I went to the free SoCal UX (User Experience) Camp “un”-conference yesterday, wondering what I might learn from the design-side of things. I was hoping to get a better glimpse into what a UX designer does and where they fit into the work flow. It wasn’t eye-opening or revelatory, as many of the things I was already familiar with from undergrad, grad, or just from working. I think the most important takeaway for me is I’m happy being a developer/programmer, but also being aware of the techniques UX designers use (e.g., use-cases) can also help me be a better programmer. UX is something new and I have seen a lot of positions open up for it at various companies as sort of the “next big thing” so I feel understanding the space is important.

The Camp took place at CSU Fullerton’s Garden Grove campus. As an “un”-conference, after checking in, we were asked to go vote for the sessions that we found interesting. I was only really interested in three of the sessions: “Mobile Web Design: Making sense of the Solutions” by Wendy Eichenbaum, “The Touch Experience” by Sean Van Tyne, and “Bringing Mickey’s 10 Commandments Online” by Chris Chandler. We also had time for breakfast, provided by the Camp, and to check out a couple of the sponsor booths and pick up freebies (yay swag bag and event shirt–in medium!).

The keynote started a little bit late, but it seemed to be aimed as a relaxed day rather than rigidly structured sessions. The keynote was given by Patrick Burke from UCLA about accessibility. He gave an interesting talk starting from his history of using screen readers and moving up to today’s mobile devices. He focused mostly on Apple products. What I found most interesting and relevant was his dislike of infinite scrolling webpages. The main problem being a screen reader in the middle of reading, then the page refreshes to load additional content, causing the screen reader to start from the top.

For the more common user, like me, my issue is reaching the footer where certain information I might be interested in is placed. For example, the DeviantArt page places a set of Daily Deviations at the bottom of the page. The main content is a gallery of the most popular images within a certain bracket of time (e.g., 8 hours, 24 hours) and a button to load more. Clicking on the button turns the page into an infinitely scrolling page and if I decide I’m bored at looking at that set of images and want to look at the Daily Deviations, I have to reload the page. I have run into this problem with other popular sites, like Kotaku, but they have recently redesigned so the footer no longer contains interesting information like article links to their sister websites (e.g., Jezebel, IO9, LifeHacker). I do miss this feature of branching to other websites, but in the give-and-take of design, it had to go.

The first session we sat in on was titled “Putting ‘U’ Back in UX” by Alberta Soranzo. It was an interesting talk, starting with a story of her experience as a passenger in an Air New Zealand flight and using the the ordering system to custom-order beverages and snacks. She labeled her experience using this system according to Armano’s “new” OMG-WTF scale (but her version had it flipped so it went from WTF to OMG), which I found humorous but also practical. She encouraged UX designers to think and not just “do” – she was very concerned about being a trained monkey vs. a thoughtful designer. I thought this was interesting because it almost felt like she was bordering on the spiritual (specifically Buddhism) with her prodding towards thinking and reflecting about design solutions.

Some of my notes:

• Process – can be limiting in what you can do
• Problem – rigidity; anybody can produce the artifacts, but artifacts are just part of the process
• Need to also consider (think about) goals, methods, documents
• Moving from hard skills to soft skills as practitioners
• Can learn methods, but not principles
• Don’t be afraid of originality of thought, like the infinite scroll may not be practical in certain situations
• Empathy means to understand and share
• Where is the thinking?
• When we dismiss the ideas, we dismiss the people
• After coming up with a solution, revisit the persona users to see if it is actually optimal – UX designers are not the users, yet they are the users
• Build thinking time into deliverable time

The second session was Mobile Web Design and I took pages of notes. I was very interested in how to properly design and build a webpage for today’s technologies which is currently straddling the desktop and mobile worlds. Wendy discussed 1 site vs. 2, the approaches and pros and cons of this method. Specifically, the separation of the two means each version is a blank slate, allowing for faster load time at the cost of development for an “additional” page. Another consideration when deciding which route to go is whether the site will be informational (e.g., a newspaper) or if it will provide a service (e.g., webmail). She cited the Boston Globe’s webpage as a successful 1-site webpage because it was informational. However, the drawback to responsive/adaptive 1-site pages is determining what information needs to be shown and where. Ads are also affected because they may no longer occupy the same spot or area size on a mobile device vs. a desktop.

There was also a long discussion about web apps accessed through the browser vs. native apps vs. hybrid apps. I wasn’t aware of the hybrid apps, but the frameworks I’ve been seeing tossed around like Sencha and jQuery Mobile make a lot more sense now. These frameworks are essentially wrappers around a web app to turn it into a native app. She also discussed the pros and cons of each. The choice depends on who the target audience is, what they need, budget, timeline, legacy considerations, and so on. The bottom line that I got was HTML 5 isn’t quite where it needs to be at to support all of the mobile interaction so when comparing a web app to a mobile app, the UX of a mobile app will win.

We took a break for lunch. Lunch, again, was provided by the sponsors and were Subway sandwiches, cookies, and chips. We also had enough time to revisit the booths and talk to the recruiters. After lunch, we had planned to go to the “Recruiting and Conducting Your First Usability Study” by Theodore Chao but the room was full by the time we got there. We decided to take the hour off and spend some time outside enjoying the sunny weather and check out historic Garden Grove.

The fourth session was The Touch Experience. There was less direction, according to my friend, and it reminded me of grad classes where the speaker was really the moderator and everyone had their say on the topic. I was interested in Fitt’s Law and will look it up as it seemed relevant when I was/am working on my Here/There app. I was interested in the difference between “touch” and “nuances of gesture” but it wasn’t a topic that was discussed very deeply. People were more interested in capacitive vs. resistive touch screens, discussing how if you’re in Chicago or some other cold area and try to use your touch-screen capacitive device, it wouldn’t register because it depends on heat. The topic of phablets came up and we were asked if we thought they would become the “4th” device or if it would really replace one of the other three. There was also discussion on where interactivity would go next, with speculations on voice, Google Glass, Pebble, wearable devices, and so on.

The session was interesting and I enjoyed it a bit. I felt like it also drove home the separation between designers and developers when Sean brought up the topic that Nokia had done their research on touch devices, but engineering had deemed it an unlikely space so their development was dropped whereas Apple pursued it and became the lead in this area. No one brought up the issue that even if engineering wanted to pursue it, other issues like time, money, and priorities can affect whether or not it is “feasible.” The technology to do what the designers dream of may not be there, but sometimes it isn’t a question of whether the developers want to do it or not, but whether they can or not. It sort of reminded me of Iron Man 2 where Tony’s father leaves him a video saying the technology of his time isn’t capable of building the element he envisioned and designed, but the technology of Tony’s time will have advanced enough to produce it.

The final session we went to was Mickey’s 10 Commandments. It was interesting to see Disney’s set of “core” values in everything they do (Chris mentioned one of the cleaners polishing a trash can in one of the parks). I’ll list them here:

1. Know your audience
2. Wear your guests shoes
3. Organize the flow of people and ideas
4. Create a weenie (a visual effect that pulls you forward)
5. Communicate with visual literacy
6. Avoid overload
7. Tell one story at a time
8. Avoid contradiction
9. For every ounce of treatment, provide a ton of fun
10. Keep it up

I was asked a few times which session I liked the best. I’d have to say the one that was most relevant to me was Mobile Web Design, but I also enjoyed the other three sessions I went to that it’s hard to say which one was my favorite. It was a long and tiring day, although we did finish early (~4pm). It was interesting to get the designer vibe but remain fairly anonymous as a developer – wolf in sheep’s clothing? That said, I’m not sure if I would come again right away. It was interesting to get an idea of what problems they dealt with and their approaches to finding solutions, which can all help in at least being aware of in my own programming work.