Keynote

Opening Keynote

Opening Keynote

This year's conference includes a special treat - an opening Keynote from internationally-renowned Design Researcher, Steve Portigal. Steve has been working in the field of design research for a couple of decades and garnered a reputation as a deep thinker and very practical practitioner. He will be sharing that experience with the audience, and helping us all improve our practice.

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Long presentations

Bringing the team along for the ride: Lessons from including whole teams in user research

Bringing the team along for the ride: Lessons from including whole teams in user research

Collaborative research can be an incredible tool to keep whole teams thinking user-centred. And the diversity of perspectives available from developers, PMs and is an incredibly important asset for designers to harness. I'll share my lessons from including whole teams in research - how to do it, and pitfalls to avoid!

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Just add water: Tips and tricks to help non-designers conduct impactful research

Just add water: Tips and tricks to help non-designers conduct impactful research

Meld Studios has been experimenting with different ways to help design newbies conduct impactful research. In this talk we will share what we’ve been trying and how it’s been working.

This year has seen a surge in requests relating to teams of non-designers wanting to conduct their own research. In response, we’ve been experimenting with different ways to help non-designers conduct impactful research.

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Old tools can do new tricks: Using Trello to conduct qualitative research more efficiently

Old tools can do new tricks: Using Trello to conduct qualitative research more efficiently

Academia might give us the standards for rigour in research, but it certainly doesn’t have an edge in innovating on how we do this kind of work. Trello, invented for project management, actually serves quite nicely as a digital space for qualitative data collection, synthesis and analysis. You will learn when and how to leverage this tool in your next qualitative study.

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On empathy: Defining empathy and its role in design research

On empathy: Defining empathy and its role in design research

Empathy is one of those over-used words, particularly in design, it’s almost lost its meaning. By taking a research approach, this talk aims to define empathy, it’s meaning and purpose in the context of design research. It will leave the audience with tangible examples of applying empathy in the world of design research and sharing it within organisations.

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Shifting the needle on the UN Sustainable Development Goals through targeted design research

Shifting the needle on the UN Sustainable Development Goals through targeted design research

Design research can become transactional and ad hoc. Aspiring to shift the needle on the UN Sustainability Goals provides ThinkPlace with a focus to undertake design research that has relevance, depth and meaning to enable richer insight and deliver better outcomes. Come and learn through our case studies how we are experimenting with design research methods to create a deeper impact.

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The truth doesn’t cost anything. But a lie could cost you everything.

The truth doesn’t cost anything. But a lie could cost you everything.

Do you know when participants are lying to you?

Is there anything you can do to uncover the truth?

I can guarantee that as a UX researcher or tester who has conducted interviews, test sessions and especially focus groups you would have participants who have lied to you. Why do users lie to us when we are trying to help create a better user experience for them?

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20 minute presentations

7 skills I wish I learned before becoming a UX Researcher

7 skills I wish I learned before becoming a UX Researcher

It's essential to know how to use different research methodologies and how the design process works to be a UX Researcher. But there are skills they don't teach you in university or General Assembly that are critical for being effective in a company setting. Learn about the 7 skills you should master to be a successful UX Researcher.

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Creativity in research: designing your own methods when the usual ones won’t cut it

Creativity in research: designing your own methods when the usual ones won’t cut it

What happens when you’re faced with a research question that none of your usual methods can address well enough? How might you tailor your approach to such a question, without losing out on the validity that traditional methods guarantee? This talk will present frameworks for creative thinking and method selection, and use them to explore how you can strike the delicate balance between observing rigour and breaking new grounds when it comes to design research.

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Crowdsourcing insights

Crowdsourcing insights

That old line about the best way to eat an elephant* being "one bite at a time" is all well and good, but who really has time for that big a meal when it comes to understanding past research? Learn about a technique that will reduce how long it takes to digest and synthesise all that research, while also getting your whole team working together and building consensus on where you need to focus your new research activities. 

*No actual elephants were harmed in the making of this talk.

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Dealing with Compassion Fatigue

Dealing with Compassion Fatigue

There is a dark pathway; we don’t talk about, a pathway that a good number of design researchers have been taking about of late. It’s a path into situations that are emotional demanding, spilling into engagements with high levels of compassion.  This can have a lasting effect on you.   

Find out what can you or your colleagues do about this?  Is it just part of the role we take on as story collectors or is there something else we can do here.

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Introducing Symbolic Interaction - a social lens to explore user experience

Introducing Symbolic Interaction - a social lens to explore user experience

In design research, other than observing user-product interaction, we need more consideration for users’ social interaction – who do they talk to, who do they live with, who are important to them, how are they influenced by other people and by whom etc. All people are socially related - whether they are our users or not. Social interaction is a crucial part of user context and it’s helpful to understand user experience. I’d like to share my thoughts and case study to suggest more attention to be paid to human social interaction in design research.

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Move over stigma! How design research helped us navigate past barriers to help seeking

Move over stigma! How design research helped us navigate past barriers to help seeking

How do you engage young people with mental health support if they don’t identify as someone with a mental health issue? Find out how ReachOut created a campaign which navigated around the stigma surrounding help seeking through design research with young people.

This presentation will be of interest to anyone exploring issues where people fear judgment, and will give practical tips on how to approach sensitive conversations. It is also for those interested to hear the benefits of using a mixed platform approach to design research.

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Overcoming the user researcher’s fallacy

Overcoming the user researcher’s fallacy

The user researcher's fallacy: "My job is to learn about users". Truth: "My job is to help my team learn about users". 

It might seem like a tremendous challenge, but democratisation of user research is possible for all of us. Kathleen will share how she and her team of user researcher tried, failed and finally succeeded in achieving this in a large Product & Tech organisation in Scandinavia. 

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Play Time! Exploring digital experiences with board games, trainsets & 3D printed toilets

Play Time! Exploring digital experiences with board games, trainsets & 3D printed toilets

Designing for digital experiences can sometimes feel like you’re in a ‘user interview-prototype-A/B test’ rinse-repeat research cycle focussed around screens and missing the juicy human stories.

PlayTime! is for those eager to open the toy-box and experiment with low-tech everyday objects to break the cycle and craft better digital experiences. Design Anthropologist Shae Quabba will share her methods for using tangible tools during design research, their application in digital contexts and the qualitative insights that can be derived from playing with board games, trainsets and 3D printed toilets.

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Taking the driver’s seat: our journey to change hearts and minds

Taking the driver’s seat: our journey to change hearts and minds

The presentation will cover how we’ve been creating customer-centricity through research, particularly drawing on journey-led change. We will showcase a journey of our journey mapping journey at UniSuper, including the pain points, our thoughts, our feelings, the challenges and the opportunities at each step.

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10 minute presentations

4 principles to synthesize evaluative research in a day

4 principles to synthesize evaluative research in a day

When you’re a researcher of one, a research consultant with demanding deadlines, or research lead coaching UX designers to conduct their own usability testing, time is not your friend. This talk will cover 4 principles that can help you turn around insights and recommendations for evaluative research in a much shorter timeframe.

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Cross-functional Collaboration

Cross-functional Collaboration

As researchers, we can run into problems with getting our stakeholders involved in the work we do. Not being able to collaborate effectively will reduce the impact of our work in a lot of cases as without the stakeholder buy-in it is difficult to influence product direction. I would like to share my experiences with challenging stakeholders and the type of solutions that helped me along the way.

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Design Research and Branding

Design Research and Branding

How Design Research Helps Build Better Brands. The value of design research is well-documented in the worlds of innovation, UX, UI, product and service design but less-so in branding and brand experience. We'd like to share war stories and invite feedback about how we might better use design research and help (branding) people see the value along the way.

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Embedding Privacy into UX Design using Contextual Integrity

Embedding Privacy into UX Design using Contextual Integrity

Contextual integrity is a theory of privacy that moves beyond the procedural approach to privacy to one that is embedded within contextual norms and values. By understanding these norms and values, and drawing on the different dimensions of contextual integrity proposed by Nissenbaum (actors, transmission principles, information type) we can inform UX design.

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Project Management and Design Thinking

Project Management and Design Thinking

Why is Design Thinking relevant to Project Managers and how they can apply it effectively. How focusing on users and user outcomes helps address and solve business problems.  

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Research Road Trip: Driving forward team collaboration and inclusive research

Research Road Trip: Driving forward team collaboration and inclusive research

Google’s research van allows us to conduct research with a more diverse group of participants, has fostered more team investment in research, and increased our research efficiency. In this talk, we’ll give a virtual tour of the van, discuss the impact the van has had on our work, and discuss ways you can incorporate parts of our process into your work.

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