Nielson Norman Group Conference, User Experience (UX)

Hi! Happy Saturday!

Nielson Norman Group Conference, Conference Review

Fantastic!

First, is important to note that I am not a UX professional nor am I engaged in the UX community. My interest in UX is purely professional, I build web sites for a living as a developer.  My objectives were twofold. One objective was to refresh the education I received at UC Berkeley in 1997-1998 that incorporated usability where I took three courses 1.) User Interface Design, 2.) Groupware Using Groupware,  and 3.) Cost Effective Software Engineering. The other objective was to evaluate NN/g for suitability with clients.

Having thus qualified myself,  I'll begin by saying today is 12/10/2016 and I just spent the last week at a conference put on by the Nielson Norman Group,  aka NN/g. This was a teaching conference. I completed a week of coursework on user experience (UX) and user interface (UI). This blog post are my thoughts about my user experience of a conference on user experience.

Conference Recommendation

Fantastic! I highly recommend the conference! :-P

The conference is excellent and it works well as an introduction and overview to what UX/UI are all about. I would especially recommend these day long classes for anyone newly engaging UX for the first time. Also for any one looking for more than reading a book. The networking with other UX professionals was excellent. I also recommend this as required background for any one looking to hire UX/UI consultants and employees.

What I do not recommend is the certification because the classes are only six hours.  The conference is structured with one certification topic per day where a day is six-hours. For example, I took the class on conducting usability studies. The question in my mind is how much can one really learn in a day and earn a certification?

Engagement Recommendation

Fantastic!

I highly recommend the Nielson Norman Group after the UI/UX commitment has been made. This recommendation is based upon my perspective of having taken a total of five, one-day courses. I am not a UX expert or otherwise engaged in the UX community reading research or opinion but found these courses very approachable.

I would not recommend Nielson Norman Group as consultants for making a UX/Usability case to the typical, rough-and-tumble, dog-eat-dog executives. NN/g are just really nice people and not hard sell enough. I asked a couple of questions in each class and in all cases made the instructors nervous. I'm not management, but a student.  In my dream world just the scientific facts would be compelling for making the case to convince people. Sadly, we don't live in that world. 

I make the after the UI/UX commitment recommendation as consultants based on the fact that their instructors are the practitioners. I used the class as a six-hour interview, if you will, of their capabilities. I was happy with the expertise of all the instructors as practitioners.

I also recommend NN/g for organizations identified as have having a 6-8 user experience engagement level as measured by NN/g. The user experience engagement level can be measured by a self-assessment survey of UX engagement that you can find on their web site. Since my score was only a 2 on a scale of 1-to-8 of UX engagement then utilizing NN/g as a consultant is not appropriate in my eyes for my needs.  NN/g is best in class and as such their price and course work primarily reflects large projects and using their services for those organizations that are the most committed to customer experience.

Talking Points

Pros:

1. Very nice people. Can't say that enough.
2. Beaten path and conservative with respect to the material. Confidence is key here.
3. UX/UI technically excellent. 
4. Well trained and practiced. The people teaching the class are working UI/UX professionals.
5. Approachable and easy to talk too. Can't say that enough.
6. Met expectations for the six hours of class designed for certification on a daily topic basis.

Cons:

1. Very nice people. Can't say that enough. This is both a pro and con because if you are thinking of using NN/g as consultants just ask yourself if nice people are suitable to convincing your management, especially if there is a need to make a case with dog-eat-dog management types.
2. Beaten Path.This is also both a pro and con in that if your business falls outside of their experience then I wouldn't engage. Their expertise in what they know is well versed. 
3. Compartmentalized. For example, even though the UX class stresses using a holistic approach to integrating usability and UI with UX, the class on usability was only usability. Nothing about UX integration was mentioned. Personally I use a holistic approach because UX Heuristic Evaluation and UI best practices are cheap and easy to do.  I intertwine both of these all along the development and test process. I also have trained QA folk  on UX Heuristic Evaluation and UI Best Design practices. Fixing usability problems before they get to production is always cheaper and preferred.  Incorporating a holistic approach has worked well for me and yet the course work was all compartmentalized. 
4. Technically shallow on the subject matter. For example, as a developer it is critical to think about usability with respect to user  errors at all levels; in the UI, in the middleware and in the back-end. Course work only covered UI. Also I did not meet any developers on their staff, which indicates to me they don't get feedback at that level.

The End