Speakers
Russ Unger
Workshop Guerilla Research Methods
This hands-on session will cover a number of low cost, yet powerful research methods to help you make better data-driven design decisions. We’ll provide a number of techniques for recruiting research participants, creating better research questions, and what to do with your data once you’ve conducted your research.
Topics Covered:
- How to sell guerrilla research into a project from the start
- How to recruit better participants
- How to form better research questions
- A number of inexpensive, quick, but highly effective research methods when time and/or budget are limited
- Valuable “how-tos” to execute the research
Questions Answered:
- How do I get my boss or client to buy into doing research for my project?
- What is guerrilla research and how is it different than traditional research?
- What are some guerrilla research methods and what kind of results can I expect?
- How do I pick the right method(s)?
- What’s the downside/shortcoming of guerrilla research methods compared to other research methods
→ Slides from Russ’s workshop
Workshop Critical Thinking for UX Designers (or Anyone) Co-taught with Stephen P. Anderson
Love creative problem solving, but need something more practical— something specific to User Experience? Russ and Stephen will share with you the exercises they use to solve the REAL problems.
You’ll flex your critical thinking muscle through a series of jumpstarter activities. Even better, attendees will be encouraged to participate, if not embarrass themselves in front of a room full of their peers as they challenge themselves to see past the first, obvious—and often incorrect—answers, and start to flip problems on their heads to see solutions from a different view.
Session Takeaway:
- Gain a better understanding of what critical thinking is, why it is important in the world of User Experience Design
- Identify ways to evaluate the visual and verbal messages in your work
- Spot artificial constraints to focus on the root problem(s).
- View problems from a different perspective and remove yourself as a consumer/user.
- Learn how reframing problems can lead to radically different solutions.
- Dissect problems to uncover solutions you may have previously overlooked.
Bio
Russ Unger is a User Experience Director for Happy Cog, a web design firm in New York City, Philadelphia and San Francisco. He is co-author of the book A Project Guide to UX Design for Peachpit Press (Voices That Matter) and is co-authoring a book on guerilla research methods with Todd Zaki Warfel due out in 2011.
Russ has been working on websites since 1993—when there was only Notepad to code with and Mosaic was the only browser around. That was when he found his interest in User Experience Design and Information Architecture began to thrive. Since then, he has worked with a variety of companies–from start-ups to everyday household brands–helping them infuse User Experience strategies and tactics into their designs.