You don't need a UX Designer

Building good software takes more than just having a user experience (UX) designer or two. It takes a whole development team and guess what? Your team might not need a UX Designer for everything UX-related.

Seems like an odd thing for a UX Designer to be telling you, doesn’t it?

UX Designers come in many flavours, with varying competencies, each subtly different from the last. But the one thing that unites each one is knowing that putting the user first in product development always leads to better products.

Should User Experience always be a function? What if it was a process that every discipline in your team could follow?

During this session, Jonathan and Revathi will describe their experience of making the process of design and research more accessible, and how they give development teams at Redgate the confidence to take on some of the more fundamental UX tasks for themselves. We will share our experience of what to do and which things to avoid when working as a team to improve the user experience of your product.

This report will be useful for:

UX designers who work with product development teams
Development teams missing UX designers

Transcript

1. You don’t need a UX Designer UX Cambridge 2015 Jonathan Roberts UX Designer @touchdeluxe Revathi Nathaniel Usability Engineer @RevNathaniel
2. The product backlog keeps being re-prioritised [...] meaning I’m (as a UX designer) not staying ahead of the developers. I’m getting stories just a day or two ahead [...] I’m not getting any time to follow the UX steps - research, concepts, feedback, wireframe etc. “”
3. Why we were running out of UX time ⇣ Talk about your experiences ⇣ How we got our teams ‘UX-ing’ ⇣ Leave you with techniques to try
6. DLM Dashboard team
7. How we work
8. Pair programming
9. ‘Competitive pairing’
11. Impact on UX
12. How does UX fit?
13. Sensitivity to users
14. Remote usability tests
15. Hesitation in asking
16. UX Designer needed?
17. Sound familiar? What are your experiences?
18. • Fast development cycle • Limited people • Hesitation to participate • Group Sketching • Collaborative design research Our solution The problem
19. Group sketching
20. Collaborative design research
21. Data Analysis
22. However, a problem persisted... • Hesitation to participate
23. • Making user research accessible by teaching process and skill Solution
24. • Find your tribe • Plan together • Be a supportive facilitator Solution
25. Find your tribe • Identify proxy ‘UX advocates’ • Build a relationship with the team • Link with personal interests/goals
26. Plan together • Identifying potential design issues • Help with framing open-ended questions • Tips on facilitating design evaluation session
29. Be a supportive facilitator • Be present as ‘fall back’ • Take care of the test logistics • Have a mock session to run through a test • Give constructive feedback • Have a ‘research retrospective’
30. Outcomes Research was • Accessible • Collaborative • Faster
31. So that’s what we did Could you apply any of this for your team?
32. Just one more thing...
33. General Q&A Ask us anything... Jonathan Roberts UX Designer @touchdeluxe Revathi Nathaniel Usability engineer @RevNathaniel