1. Survival Skills
for Lone UXers
Slipping UX Into Your Organization
Jennifer Jefferson
@uxjenn

2. David Coucheron
Concertmaster
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra

3. This is the experience.
Get out of the way.

4. 3 Survival Tips
Do what you can, when you can.
Create your own team.
Always fight for the user!

5. Do what you can,
when you can.

6. –Charles Eames
“The details are not the details.
They make the design.”

7. Experience = Everything
• Consistency (trust)
• Speed
• Errors
• Good content
• Visual design
• Functionality
• Usability

8. My Story

9. Day 1: We’re in the middle of
redesigning our website!
But you can’t make the decisions and we are not going to test
anything - wireframes are enough. Oh, we’re behind schedule too…
Photo credit: Marc Baptiste

10. Why redesign?

11. Having an inconsistent UI
made our site look
untrustworthy.

16. I did what I could.
There was no time for a
complete redesign of the
commerce pages before the
big sale and before the new
main site was developed.

18. I did more.
Finally, a design that was
consistent, usable, speedier,
and much more useful.

23. Usability Issues
You can’t test or fix everything, so focus on
the obvious and most glaring problems.

24. It was oversensitive and
caused multiple usability
issues.
Dropdown Menu

25. “The menu keeps popping out while I’m trying
to use the site.”
“It’s too sensitive and I can’t click the link I want.”
“I hate using this menu, it’s so frustrating!!!”

26. 78 customer service complaints, co-workers complained, and some
vocal customers emailed me about the dropdown menu’s usability.
Did a few usability tests to validate the reported issue and found it
was a HUGE problem.

27. Found a good design pattern on NPR - a pushdown menu.
Our menu now required a click or touch to open and close.

28. 0 complaints about the new pushdown menu.
Tested the new design and the usability issue was gone!

29. We consistently had too
many error messages and
a super slow site.
Slugs & Other Bugs

33. “Your site is worthless; a high school
student could do better”
–Angry customer via email
“Do you actually want me to buy tickets on
your site?”
–Frustrated customer via Facebook
“Can you just do my renewal over the
phone? Every time I try to use the site I get
an error.”
–Board member called our fundraising department

34. Errors will always be a problem
as a result of technical debt!
We significantly reduced errors
and sped up the site over a long
period.

35. Create your
own team.

36. –African proverb
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If
you want to go far, go together.”

37. Lead your peers to understand
and care about UX and you will
be able to make a difference.
Customer Service
Box Office
Marketing
PR
Education
IT
Agencies

38. Customer Service, the
Box Office, and Ushers
were my front lines to
our patrons.

39. Feedback Funnel
• People called to complain, visited the box
office and subscriptions office, and made
remarks at concerts. This is where I got my
jewels for user issues.
• Secret: Their favorite person to complain to
was our president!!!

40. Quality Assurance (QA)
Testing Sessions helped
my team understand UX.

42. Developing a content
strategy with the PR team
gave me “additional
headcount” and waaaaayyyyy
better copywriting!

46. Stakeholder interviews
helped me develop
empathy for my users –
other departments who
owned their section of
the site.

47. I worked with an agency who
cared about the user and
who wanted to do a great job.

48. Whiteboard Session

49. Thoughtful IA

50. Always fight
for the user!

51. –Steve Jobs
“If a user is having a problem,
it's our problem.”

52. Excuses…

53. “That’s just a cosmetic change.
We will fix it later.”

54. “But it works on my
computer! The user
must be stupid.”

55. “We don’t have time to
do usability testing and
we can’t afford it.”

56. Patience

57. Diligence

58. Education

59. Teamwork

60. If I’m not representing the
voice of our user, who will?
Photo credit: https://genevaanderson.wordpress.com/category/classical-music/

61. In-Depth Thinking
• The User Experience Team of One - Leah Buley
• Undercover UX - Cennydd Bowles & James Box
• Rocket Surgery Made Easy: The Do-It-Yourself Guide
to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems - Steve
Krug
• Just Enough Research - Erika Hall

62. Do what you can, when
you can.
Create your own team.
Always fight for the user!
Jennifer Jefferson
@uxjenn
jenn@uxjenn.com