Ux Australia Audio (from 2015)

What They Say vs What They Do It’s often hard to spot the difference between what people say they want and what they actually do in practice. Sometimes an interview or a user test doesn’t give you the ability to see behaviours over time and in the real working environment. Journal studies can reveal these truths really well, so why don’t they get used more often? They are simple to set up, cost effective and give you rich insights, especially for audiences that can be hard to observe. In this presentation we’ll look at how journal studies could be a great addition to your regular research toolbox.

A Stakeholders Point of View on Engaging in Research Researchers often struggle to engage stakeholders in research. As someone who has been a stakeholder myself, I also want to be engaged in the research so I can use it as an input to make design decisions. If both parties have this common goal, why is stakeholder engagement such a challenge? In this presentation I'll share a stakeholders point of view of how to make research outputs impactful.

How To Design Your Own “Empathy Walk” (and make your stakeholders live your research findings) What can you make your audience experience in 30 minutes? Try being a single mum in subsidized housing in Chicago and see what kind of decisions you have to make to avoid homelessness. Or be a maize farmer in rural Zambia, anxious for the annual harvest, and see if he will buy your client’s health insurance product. In this series of stories I'll show you a method that I believe should be in every research team's field kit when it comes time to story-telling and bringing your findings back into the boardroom. Come see how you can craft your own empathy walk from your research findings, and help your audience really connect with the people whose stories you are trying to tell, and the problems you are trying to make visible.

Design Research 2021 Day 3 - Katrina Ryl & Roland Wimbush by UX Australia

Creating Impact through the Research Journey These days, researchers can’t share a report or presentation and expect their research to have an impact within teams. Researchers need to make sure that they’re able to take their teams along the journey of research to help their colleagues understand and get buy-in for research outcomes. However, this can be challenging when teams don’t understand or value research, or when the researchers’ outputs are misaligned to business objectives. During this presentation, Jess will share how to identify the research maturity of your team to help maximize the success of bringing your team on the research journey to create impactful research outcomes. She will also share practical tips on when and how to empower your teams to lead their own research.

Reporting your User Research Findings like a Psychologist Our user research findings lack gravity when they are reported poorly. Oftentimes, we negate key pieces of information or unwittingly breach ethical guidelines. Despite the various benefits of having some creative freedom, as it stands, the user research report comes in too many shapes and sizes. This impacts both our ability to quickly consume previous research conducted by fellow researchers and more importantly, denies us the ability to appraise its quality; a fundamental function of research. Albeit presenting our research insights with long slabs of text and convoluted words is a far cry from the desired objective, we have a lot to gain from leveraging the structure that psychologists turn to when presenting their findings - the academic journal. The design of the academic journal is very intentional, with each section devoted to addressing a key aspect of the scientific method. Insofar as user research is to be legitimate in guiding large-sc

Remote Research for Business Engagement 2020 has changed the way most of us will work for years to come and our ability to work remotely has empowered teams to be more connected than ever before. In this presentation, Stephanie will show you how remote technology can assist in immersing the wider business in customer research. She will talk about how remote research has engaged wider business teams and what this means for the digital experience, the team and most importantly the customer. She will also share her top tips to ensure successful engagement through remote capabilities.

Design Research 2021 Day 2 - Paul Merrel, Bek Hendry, Peta Marks & Sean Rom by UX Australia

Insights from Anywhere - A guide and options for doing remote research COVID-19 has disrupted many things, including in-person research. We no longer have access to research facilities or labs. We can't even be in the same room as research participants. These are limitations, but limitations can lead to great moments of creativity. Just because you can't do research the way you're used to, doesn't mean that you can't do excellent research. Lauren Isaacson has been doing qualitative research from her home since 2016 and will share what she knows about the advantages and disadvantages of remote research, how to set up a research lab at home, and how to ensure remote research success from recruiting to communicating results to your teams.

Design Research 2021 Day 2 - Laura Ryan by UX Australia

Trauma-Informed Design Research Trauma is common within society at large and is particularly prevalent amongst vulnerable populations, First Nations peoples and people with Lived Experience of mental health issues. Trauma informed practice is a strengths-based framework that supports responsiveness to the impact of trauma, enabling physical, psychological, and emotional safety for both providers and survivors. In this presentation Jax will discuss the five guiding principles of trauma informed practice; safety, choice, collaboration, trustworthiness and empowerment and consider how they may apply within design research contexts.

Design Research 2021 Day 2 - Brooke Jamieson by UX Australia

Reimagining ethnography during COVID with adults, kids and cars Covid-19 has been the catalyst for reimagining the way the ABC conduct design research. What we’ve learnt along the way (from planning, to conducting and analysing) has become grounded in our practice. Come and learn about the impact this has had on our processes, products and audience experience.

Gloves in the time of Corona - Guerrilla Testing in a Pandemic How do you get real people to test a physical prototype during a pandemic? Alana Wade and Serena Lai, user researchers at the Digital Transformation Agency, will share their personal 2020 experiences. They needed to conduct research on a government device, testing a facial recognition feature to verify real people with real people. Something that couldn’t be done remotely. Their option? Guerrilla testing: brief face-to-face interactions with people going about their daily business. Alana and Serena will share the lessons they learned pivoting a project in May from in-depth in person research into a socially distanced feat of guerrilla testing. This includes adapting to quick changes, preparing for rapid testing and insight gathering, and how to build trust in seconds with passers-by when you have to remain distanced. This was also a real challenge for observation on devices!

Embracing Diversity in Research What do you do when you need to work with a very specific group of people? How do you approach research for those with disabilities or from different cultures or age groups? Maybe you have to test a product with a group of young teenagers or those who aren’t quite as tech-savvy? We’ve uncovered valuable insights about user behaviour through researching with blind and low vision users, non-tech savvy users, teenagers and English-as-second-language users. In our session, we would like to share with you our biggest lessons learned and the challenges and importance of working with a diverse group of users, before the final product and no matter the product.

Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks: Moving from Experience Design Research to Product Design Research This presentation follows my journey as I take on a new role in a new organisation that has a super strong product focus. Watch as I stumble through new ideas, challenges and techniques. As I grapple with what it means to move from being an Experience Design Researcher (of 20 odd years) to a shiny new role as Product Design Researcher. This discussion might be already old hat for some of the young product design research folk, but there are bound to be some amusing stuff ups, missteps and anecdotes as I question my whole professional perspective on what good research is for and how it is conducted. Will I be able to successfully navigate the new leaner world of research? Will I forsake my anthropological roots for the lure of data science? Can an old dog really learn new tricks, and if so, what are the things that I have learned that have allowed me to stay in my new role. That is, if I manage to stay in th

Exploring Health Sector Complexity through Design Research Being adaptive in approach is key in research, especially when it comes to facing complex scenarios in an increasingly complex world. More and more, we are seeing governments and organisations opting to apply research and design-led approaches to decision making. As design researchers, it is our responsibility to provide clear, representative foundations from which these decisions will be made. This talk discusses a design-led approach to looking at policy within the health sector, by considering the people it impacts.

Finding the Sweet Spot: Leveraging Insights to Shape Strategic Direction I work in the Australian superannuation industry – an industry which is complex, typically conservative, highly regulated and characterised by customer apathy and disengagement. We’ve been striving to drive customer-centric change at UniSuper for 3-4 years now, leveraging research to reverse engineer processes and shift mindsets. In 2019, I co-presented our journey mapping journey at Design Research alongside my colleague, Leah Mackenzie. This is “Chapter 2” of my story. It’s about what happened when the groundswell we had created resulted in a breakthrough moment: Customer Experience (CX) having a seat at the decision-making table. This presentation will cover my experiences leading a small CX team to influence UniSuper’s strategic direction through organisation-wide collaboration. It’s about what we did with our seat, and how we did it, to ensure that the voice of the customer was heard authentically all the way up to Board leve

People, Purposes, Patterns & Problem Space How can your org go deep? How can it find 1000 more opportunities to support by studying the patterns that come from people's inner thinking as they pursue their purposes? Indi will unfold a way to bring this powerful perspective to your organization.

So You’ve Earned a Seat at the Table. What’s Next? Over the past couple of years, “having a seat at the table” has become one of the most widely-discussed topics in the research community. However, once that seat has been earned, many researchers struggle to adapt to the needs and expectations of senior leaders and stakeholders, which are typically quite different from those of the product teams they’ve grown accustomed to working with. This presentation will offer several strategies and supporting examples to guide researchers from just having a seat at the table, to actually using it to influence high-level, strategic decision-making.