Agile UX: a good user story is about sizing, not format  

Writing good user stories is an important way for UX-ers to constantly stay relevant to the needs of the project. It is a code-free way to connect with the tech team and QA team to ensure that the right kind of user experience gets built into the project. It is also an effective way to be valued by the tech team (they generally shy away from story writing) and the QA team (loves specifics and clarity). My presentation shows some of the important considerations that go into writing an effective user story.

Bhuvana Narayanamurthy

Multi-dimensional visualization of security data 

To get a security clearance, you must undergo an investigation. Security specialists review the investigation findings to ensure you meet the requirements for clearance. These specialists review text-heavy documents spanning 10 to 30 pages or more to understand the interactions between the information presented in the documents, identify gaps and red flags, and evaluate risk. 

We designed a Visualization Tool that displays graphical and text information, making it easier for security professionals to identify gaps, overlaps, and patterns in a subject’s history. Our tool transforms the way the government thinks about investigation and adjudication outputs. By laying out text-heavy documents visually, instead of textually, we allow individuals to interact with information in new ways and draw previously unseen conclusions. By applying our approach to other document-heavy processes with two sets of time data (e.g., employment verification, criminal history), the government may develop a new way of approaching key information.

Bruce Sklar, Daniel Blalock

Dashboard for Humans: Designing useful dashboards to help real people get answers

Dashboards are built to make it easier for people to consume large amounts of data to make decisions. Designers often are tasked with adhering to a large set of business requirements, including multiple user groups and form factors. This leads to bloated interfaces that are perceived as cumbersome and difficult to use. Our Dashboards for Humans (DFH) design serves the purpose of easing these challenges and provides guidance for creating dashboards that are easily navigated, provide answers to users’ questions, and gain deep insights of the business performance. By using gradual exposure, accelerators, and careful implementation colors, DFH offers design solutions that address the needs of subject matter experts and decision-makers who use dashboards as part of a wide array of tools to improve their business performance.

Chris Eisbach, Felix Portnoy, Christine Jowdy

What if I can’t talk with my users? How to successfully implement UX research into a federal healthcare organization

One of the fundamental tenets of UX is that “You are not your user.” That is one of the main reasons why we do user research by interviewing users. But what if you couldn’t? One of the challenges with Government UX is that you may not have direct access to users: that was a challenge that I faced as a Usability fellow for a federal healthcare organization. One of the fundamental fears for this organization was a data breach, as they had access to sensitive medical information. As a result, I was unable to do user research by talking with users. So this session will be about what I did instead, which was use a triangulation research strategy.  

Christopher Wong 

Icon-undrum: the path to Marie Kondo’ing your icon repository

What do you do when you have one icon designer, approximately 216 distinct Delete, Save, New, icons across 40 applications, in a library of 4500 icons? You form an icon team, create an icon request process that aligns with your company’s software development process, and provide guidelines for how these icons are used across all applications. We will include steps that we hope will inspire others to implement their own icon team and request process within their organization.

Cindy Huffman, Ginny Matsey 

On the sofa in sweats: how User Experience impacts online learning

Online Programs in Higher Education have revolutionized our access to education.  However, meaningful learning can’t occur in online environments if poorly designed UX prevents students from important tasks, like finding homework and communicating with their instructors. 

This session will discuss the unique needs, preferences, and behavioral patterns we’ve observed from multiple usability research studies conducted on online learners and learning environments. It will also discuss the overlaps between UX theories and learning theories, and how a perfect marriage of both can create meaningful educational outcomes for students in online environments.

Claire Menegus, Joy Chen 

8 tenets for designers that will not make you rich

One of the advantages of being academic is the luxury of reflection. I design, I teach design, and I research design. The most frustrating thing about working with and teaching new designers is their naivete of the power of Design and what one can do with the power it wields. As such, I wrote out a list of guiding tenets that are based on ethics. When I say ethics, I mean morally-based and human-centered ideas. The tenets have come after 20+ years of working in interaction design and almost as long teaching it. In this talk, I’ll discuss including users in the design process, the role of empathy, and the dangers of the misuse of social science.

Greg Walsh

Designing technology affordances as culturally sustaining value propositions for global innovations

Nowadays the ultimate value of a social media innovation often depends on its global success, and companies are competing for both a local market share and global domination. This talk presents a global competition case of four social messaging apps originated from the Pacific Rim, including WhatsApp from the U.S., KakaoTalk from South Korea, WeChat from China, and LINE from Japan, and discusses how different discursive affordances and value propositions were designed to meet local cultural needs and drive global user growth. 

Based on a visually rich discussion of how four social messaging apps/platforms positioned and presented their affordances and value propositions in different ways, the talk offers strategic design advice on designing for technology affordances and co-creating value propositions to sustain local cultures and attract global users.

Huatong Sun

Exploring new UX teaching methods for virtual reality 

Virtual Reality (VR) technology has become more widely available in recent years. The goal of VR is to create artificial environments that resemble real physical environments as realistically as possible. Users experience feeling immersed in the artificial environment. Evaluating the User Experience (UX) of VR is important in the development of applications for VR, however, typical usability evaluation methods have mostly focused on two-dimensional user interfaces. Evaluating UX in VR poses additional challenges for UX professionals. User Experience professionals should understand and practice usability testing techniques for VR technology. A course module has been developed to teach students VR usability evaluation methods in a graduate Human-Centered Computing program. The module includes an introductory presentation and two activities with head-mounted VR displays for direct and for green-screen-mediated observations. The results show that students were very engaged in the VR usability evaluation and gained useful skills for the UX evaluation of VR.

Hye-Kyung Bae, Anita Komlodi, Marilyn Iriarte, Wayne Lutters  

Readability audits: surprising ways to reach our stakeholders

When used the right way, readability formulas can work beyond the numbers to get people engaged with their content.

Recently, my team used an online tool for a readability audit. 

Much to our surprise, people responded both favorably and quickly: they reviewed and updated their text, moved or deleted pages, and greatly exceeded our expectations. 

While readability formulas do not guarantee the usability and plain language, they were a great tool.

Katherine Spivey

APIs & CLIs: humanizing the developer experience

As Experience Researchers and Designers, we typically split our focus between the Customer’s Experience and the Business Goals. What is often ignored is the Developer Experience. But, with modern software, APIs are becoming a common interface. And, Developers are the Users. 

This poster session takes a look at how Human-centered Designers can assist in the creation of excellent Developer Experiences.

Martha Valenta 

Awareness and usage of MOOCS: the underrepresented Experience

MOOCs allow individuals to expand educational boundaries. The proliferation of MOOCs holds the potential to enhance access to quality learning materials for those who lack these resources, such as young adults in low-income communities; African Americans are overrepresented in these communities. There has been little attention to investigating how African Americans in higher education currently use MOOCs for career development and even less attention to how these young adults become aware of MOOCs . This empirical study identifies how African Americans from underserved communities in [STATE] became aware of MOOCs and their uses of it. There were three main findings in the research 1) awareness of MOOCs is generated when individuals face educational challenges in two forms: peer-to-peer networking or online social network engagement, 2) MOOCs help individuals overcome educational challenges, and 3) MOOCs help promote networking, personal and professional development.

Tyreek Houston 

From user focus to DCUX: a historical overview of UXPA DC Conferences

The DC chapter of UXPA has a long and storied history. This poster presents the history of UXPA DC-hosted conferences (and noteworthy events) illustrating the evolution of the conference from User Focus (2006-2012) to UXDC (2014-2017) and DCUX (2019 and beyond). The poster was originally created for the DCUX 2019 conference (November 2019) to showcase the history of the event. It is presented at UXPA International 2020 to bring attention to the DC UXPA chapter only a few dozen miles south in the greater Washington, D.C. area.

Jeffrey Pass