UXcamp 2011 Kiev Report - Inside View

1st day

Road to UXcamp

On the last weekend of July 30-31, a two-day workshop for User Experience of Ukrainian specialists was held in the vast expanses of Ukraine. However, the event went far beyond Ukraine and brought together experts and experts from various CIS countries. I could not miss this event either. By July 28, the entire formal part with registration, payment, purchase of a ticket, etc. was finished, and I began to prepare for departure to Kiev. From the newsletter, which did not keep itself waiting, I understood where and how to get there, but I still did not figure out what to do in case of being late, for which I paid in consequence. July 29 arrived, and after work I started packing ... A toothbrush, toothpaste, a camera, a charger for a mobile phone, clothes, a couple of little things and the book Alan Cooper about the interface flew into my bag. The basics of interaction design, ”decided to re-read on the road. At 22. 45 got on a bus from Minsk and on the road. They promised to come to Kiev at 9.30, and registration was before 10.00, the time was close. As a result, 2 stops in Belarus, one in Ukraine and hello Kiev. At 9.20 a rainbow mood was interrupted by traffic jam from the metro station “Levoberezhnaya” to the metro station “Dnipro”. Not really thinking about the emergency landing, I did not think of a route from other points of Kiev and had to go to the station, and the time was already 11.30. With annoyance in my soul, I went out at the train station and rushed to the venue of Uxcamp. and the time was already 11.30. With annoyance in my soul, I went out at the train station and rushed to the venue of Uxcamp. and the time was already 11.30. With annoyance in my soul, I went out at the train station and rushed to the venue of Uxcamp.

Arrival

I arrived at the place at about 13.00, Olga Gorenka met me, told me everything and helped to accommodate. I joined my “blue” team (Ruslan Kokin at the presentation that we are blue, but you don’t believe it :)) I joined when the customer’s interview was already done. I had to catch up.
We got an interesting project - a platform that provides information on promotions, sales and discounted goods in offline stores in Kiev. The task was to conduct an expert assessment, indicating that it is necessary to provide users on the site, based on the general concept of the product. The moderator was Margarita Titova (Usabilitylab.ru, Moscow). During the whole UXcamp, experts came up to us: Dmitry Satin, Alexei Kopylov, Sergey Kudryashov. Yuri Vetrov abandoned the role of an expert and joined one of the teams, which, of course, contributed to well-prepared material and a brilliant and creative presentation in the end, but more on that later. Olga Gorenko, as the organizer, always came up and was interested in the progress of the project, somewhere she gave advice, somewhere she helped with the missing information and materials.

Lunch and games

Until 14.00 we did a good job and it was time for lunch and games. Everyone went to rest and have fun. For two hours we ate, played various games, generally rested. In an informal setting, they got to know each other better and talked to experts. I made an amazing conclusion for myself - they are people like everyone :) It was very nice to talk with Dmitry Satin and Alexei Kopylov (wonderful people, not just good experts). During the games, everyone had fun playing badminton, a broken phone, frisbee, basketball, soccer, volleyball (there was only one ball, but used it differently) and attention, even in games, restless usabilists stood out and came up with badminton-soccer (rules games ask paz0r ).

Usabilitylab album photos (Uxcamp 2011)

Work

Around 4 p.m. everyone started working again. From the schedule, we are a bit behind and just started working on characters. Time flew by, and the work moved with a creak. There were a lot of ideas, everyone was discussing, but it was difficult to reach agreement. This situation was common for all teams. As rightly noted at the end of the first day, Alexei Kopylov, in the teams people worked mostly unfamiliar and it was very difficult to determine the leader. To be more precise, there were many leaders, but no recognized ones. My personal impression was that the people in the teams looked closely at each other on the first day, met, found out who was the best, but the work dragged on and was ineffective. At the next UXcamp, I would recommend starting with team building, team building games, during which the team members will get used to each other and it is possible to immediately determine the leader (Olga Gorenko note :)). In general, at 20 o’clock some results were summed up, a few ideas were taken and characters were developed. The participants wanted bread and circuses ...

Photos from the album of Alexander Kulik (Uxcamp)

Relaxation

At 20:15 a general review of the 1st day was conducted, experts spoke out about the work, made some comments to all the teams, and everyone went to dinner. At 20:30 there was a delicious barbecue, however, it diverged faster than they managed to bring it. Who did not get the barbecue, a second party was organized somewhere in 30 minutes. As a result, everyone ate and the barbecue even remained. After dinner, we went to play the mafia and wait for the final stage in the UXcamp schedule, which was called "Puss in a Poke." The game was in full swing when the cat still got out of the bag. They turned usability testing site. The respondent was selected and successfully seated at a place at the computer. As testing began, it began to rain. However, this did not frighten the fearless respondent, and usability testing continued until the organizers began to seriously worry about the technique. The rain intensified and everyone began to move under the awning. Thus, the schedule for the first day of UXcamp ended. The schedule was over, and the usabilityists had more than enough enthusiasm. The logical continuation was the UX-Bukhalovo :) Someone rushed into the city for something stronger, someone already had enough, but the vast majority continued to swim in the sea of ​​beer. The situation became completely relaxed and communication was easy and not forced. The difference between experts, specialists and just Vasya Pupkin was only in ...? Yes, there was no difference. Someone played the mafia, someone a crocodile, someone "drove smart carts" for those who could still take something seriously, there were more contests and much more. In general, it ended somewhere around 3 nights. Although for some it was not the end, and everything went on in the rooms. I got to my room when my neighbor was already asleep, which I really wanted. According to the old Russian tradition, he set about 5 alarms from 8.30 to 9.30.

Photos from Oleg Nesterkin's album (Uxcamp 2011)

2nd day

Awakening

At 9.10, my head slowly rose from the pillow, turning off the penultimate alarm, I still decided on a desperate attempt to get up. According to the schedule of the 2nd day, breakfast should be from 9.00 to 10.00. Already at 9.40 I reached the place of breakfast. Of course, there were not many people, and having breakfast, I began to wait for the rest. At about 10.30 our team gathered and we, having received a parting speech, moved forward to continue work.

Race for the deadline

I brought a bottle of beer with me. The work began dejectedly, but after half an hour everyone was busy with work and “made a pot”. Someone was well influenced by the morning beer, someone finally woke up. Everyone organized, split up in pairs and refined characters, developed scenarios, made a presentation. The rapid race for the deadline has begun. There was absolutely not enough time, but thanks to well-coordinated work, we managed to catch up with the deadlines. It was interesting and fun to work in a team, yesterday's seriousness and controversy disappeared. Everyone began to joke and have fun. In between, they shared funny videos on youtube, told jokes, but Petro was the climax of humor and jokes. No, this is not a real person, this is a character developed by Eugene Kiselev (hi to Zhenya). The presentation of Zhenya of his character inside the team produced a whole explosion of emotions. It was a character, or even a whole story of the character’s life, which was full of sad childhood, not a bright student body and a great future (ask Zhenya for more about Petro’s story). In general, the story, by all the rules of the series with happy end :). On a pleasant note, with a sense of accomplishment, we all went to dinner together. In order to distract ourselves from busy affairs, we talked a little about ourselves, talked about distant topics, and Olga Gorenko found us behind it. We described the respondent that we need to conduct usability testing, and Olga left in search of such an individual, and we went to rehearse. Presented our work Ruslan Kokin. Having received a small piece of criticism mainly from me and Anastasia Savchenko, Ruslan clearly issued a presentation. I was the test respondent, and Margarita Titova conducted usability testing. When the rehearsal was over,

Presentations

Around 2:30 p.m. presentations began. The first was presented by a team with Yuri Vetrov, which did not meet the allotted time of 5 minutes, but the performance was very creative and, with the consent of the audience, they continued. In my opinion, this was the most interesting presentation. Next in turn, all the other teams presented the last one, since we had usability testing, our team spoke. With the support of two beautiful girls from our team, Victoria Peredery and Olga Borzenkova, Ruslan Kokin spoke about our project and the work done. Further Margarita Titova conducted usability testing of our prototype. There were some inconsistencies in the teams, somewhere there were disputes within the teams, somewhere in general the participant separated and did his work on the project and presented it. Customers appreciated the work done and took note of the recommendations for improving the site. Recommendations were both on improving individual page elements, and on redesigning the site as a whole.

And the end

At 6 p.m., all the presentations were finished, and UXcamp came to an end. In the first routes to the metro station "Zhitomirskaya" they were leaving mainly nonresident in order to catch a train or a bus. Saying goodbye to new friends, I left on the second flight. With a good mood and a lot of knowledge and emotions, I went home.