Kaboom! Making comics to communicate user experiences

Overview

Comics are powerful, visual communication tools that people love to read. In a business environment they can give clients and team members a fresh outlook on who their users are, and how they behave.

This is a fun and practical workshop that will introduce you to comics and what a ‘UX comic’ is. After looking at some example comics, you’ll learn how to make your first UX comic from scratch.

We’ll cover how storytelling and images can communicate information much faster than written reports. Plus we’ll look at how the comic format is a powerful language in its own right.

You don’t need to be an artist to take part, we’ll share simple and easy ways to draw characters, set the scene and develop stories. By the end of the session you’ll have learned how to:

• Analyse user research to identify stories
• Develop characters that are recognisable and easy to draw
• Structure your story so it flows and makes sense to a reader
• Avoid common pitfalls
• Use tools to speed up comic production

Plus you’ll take away your own unique comic!

We’ll provide all materials, you just need to bring a willingness to draw!

Biography

Bonny Colville-Hyde is a User Experience Consultant living and working in Bristol. She has a BA (Hons) in Media Practice, and draws on a wide range of experience from customer service through to documentary production to inform her work. Bonny has been a UX consultant for almost eight years, working with a diverse range of clients and platforms. Everything from eBay, and Expedia through to NHS Trusts, The Samaritans and Action for Children.

Read more about Bonny or follow her on Twitter: @almostexact

Using design rules and principles to evaluate and guide UX

Overview

The workshop will cement established design principles which can be used to evaluate interactive experiences, it will help attendees to be able to objectively assess and build in good practice, it will help designers to ignore established ‘rules’ with intent rather than through ignorance. It will probably also dispel some myths about what good design actually looks like (and if not at least fuel healthy debate!)

Things we will cover:

• Review and discussion of some popular (and even famous) design rules covering interaction, perception, usability, persuasion and more
• Exercise: rationalise into a bespoke set
• Guided exercise: use to assess physical products and interfaces
• Show and tell: each group presents findings back to the whole room

Attendees will be working in groups of 4 or 5 (depending on numbers) – it will be fun and largely hands on. Bring laptops/tablets/phones and your favourite physical interactive products.

Biography

Jon holds a DPhil. in Visual and Computational Neuroscience from Oxford University. As an academic he researched (amongst other things) how you and your brain judge attractiveness, discern the shapes of shampoo bottles, and make decisions when shown visual illusions (he can also tell you a thing or two about how faces indicate age, gender and trustworthiness and why caricatures work so well).

Read more about Jon or follow him on Twitter: @jonbunnyfoot