“Our humanity is the point of human-centred design.” This was one of the sentences heard last Friday at the Bristol Aquarium, during Annette Priest’s talk at the Collaborate conference, which was sponsored by People for Research. Looking back, it helps us realise that the event was mostly about what has meaning to all of us as humans, expanding the focus of the day beyond sustainability in user experience (UX) and design, the topic of this year’s World Usability Day.

On one hand, UX expert and design consultant Annette asked us to get comfortable with everything that bothers us and affects the human condition (like death!). On the other hand, Nat Al-Tahhan showed us how to be fun and incorporate unconventional ideas to avoid creating boring products that will only get yawns from the users.

The game design expert reminded us that reward systems work for both adult and children, that we can be both playful and appropriate at the same time and that user testing should always be as simple as possible.

User experience + digital accessibility

During the day, we asked some of the people attending Collaborate Bristol to take part in a video for our accessibility campaign #MakeTheWebAccessible, launched earlier this year. UX and usability experts, designers, coders and developers, Team PfR members – all of them got together to answer the question “What is digital accessibility?”.

In the morning we listened to Pete Trainor and witnessed the most emotional moment of Collaborate. Pete, from Nexus Design, has a simple mantra – ‘don’t do thing better, do better things’. He was obviously inspired by this idea during his talk, focusing on how artificial intelligence, chatbots and algorithms can save lives and even prevent suicides by helping to identify people with mental health issues.

💭 “If technology can save one life, then it was all worth it.”

Pete’s talk was followed by names like Vicky Brown from Nomensa, who talked about developing great user experience in an agile environment and Chris Chandler, who truly focused on the collaborative approach in the usability and design industry.

The final talk of the day was all about thinking outside of the design box. Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino, who was also in charge of the pre-event workshop, encouraged all designers and UXers in the room to step outside the ‘box of design’ and think about the economic and emotional context in which each product is born.

Maria Santos, Head of Digital Ops & Data Protection

If you would like to find out more about our in-house participant recruitment service for user testing or market research get in touch on 0117 921 0008 or info@peopleforresearch.co.uk.

At People for Research, we recruit participants for UX and usability testing and market research. We work with award winning UX agencies across the UK and partner up with a number of end clients who are leading the way with in-house user experience and insight.