Karina Hickey Transcript

Transcript

1. 1 www.captionslive.com.au | captionslive@outlook.com | 0425 904 255 UX AUSTRALIA Design Research 2020 Day 2 Friday, 20 March 2020 Captioned by: Gail Kearney & Rebekah Goulevitch
2. 2 KARINA HICKEY: Let me do some think out loud and eye tracking. Now I just need to share my screen. Is that right? Where do I do that? Here we go. Right in the middle. Perfect. I want to share my desktop. Share. OK. I feel like watching all the presenters do the eye tracker and think out loud is UX Research in itself but I am going to talk about how to make Post-it Notes sexy. I would ask you to raise your freshly washed and sanitised hands if you were in front of me but we'll do it in the online chat options. I will present options, one, two or three and pop it in the chat that best describes your online portfolio. One is you don't have a portfolio of your research our your design work but you're interested in having one. Two, you do have something already, whether it's a personal website or something hosted on a third party website. And three is you don't have one, but it's not relevant to you, you're not interested or maybe you're at point in you career you don't need a portfolio to show off your stuff. I am have a look. No.1, two, or three. Got a three, got a three. Cool, I'll wait for a few more people to come in. OK. A few more coming in. So, sorry, just a moment. OK. So, from my perspective, I'm in a process of transitioning away from academic research into more product-based research. So I wanted to know how to make my published journals, which are boring into a portfolio. Designers can have all the elements to include in their portfolio, product shots, logos, all that stuff but when it comes to researchers, here are some things I work on lately that I am perplexed how to make sexy. Here is testing I ran last week for a medical database I'm helping to iterate and improve. Different personas doing online testing of this prototype. There is great data, pass and fail, great comments and feedback but objectively, this is not sexy. Then we have me hosting a UX workshop, look how hard I'm working, four screens, people dialling in and keeping people engaged but it is boring and I can't stick it in my portfolio. Next up, qualitative interviews for a HR company, I ran 15 over the phone interviews and got great rich data and responses but it is a Google form, pretty boring and not sexy. Next up, we have sexy Post-it Notes which you can buy online if you're into it, but sexy but not relevant. Thankfully, I realise there's a process to create your research portfolio that's going to be visually appealing and give, make you standout. That includes using your format, your content and telling your story. The content, there are three. It is about choosing the case studies to show off your abilities. And we will cock it through an acronym in the form of a compelling story. I'm just going to pop this over here. Sarah Doody, you can find her information online and she goes into ways of presenting research portfolio and the pros and cons of each. First is a personal website, something like something you create on Square Space. Nicks is a platform base. You up load your content on enhance or something. And then a PDF portfolio is something you can create in keynote, for example. The pros and cons of each, a personal website, you have complete control over what goes into it, self-promote by using your name as a URL but you're constrained with the template, whatever template you're using. I would say the biggest draw back of this your portfolio can't be tailored for each potential job you're applying for, for
3. 3 each recruiter or for each consultant or client you're working with. Next is a platform, like Dribble or Behance. You up load your content and design and people say there is more content for exposure because people are perusing other people's content. It is easy to use but the draw back, you are one click away from the next person's interesting content. You miss out on the opportunity. The same draw back is the personal website that content can't be tailored. The next sweet spot is the PDF portfolio. It is quick and easy to design. If you worked on confidential projects with nondisclosure, you might have more benefit in that. It is not discoverable but you can customise or tweak each of the case studies for the different role you're applying for or for different clients. Should you have all three at once? No, you would burn yourself out trying to make all three. The best consensus is stick with what is suitable for you at the current moment or have a combination of both, say, a personal website with bio and case studies but more detail in your PDF portfolio. OK, got to click with the mouse. Your portfolio will never be done, so don't strive for perfection. Sarah Doody summarises this as just do something, something is better than nothing. I would say what better time than now to update your portfolio you are linked into, to create one from scratch if you don't have one, while you're sitting at home quarantined. There are three elements you want to include in your portfolio. If you want more information on this, check out Emerson Schroter or David Travis. A bio is really important. You want to talk about your work history. You want to include country or five of those and choose the ones that are most relevant to the role you are applying for, whether it is the methodology or skills and attributes and the ones that had the biggest impact, especially if you can quantify the impact. If you worked on a project where you reduced the balance rate or decreased abandoned carts in a checkout process and you have got numbers behind it, quantify it and show business impact, absolutely include those. Testimonials are great to have and some people would say include development professional courses, qualifications, etc. OK. This is the crux of the whole issue: If you're a user experience researcher you don't design screens you design experiences. Here we are, not trying to make Post-it Notes sexy but to tell a story about the research process and the impact that it has had. So, credit, again, to David Travis for this acronym. It is a way you can present your case studies rather than pick out the most visually appealing elements, the personas or whatever it might be, tell a story of what you did, POWER: Project, if you are working in a team of five, don't take credit for the work the designer or copy writer did, highlight what you did. What problem are you trying to achieve? Solve? How did you achieve it? What methodologies did you choose and why? What was the end result for business outcomes or deliverables, if you have statement because of my research, X, and include that. And it is important to include a reflection of what you learned and do differently next time. Something goes wrong with every project and that is great because you learn from that. Show your growth as a researcher in your portfolio. I want to show you a one minute YouTube video of a live critique. This is from David Travis, never seen it before and does a think out loud analysis. (Video
4. 4 plays) that was a good experience, let's move on to our next one. This is Maria and a great, great front page, engages me, draws me in, the eye contact in the photograph, a very compelling image to begin with and then the about page, this looks really good. Now we move on to the case studies, the brief, key tools and deliverables and the results. And I really like this structure. I know this is the template that you could use but this, to me, makes the whole thing really manageable for me to go through. It's really clear, what each of these are about, it is nice and short, I can skip over it, I don't need to spend a long time going over the whole thing. We've got various case studies and we move on to details about training, testimonials. So, I like that structure, again, that was an impressive use of a one minute of my time. Let's move on. (End of video). I recommend watching the end of the video if it does interest you, he is ruthless, honest and gives you great content what you should and shouldn't include in a portfolio. I also wanted to show you four different examples of what I think are great research portfolios. I'm not going to go into detail and just show you the URLs or titles and if you want to look, do it in your own time. They all present different methodologies, all worked on different projects but have a really clear format of telling a story and showing the impact. The first is from Jason Lipshin who works for Tom Tom and if you scroll down to the second case study it is compelling. And I also like Chloe Blachard. Katy McCurdy is a favourite and lastly if you're so inclined check out Jules Lee's portfolio. One element I wanted to highlight in the portfolio is the way they present a qualitative survey. This is what I call boring content. It's a question in a typed form survey but the way they screen shotted it, and encased in a tablet, the message is you're not trying to make your portfolio sexy but there are ways to use visually appealing elements. We judge people on that fact. If you want to look through the different portfolios you can see ways they presented research, boring research, in a sexy, visually appealing way. So, um, before we open to questions. I have one final question for you I'm sorry to flood the chat feature. If you do have an online portfolio, a sample of your work, something that's got a URL and you feel comfortable linking that in the chat feature, if you're feeling brave today, go for it. If it is a networking thing, go for it. I would love to see what is out there. I have no intention of critiquing your portfolio. No-one else does. It is a great networking tool and I would love to see some of the people at this conference. That's from me. Thanks.