URLs incorporate actions, e.g.
www.files.com/file/myfile/save

35. Content hierarchy
‣ “If your website was a telephone
hotline, what order would you say
things in?”
‣ Identify the atomic units of content
and order them
‣ At some point you say “...and then
there’s everything else” - remove or
conditionally load those things

36. Style
‣ Create pattern libraries horizontally to
make it clear it’s not a real page
‣ Create style tiles and ask “how does
this feel?” - start a conversation
‣ Layout is just one element, we over-
emphasise it
‣ Layout is an enhancement, it’s not
there by default

37. Marty Neumeier
@martyneumeier
Director of Transformation, Liquid Agency

38. The Robot Curve
‣ The value and
cost of work
decreases as its
mechanisation
increases
‣ Keep learning to move
back up the curve
‣ Your job is always being
destroyed by new jobs

39. Metaskills
‣ Learning is the
opposable thumb
of the metaskills
‣ talentfinder.metaskillsbook.com

40. Imagination blockers
‣ Unexamined belief
“This is the only way I can do it”
‣ Rigid mental mode
“We've always done it this way”
‣ Lack of technique
"I don't know how I'd do that"

41. Imagination blockers
‣ Fear of failure
“What if I mess it up?”
‣ Shopping mentality
“Everything is on a shelf somewhere”
‣ Right answer fixation
“There's an answer out there, we just have to find it”

42. Process
1. Discovery
2. Definition
3. Design
4. Development
5. Deployment

43. Process
‣ This is a big lie and we all know it
‣ The really good work doesn’t come
from this profile
‣ Be honest with clients, tell them you’re
not sure how we’ll get there but it will
be [this] good

44. Process
1. Confusion
2. Clutter
3. Chaos
4. Crisis
5. Catharsis

45. The illiterate of the 21st
century will not be those
who cannot read and write,
but those who cannot
learn, unlearn, and
relearn.”
Alvin Toffler
“

46. Ben Reason
@breasy
Founder, live|work

47. Manage the brief
‣ live|work often expand the brief to
look at before and after, to find further
opportunities and problems
‣ Give yourself permission to deal with
things that aren’t digital, e.g. live|work
found they could improve the mobile
experience by making changes to the
stores themselves

48. Hannah Donovan
@han
Co-creator, This Is My Jam
Matthew Ogle
@flaneur
Co-creator, This Is My Jam

49. Problems
‣ 1st order problem = need
‣ 2nd order problem = play
‣ 2nd order products often rely on 1st
order products for support, or even
just appetite for the stuff

50. Problems in music
‣ 1st order = access
‣ 2nd order = discovery
‣ There are more ways to access music
than ever before (Napster, iPod,
MySpace, YouTube, Spotify, iTunes...)
‣ There’s still desire for discovery
services

51. Trends
‣ It’s well known in fashion that trends
are often direct opposites of what
came before
‣ If you want to make something
playful, a good exercise is to imagine
the opposite

52. Richard Seymour
@seymourpowell
Co-founder and Design Director,
Seymourpowell

53. The state of the art
‣ This may only be the 2nd time in 500
years the tech outdoes our
imaginations
‣ Big businesses have slowed down
because they see big things coming
and they don't know what to do

54. Quentin Tarantino School
of Ethnography
‣ Observation is better than focus
groups
‣ People don’t know what they do
‣ Divert the subject’s attention away
from what they are doing so you can
observe their unconscious actions

55. Genetic manipulation
‣ It is coming hard and fast
‣ You can buy a red pill today that
restarts collagen production in post-
menopausal women, it needs no drug
license because it’s classed as food
‣ Mass storage in DNA; immortal data
‣ Mushrooms that glow; biological
lighting

56. Your life is absolutely
littered with shit that
doesn’t work”
Richard Seymour
“

57. Oath
‣ The templars had an oath to
safeguard and helpless and do no
wrong
‣ Designers don’t have an oath
‣ Shall we make one?

58. Marty Neumeier
@martyneumeier
Director of Transformation, Liquid Agency

59. 10 ways to get ideas
1. Think in metaphors. What else is this
like? E.g. "The world is a stage"
2. Think in pictures. Draw stuff, draw the
problem. Car lanes in the USA: fast
and slow. In the UK: passing and
driving.
3. Start from a different place. You can't
just dig old ideas deeper.

60. 10 ways to get ideas
4. Poach from other domains. An
inventor walks in woods, notices burrs
stuck on their clothes, looks under a
microscope, notices holes and loops,
invents velcro. Nature applied to
clothing.
5. Arrange blind dates. Take ideas that
don't go together and see what
happens when they do.

61. 10 ways to get ideas
6. Reverse the polarity. E.g. Yahoo
homepage vs. Google homepage.
7. Find the paradox. Trying to stop
people dumping in drains? Don't put
up a sign, make the drain look like a
fish.
8. Give it the third degree. Who says? So
what? Why now? Ask like a 4 year old.

62. 10 ways to get ideas
9. Be alert for accidents. An engineer
noticed chocolate on a radar console
melting, invents the microwave.
10.Write things down. You'll forget
otherwise. Read your notes again to
refresh your memory and make
connections.