UX Café » Präsentation

The Future (Holger’s Talk)

Stefan — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 22:10:45 +0000

Predicting the future is easy – at least that’s what Holger thinks. What is the future of our digital world? What is the future of the Internet, of television, movies, books, music, social networks and communication? What devices will we have in the future and how will we interact with them? And what does this all mean for our work as UX designers today? Hear how the digital revolution is transforming our lives right now and where the market is heading in the next few years.

This is a recording of a talk at IxDA Berlin on November 2nd, 2011.

Links for this episode:

Listen:

Change Management

Stefan — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 21:51:46 +0000

If we just do our job with user research, information architecture, wireframes and stuff, chances are high to build a useless website with lots of bad content. In his talk at UXcamp Europe, Stefan focusses on the business side of large-scale UX projects. His talk offers food for thought on why we need to align stakeholders, how to do it, and how to sell change management methods.

Thanks to all UXcamp attendees who attended the session, and special thanks to those who participated in the discussion!

Attendees who spoke up gave consent for publication of this recording. Apologies for the sub-standard audio quality in the first few minutes (mobile phone interference).

Links for this episode:

Slides: Keynote, PDF with animations, PDF without animations
Wikipedia: 5 whys
»Stop having projects« – A similar approach is Lou Rosenfeld’s Redesign must die (my take on it: you should have a solid basis first)

My reading recommendations:

John P. Kotter: A Sense of Urgency
Dan Heath, Chip Heath: Switch – How to change things when change is hard
Kerstin Stolzenberg, Krischan Heberle: Change Management
next practice – Erfolgreiches Management von Instabilität (also worth watching: Im Gespräch mit Prof. Peter Kruse and Peter Kruse at re:publica 2010)

Reading recommendations by attendees:

G. Richard Shell, Mario Moussa: The Art of Woo (»winning others over«)
Dave Gray et al: Gamestorming
Roger Fisher, Alan Sharp: Getting it done – Hwo to lead when you’re not in charge

Listen:

Mental Models

Stefan — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 19:16:57 +0000

Wer hören möchte, wie Stefan innerhalb einer halben Stunde 300x »Ähm« sagt, der ist bei unserer neuen Folge genau richtig! Alle anderen können erfahren was Mental-Model-Diagramme sind, warum man sie einsetzen sollte, und wie man selbst Nutzerinterviews organisiert, durchführt und als Diagramm auswertet. Viel Spaß bei diesem Mitschnitt von der IA-Konferenz 2010!

Vielen Dank ans Orga-Team der IA-Konferenz (Jan!), das uns freundlicherweise den Mitschnitt für unseren Podcast zur Verfügung gestellt hat.

Links zur Diskussion:

Website der Konferenz für Informationsarchitektur
Folien des Vortrags
Folien des Vortrags (mit Notizen)
Das Diagramm aus dem Vortrag und zwei Interview-Transkripte (auch lesenswert für alle, die in Thailand Urlaub machen möchten)
Das Buch von Indi Young
Vortrag von Indi Young bei den Google TechTalks

Anhören:

How to write the perfect pop song

Stefan — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 21:41:57 +0000

According to our secret holiday schedule, it’s time for another episode! At UXcamp Holger talked about song-writing, creativity, shitty first drafts, and teaching stuff. The title is »How to write the perfect pop song« – and yes, indeed, this has a lot to do with User Experience!

A video recording of Holger’s talk is available on Vimeo, thanks to Marian Steinbach (uxzentrisch.de).

Links for this episode – and go watch those videos on YouTube!!

Holger’s example for song-writing is Feel by Robbie Williams.
The B section in a thirty-two-bar form is called middle eight and common in Tin Pan Alley songs.
You’ll find lots of Pachelbel rants on YouTube – named after Johann Pachelbel – e.g. this one by Rob Paravonian or this one by the Axis of Awesome.
Randy Pausch used two head fakes in his Last Lecture called Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams. You also might want to watch Time Management by him.
The term »Shitty First Draft« was coined by Anne Lamott in her book Bird by Bird.
We also mentioned the TED conference (great talks online!)…
…and the Service Design Conference. Holger will give his talk again at the conference (13th + 14th October 2010 in Berlin).
The song Holger played after the questions & answers was »A Decade In The Making« and is available on MySpace.

Listen:

If you enjoyed listening we would appreciate if you’d spread the word!

Zombie Personas

Stefan — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 19:00:44 +0000

This is by far the nerdiest episode we ever did, so fasten your seat belts. In his session at UXcamp, Tom said: "Personas – love ‘em or hate ‘em – you can’t not use ‘em. Either you have zombies, or you have living ones." In this recording of his session he talks about different kinds of zombies like Mirror Personas, Undead Personas, Unicorn Personas or Stupid User Personas. He gives advice on how to avoid these fellas and how to make good use of living personas during a project. As a bonus, Tom explains why 37signals doesn’t need personas at all.

Links for this episode:

Slides of Tom’s Zombie Persona talk
Another presentation by Tom icludes more info about the Target Persona Exercise and Story Cards
The book "About Face 2" by Alan Cooper (current edition is "About Face 3")
The book "The Inmates are running the Asylum", also by Alan Cooper
The New York Times article about the use of personas by the Ford Motor Company: "Before Creating the Car, Ford Designs the Driver"
37signals, makers of Basecamp and Backpack

Listen: