I had the distinct pleasure of presenting at An Event Apart 2009 in Boston and Chicago (read about my experience), so imagine my delight when Jeffrey and Eric asked me to reprise my talk this year in Minneapolis and San Diego!
AEA attendees are a tough crowd — they’re already smart, successful and very well-informed on the latest and greatest the web has to offer — so teaching them something new and getting them to think about something they haven’t before certainly isn’t an easy task. To say I was scared, despite having done it twice before, would be the understatement of the century. I was terrified. In fact, I was shaking when I woke up, and nauseous up until the moment I hit the stage.
Giving the same talk two years in a row can be particularly troubling because everyone in the audience might have already seen it the year before! Or at least that’s what I told myself. Everyone already knows this stuff. Everyone is smarter than me. Everyone is gonna think I’m ugly. Yes, these are the things I kept telling myself.
Much to my surprise (again), the talk was a hit. I’d made a few tweaks since the last time I gave it, so the updated slides are posted below, along with tweets from the audience.
Thank you so much to everyone who cared enough to listen, who took the time to come up to me afterwards and offer their thanks. If I can encourage just one person to start bringing their users into the design process, then I feel like I’ve done my job.
If you were in the audience and enjoyed the presentation, please tell me about it in the comments. And if you didn’t enjoy it, I definitely want to hear from you as well. I practice what I preach, and continuous improvement is very much a part of my life. So help me!
Great notes on DIY UX
From Luke W
From Marc Drummond
From RedMonkey
From Recursive Awesome
Twitter stream from A Feed Apart
Slides
Tweets
Photos
Amazing pics from John Morrison, David Rutledge and others.
Related Posts:
- An Event Apart Boston was wicked good June 25, 2009 | 4 comments
- DIY UX at An Event Apart Chicago 2009 October 20, 2009 | 13 comments
- 10 Most Common Misconceptions About User Experience Design — the presentation April 6, 2009 | 1 comments
- Evaluations of my STC Summit 2010 talks July 14, 2010 | 3 comments
- See you at An Event Apart Chicago October 10, 2009 | 2 comments
About Whitney Hess
Whitney Hess is a coach and writer helping product teams and senior leaders make better decisions through the principles of user experience. She believes empathy builds empires.