Last week I went to the O'Reilly Design Conference and enjoyed learning about emerging UX trends. The conference was full of high-quality presentations on UX practice. Here are three of my favorite talks. The Many Minds of the Maker Knight-Mozilla Fellow Livia Labate shared examples of how designers can overcome barriers to learning code. Her experiences from the pragmatic (no you don't need to learn Rails) to the philosophical (to be good at something, be bad at it first) are relevant to people beyond designers.
Last week Gus and I gave a talk at Shmoocon in DC. The focus was on helping technologists who don't have experience in human-centered design processes conduct basic research to improve their existing open-source tools. We covered four basic steps that we believe even small or volunteer teams can take: Agree on your target users Do an expert review of your UX to identify (& fix) low-hanging fruit Interview real users Build a model of your users and their needs Smooth the path for user feedback Iterate until you get it right Overall the talk was well received, with a few choice quotes making their way onto Twitter.
This week we joined nearly 200 other organizations, companies, and individuals in signing an open letter to the world's governments calling for them to protect the integrity of online security, and to not undermine it by weakening, limiting, or backdooring encryption. Simply Secure has written before about the importance of this issue before, both on our blog and elsewhere. We believe that all people should have access to strong privacy-preserving technologies, and that efforts to compromise encryption in the name of fighting terrorism will only backfire.
We are pleased to share that the call for applications to the 2016 Supporting Usability and Design for Security (SUDS) Fellowship is now live. The fellowship, which is sponsored by the Open Technology Fund and co-administered by Simply Secure, is the next generation of the Secure Usability Fellowship Program (SUFP). Note: the deadline for applications has been extended to March 21st. SUDS is designed to pair fellows with host organizations that will offer mentorship and oversight, and Simply Secure is once again acting as one of the host organizations.
Sketching storyboards – cartoon-like drawings showing how people use technology – is a way to get more, high-quality ideas for product design. Sketches are useful for taking notes during a discussion and for getting a team on the same page. Fine art drawing is difficult for many, but anyone can master the basics of sketching storyboards – even without drawing skills. You don't need to be artistic, just follow these simple steps.