Importance of face-to-face communication

We started to organize by-monthly UX meetups a year ago. In that time, we tried many channels of communication. I learned that keeping it remote for way too long can backfire horribly.

Workshops for students of primary school

I find presenting UX and Design Thinking to adult audience quite challenging and rewarding experience. Having audience made of teenagers can be even more of a challenge. Last week my audience were 5th graders and 7th graders from primary school – children. What were the obstacles, the approach and the result?

Multiple stakeholders

Dealing with multiple stakeholders can bring unexpected problems. Their opinion about solution might not be unified, their very views on the problem could be different and dealing with all of them at the same time can be a rather messy situation.

Research interviews – Reality and practicing

One thing is to have the theoretical knowledge, the other is to have the practical experience. This time we dive into the reality of Research interviews: how it looks, what can go wrong, how to react in unpredictable situations.

Prejudice and judging people before you meet them

It is easy to make first impression. It takes only couple of seconds for people to box others into groups and make uninformed decisions. It gets even worse when people unconsciously change their attitude based on these first impressions. It is hard to control because it is encoded deep in who we are and yet it can do so much harm.

A day in life – Experience over shadowing

Our department held day in life for the teams inside so that everyone could get to know each other. We spend some time thinking about how we want to describe our team but we could not come up with any solid description that would summarize all that we do in a way we would like to. Eventually we decided that being able to experience something gives you more than just hearing about it.

Research interviews – Leading a discussion

Understanding the true problem is necessary step towards fixing it. Often you are trying to improve experience of your users to increase company revenue in case of external products or employee efficiency if internal products are in question. Let's look at one method to further this understanding - Research Interviews.

Things we take for granted

Have you ever thought about people who had enough misfortune in their life and never had the chance to learn something that comes so natural to the rest of us like shopping for clothes or basic social skills? How about people who have never found their role models who would motivate them into following their dreams or even having any dreams?

It's all your fault

In today's world, people are mainly interested in being right. In their faith, in their beliefs, in their views, in their opinions. And also in workplace. Imagine you have two people defending opposing views, not being able to accept any form of defeat. Just locked in infinite battle of who is right, never discovering the real truth.

Selling by lying

Creating a presentation can be a bummer. There are times when you are asked to say something but you have nothing to say. Potentially even worse are times when you are asked to promote product you know is not good. In those situations you need to be mindful of one thing - pretending you are someone you are not. It can get you into lots of trouble. Preaching water and drinking wine will get noticed by your audience.

My take on presentations

During my vacation I realized that I rather watch useless YouTube videos filled with somewhat irrelevant informations than archives of presentations, lectures and conferences on subjects I care about. I tried to figure out why this is the case. I came to conclusion that the reason for it is the way presentations and lectures start.

Workshops for students of secondary school

Some time ago I had the opportunity to organize workshop for students of secondary school. Topic was open, so I decided to talk about UX and design. Challenge was that non of these students came to that school to do design, they were studying networking (internet, routers, switches...) So I had to ask myself, what should I do to reach them and what knowledge would they benefit from in their roles?