The week after we got back from New York in the middle of October I began a period that was full to the brim with really exciting things. Over three weeks I ran 5 workshops and did 1 talk.
Putting together a good talk or workshop takes a lot of work. There is research and planning to be done in order to ensure you have the right content, up to date sources etc., but also for making sure that the story flows. That part is what I love the most, because at the end of the day it’s all about storytelling.
Once the last talk was done I went straight home, packed my bag, went to Heathrow and got on a plane home to relax with family and friends for the weekend. I was tired but incredibly happy and here is why.
Eventhandler workshop
The first workshop I ran was Best practice for UX deliverables with Eventhandler on the Tuesday evening after we got back. This workshop was very special to me and I started out by telling why. It was sold out and went really well. It ran for three hours in total where of around 45 mins was me talking about why how we present our work matters, what we should consider as well as how we should adapt it to the audience. I’d asked friends and old colleagues from different areas for their thoughts on what makes for good UX deliverables and their quotes really brought the presentation to life.
Finally there were DOs and DON’Ts, examples as well as four hands on exercises that the group went through brilliantly. Not only did they complete all four (see the presentation – it was a lot) but they did it to a really high standard. Proof that through applying simple techniques to how we work with and present our deliverables, we can improve their value without having to spend unnecessary time polishing them.
My presentation was featured on Slideshare’s home page and has, at the time of writing, been downloaded 145 times. Something that makes me very happy as hopefully it means others pass it on and even more people can benefit from it.
www.eventhandler.co.uk/events/uxnightclass-uxdeliverables
Two in house sessions
On the Friday that same week I also ran two sessions with a company outside of London. They approached me after one of my ‘Designing for multiple devices’ classes at General Assembly and asked me to run two workshop sessions, one with the account team and one with the studio. Both went great and the more sessions I do in house, the fonder I get of them. There is something really rewarding about coming in to work with the teams in question, educating them on the subject, provide inspiration and insight that can help in conversations with clients and internal stakeholders, to then working through exercises and providing hands on practice.
The slides I do for these sessions are only shared with the company in question, so they aren’t up on slideshare, but if you want to talk to me about what they include, drop me a note.
Two workshops at the Dublin Web Summit
The week after that it was the Dublin Web Summit, or the Summit as it is now called and workshops with General Assembly. I did two 45 min crash course workshops in ‘Designing for multiple devices’ and my presentation got picked by Slideshare as the top presentation of the day on the 4th of November. I’ve had a few home page features before but this was my first ‘Top presenation of the day’.
www.websummit.net
UCD2013 conference
Last but not least, on the Friday in week 3 I did a talk around storytelling in design at UCD2013. Out of all the talks I’ve done this was the most personal one. My dad is a writer so stories and storytelling always played a big part.
Dad often talks about how much he enjoys seeing and making all the pieces of a story come together and how, as a writer, you need to know where to change something if you add something somewhere else. The red thread is critical but there are other elements to what makes for a good story, and I asked my dad what those were. I told him about my topic, the idea behind it and the message I wanted to get a cross. Dad in turn told me about how to tell a good story and though I knew there were overlaps, I didn’t know just how much until we had our conversation on the phone. Before I knew it we were drawing parallels all over the place between good UX and good story telling and it made my talk into what it is.
It was the perfect way to finish off three intensive weeks. The Drum wrote a piece about it and I got some of the nicest feedback I’ve ever received after this talk, with this one being my absolute favourite:
#ucd2013 @annadahlstrom the most beautiful well told story – storytelling as a method of ucd! Amazing Skandi style images and typography
— lwjkeith (@lwjkeith) November 8, 2013
Image source: www.flickr.com/photos/41002268@N03/4654483579
