For years, the field of UX focused on methods, methodologies, techniques, artifacts, and deliverables. Today, however, we have learned that UX is no longer just about the work. The ability to interact, relate, and exchange with team members, stakeholders, clients, and leadership has proven to be, in some cases, even more important than the work. For these reasons, the importance of soft skills has become increasingly critical. This talk will provide an overview of the key factor — emotional intelligence (EQ) — including such factors as the following:
The challenges and issues it can help you overcome,
How it can impact your project
How it optimizes relationships with stakeholders and teammates
The benefits it offers for personal and professional growth
Key EQ red flags that serve as identifiers for growth in self or one’s teams

From March 2020 the landscape of teaching and learning in SA changed irrevocably when millions of teachers and lecturers moved their practice online. As teaching and digital spaces melded into one, it quickly became apparent that nobody was having much fun. This talk seeks to explore what ‘delight’ means in digital products and critically interrogates how we can meaningfully expand this concept.

Journey maps are a powerful tool for gathering and structuring data about end users. They also help align associates from various roles and teams through a consistent perspective with the user in focus. Throughout our work on our next-generation electronic health record, Cerner’s UX and IP teams have worked together to find meaning in complex data to inform this global product.
During this talk we will share our own examples of journey map adaptations and describe how to utilize each method for your own projects.

There has been a proliferation of technological developments in the last few years that are beginning to improve how we perceive, attend to, notice, analyse and remember events, people, data and other information. These include machine learning, computer vision, advanced user interfaces (e.g. augmented reality) and sensor technologies. A goal of being augmented with ever more computational capabilities is to enable us to see more and, in doing so, make more intelligent decisions. But to what extent are the new interfaces enabling us to become more super-human? What is gained and lost through our reliance on ever pervasive computational technology? In my short talk, I will cover latest developments in tech advances, such as conversational interfaces, data visualisation, and augmented reality. I will then draw upon relevant recent findings in the HCI and psychology literature that demonstrate how our human capabilities are being extended but also struggling to adapt to the new demands on our attention. Finally I will show their relevance to investigating the physical and digital worlds when trying to discover or uncover new information.

As designers we aim to solve problems by creating novel, functional, easy to use solutions. Often we follow existing frameworks like Design Thinking, which takes on the Empathise > Define > Ideate > Prototype > Test structure. However, how do we stop ourselves from coming up with solutions rooted in the same mindset that created the problems in the first place? What tools can we use for “ideating” beyond the usual brainstorming?

This workshop introduces the concept of “reframing” as a means to shift mindsets when tackling problems. We’ll go through real-life examples where this has already been proven to work, and work in teams to tackle a problem where you’ll practically go through the steps and see how it can be applied to your own work and daily life even.