I recently presented as a Key note speaker at the 21st Oxford Geek Night.
When I arrived, about 70 people were crammed into a very small space at the top of the Jericho Tavern in Oxford. Drinks were free (at least the first one was) then we quickly simmered down in preparation for the first talk: Styleguides for the Web, by Paul Lloyd, visual designer at Clearleft (slides).
There was a five minute break before Nick, my side-kick UI developer, and I went on stage to present 15 minutes on: Rapid prototyping: fast, continuous, informed design and development, by Eewei Chen and Nick Bailey, Experience Design at Thoughtworks (slides).
You can step through the slide above at your leisure but my biggest takeaway is that people want specific examples they can focus on and pick apart. Some feedback included:
- Would be great to see how all this theory can be applied to one project from start to finish
- Provide insight into lessons learned and how they were applied to improve the user experience and better meet customer goals
- Break a project apart and show where low-fi all the way to coded more hi-fi prototypes aided user testing and ‘getting the idea across’ more efficient
- List of tools and techniques was useful
- Presentation was good but was too much to take in
- Tell a story, take us through the highs and the lows, how you learned to adapt and improve for all to see
- Live code was brave but we get it. We want to learn about where to integrate, how it was done well so we can apply it
I look forward to giving this presentation again but next time it will be focussed on one project touching upon all areas. Tell a story that everyone can follow and have key take aways and tools at the end.
