ProfsoUX-2014 - videos and overview

    A couple of weeks ago in St. Petersburg, the ProfsoUX-2014 usability conference was held , its “trade union” name denoting the industrial nature of the problems heard at a meeting of Leningrad workers in the field of Usability and UX. It’s kind of a joke, although the reality is developing in such a direction that “trade unions of workers in human-oriented design of interactive systems for GOSMINERGO electronic computers” will soon appear.

    Everything was positive - now there is a brief report , hundreds of four people gathered in two rooms, plus you could watch the broadcast and ask questions via Twitter.

    In addition to the broadcast, I recorded the conference, and sound videos (editing from three cameras and a screen, sound from microphones) giving the full effect of presence were quickly published. All reports are peppy and dynamic (exceptions were invigorated during installation), with good quality slides - the selection by the Program Committee was strict, with control of materials and compulsory listening to all speakers.

    Here, as an illustrative video image - a three-minute review video about all the reports of the conference.


    And now, under the cut, I offer a brief overview-classification with links to the video, so that you can see exactly what you are potentially interested in.


    UX Philosophy


    Here are reports about global and strategic: trends, concepts, approaches.

    Taras Brizitsky: “Stupid things” - About the disappointing world of predatory clever stupid “things of the future” that appear to appear without “creative design”, pure evolution through mutations, and with a result like “doublefaceplm” and “killmepls”. On the other hand, the thoughts of the UX designer about light bulbs ... let's say, they reminded the UX joke “How many UX designers do you need to get a light bulb?” - P @ c, they now also want to screw a light bulb ... ".

    It is possible that there is no mediocre grayness and creative ugliness, and all that, it is necessary that in the UX there was not only a conveyor process of narrow specialists, but an engineering genius sparkling boldly solving seemingly insoluble tasks of conflicting requirements. Andrei Kuryan in “Caffeine for UX” spoke about the well-known TRIZ - Theory of Inventive Problem Solving, using an example of a simple design riddle .

    Andrew Zusman "Designing Cognitive Engagement for Everyone"“Zagranitsa” traditionally defended minorities and people with disabilities - this time they did not even care about color blind people, but about illiterate dyslexics - “how poor they are, they will feel on the Internet we designed”. Personally, it seems to me that they are not 10%, as the speaker said, but all 90%, and they feel great on these very Internet. The report is English-language, but understandable, because, the author, as a whole, is our man: "Israel + Russian wife."


    Research


    Sofya Chebanova: “The Big Story of Games User Research” - A half-hour review lecture on computer games and the evolution of approaches in their research from a leading specialist in wargaming. On the one hand, academism prevailed, and on the other, institutes do not yet teach this, and knowledge of the history of evolution (interfaces, research methods, programming languages ​​...) is a great way to start seeing trends.

    Ekaterina Shafeeva: “Interface research is the obvious thing you can forget about” - how to make a drawing in the mind so that “the meter does not affect the object of study and the result.” The speaker is clearly a professional - a girl with strict glasses, an interest in role-playing games, and obviously not a “cook” - I’m not a cook at all, but the cake in the photo cannot be “Napoleon”.

    And in continuation of this - the subtleties of questionnaire research: Anna Biryukova “K ux - measure Godzilla. How and why to measure UX in numbers . " How to deduce from the heap of "paper answers" the magic formula The Correct Quality Factor with which you can already work, compare, etc. Ahhh


    , a martyr in the hall ... Famous Dutch researcher and teacher Suleman Shahid c “ Measuring 'the Must' - Going Beyond Usability"At first he talked for a long time about the importance of emotions in the UX, essentially retelling the famous book by Donald Norman, and then made a horse move, saying that such ephemeral parameters as emotions can be read on an industrial scale without experts from The Theory of Lies special software and webcam. Well and accordingly, to use in measurements, especially when it is difficult to obtain a sane answer from the user in another way (children, invalids, etc.). But, although this technology, according to the speaker, is reliable, and not “rocket science,” I personally doubt the theories from Norman’s book and that facial recognition will be effective on Russian users who reliably hide their emotions under the guise of Grumpy Cat.

    In any case, this is a well-known specialist and an excellent report - second place in reviews, so,but no, don’t go yet - the video is closed for viewing, because the speaker burned several slides under the NDA, and now there is a discussion of what to do about it. But, I think, in a couple of weeks, we’ll redo and declassify this video, and put everything there, you can watch again.


    Subject stories


    Here are specific stories about aspects and practices in real business, from “production workers” rather than “trainers”.

    Alexander Bezborodov: “How do we cope with the subject and technical complexity” - Two letters - “1C”. For many years the company has been friends with usabilityists, trains employees, promotes at UX conferences, ... and still receives questions in the spirit of “Are you the main UX manager in 1C? Wow. And when will you start? ”

    Ekaterina Yulina: “How to ask for money via TV?” - Oh, those small and stupid SmartTVs, from which the business people want to make a video rental machine. So far, everything is not very there, and what exactly are the problems, said both the speaker and the audience. Personally, I hope that the optimal SmartTV helps to a normal laptop and it will have Popcorn Time, Anidub ... and all that.

    Margarita Titova: "How we work with web analytics data and what comes of it . " A simple case is “online tours”, a simple tool is Google Analytics, and with this you can do exactly to improve UX and conversion, what hypotheses arise, and how to test them.


    Process


    Here it’s rather near-talk reports about where UX actually lives, what its place in development is, how to build interaction and resolve conflicts with customers, and with the team of testers, analysts / planners and developers, project and product managers.

    Muddy statements orally or in detail prescribed multi-volume unreadable TK? Waterfall, or throw assholes and break through in a week? Different projects, different companies, different approaches.


    Sasha Kutsenko: “Why and when to write a specification”- The first step towards formalizing processes, at least fixing the statements and specifications, moving on to guidelines and other regulations. The audience (young and female) was incredulously amazed at how possible this is, although in fact, the speaker described the very first and necessary steps to move from chaos to predictability.


    The next step is Lidia Bogdanovich: “Slender processes = effective interface. How to build workflows in the design department so that everyone loves you, ” already about the separation of roles and responsibilities, so that no one“ plays with the design ”and there is another bias, and how to finally build a real UX Conveyor (Love?).

    The next level of formalization, which is probably beyond reason, is Evgeny Ovcharenko: “Processes in government contracts”. Speaker - UX-consultant of "state portals", shares insiders. The audience hears, mostly interested in “how much money is there,” and whether this sheepskin is worth the candle.


    And in contrast to these reports - what to do when YESTERDAY and ANY PRICE is needed - the best-rated conference report - Anton Utkin: “Conducting short, complex and serious cross-media design projects in wartime conditions ” was immediately pulled off Twitter quotes. "Do not work with the asshole," "Remove the Agency", "Remove all the unnecessary" ... "These bastards will not help the cause", "Stop writing TK" - the report of the short (<10 minutes) and in the military parts of tky. Recommendations from leading dog breeders!

    Well, no matter what the process, the problem of troubled customers who want or it is not clear what is or impossible (“seven red lines”), and how to remove and identify the requirements in them - about this Sergey Pavelchuk “Demand or offer?” .


    Mis

    I’ll pull out a couple of reports separately.

    Victor Filippov: “The initiative is punishable” - despite the frightening and demotivating name - it is about self-motivation. The fact that "it is ideal only where we are not," and that you do not have to wait for mercy from nature, because everything - including the meaning of life, can certainly be found even at the current job.

    And although the conference turned out to be more of a practical plan - i.e. scientific and educational, it seems like they should be outside the brackets, here they tried to arrange a round table “Questions of UX-education” , bringing together Russian and foreign UX- teachers, trainers and students, both academic and business. There were several mini-reports with slides, and a bunch of proposals of varying degrees of reasonableness, and a discussion with the audience, where the youngest person was less than a year old.


    So, I hope the dear reader will find something of interest.

    By the way, these are still beta versions of the video, they contain embroidered "debugging information" - for example, red time markers of true time. So if all of a sudden, you find some critical bug in the video (the sound has disappeared, you need to make the screen larger to read something, or vice versa, remove the screen to see the laser pointer) - write me , or comment on the video, or The drugs, in general, as you like - indicating this same time range and problem - for now (a couple of weeks), you can still fix it.

    Well, if you want more UX-performances - look here - there are almost a hundred UX-reports that I shot.

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