With the recent snowfall it only seems fitting to recap a presentation that had caught my interest since I saw it on the schedule for Midwest UX months ago. Ken Leung (@moogbot) spent thirty minutes talking about a recent side project by Normative Design. Their goal? To do for skiing what Garmin and Nike have done for cycling, running, and other outdoor activities.
Read MoreMidwest UX 2014 Recap: Communicating Design to Others
The first two presentations of Day Two at Midwest UX touched on a common theme - how design can be an agent of change within organizations. Both Lorna Ross and Tom Greever explored the topic in different ways. Drawing on her experiences at the Mayo Clinic, Lorna Ross demonstrated how design goes beyond the digital environment. Tom Greever's talk, Articulating Design Decisions, offered forty minutes of practical advice on how practitioners can clearly communicate their points of view without falling back on "but I am the designer!".
Continue on for video and sketchnotes.
Read MoreMidwest UX 2014 Recap: Wayfinding on the Web
Both employed by Indiana University's Process eXperience Architecture (PXA) department, Tara Bazler and Chris Basham (@chrisbasham) cover many parallels between navigating forests and the wilderness of the web. Many of the theories will be familiar to anyone who has ever taken library science courses or practiced information architecture for a few years. For those who have not this talk offers the perfect gateway into Peter Morville's writings.
Read on to learn more about the parallels between physical wayfinding and the digital world.
Read MoreMidwest UX 2014 Recap: Data and Design
In a pair of back to back talks Jen Matson (@nstop) and Pamela Pavliscak (@paminthelab) explored different aspects of what data means to the user researcher. Jen Matson approached the problem from the perspective of working within a larger team while Pamela Pavliscaks talk focused more on how we can understand and decipher data without a master's degree in statistics.
Read MoreMidwest UX 2014 Recap: The Self Aware Researcher
If you have had the opportunity to do any user research you know that it can be challenging. If this recap I look back over Veronica Erb's presentation from Midwest UX on how the tools that we use in the field can be turned inwards to help improve ourselves. An excellent and well organized list of actionable items should be provided to everyone as they begin their careers in user research. Continue on to learn how you can embrace your inner researcher.
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