Techniques for Guerrilla UX

This session will present how to introduce valuable User Experience activities into a project when there is very little budget for it. 

All too often a very cool website improvement project arrives on your doorstep, wrapped in a basket and a crazy timeline, with a limited budget and fuzzy features. Unfortunately the message from the key stakeholders is familiar and crystal clear: “no time or money for research and analysis, just BUILD it!”

If you’ve ever wished you could just throw a switch and shine the light on the usability factor, here’s your session. This presentation will show you how to show “them” how the users of their site see things without taking up too much time or money (or seeming like you’re throwing a big wrench into things).

The benefits are multifold:

• Increased user satisfaction: a clearer understanding of how the site is used by visitors, means being able to address their unique needs
• Increased stakeholder satisfaction: their site reaches their audience better with a higher conversion
• Issue detection: identifying usability issues from an audience standpoint and removing barriers to conversion
• Increased efficiency: targeting the biggest issues means a better return on investment.

“Guerrilla research methods are faster, lower-cost methods that provide sufficient enough insights to make informed strategic decisions. Guerrilla research can be a lot more palatable to many bosses and clients who struggle with understanding the value of research. In fact, using these methods is a great way to introduce companies to the value that research can bring to projects.”   ~ by Russ Unger | Todd Zaki

Stop wasting money, time and resources on features for features sake. Don’t just make your site pretty, make your website at true asset for your organization. Come way from this session with ideas for: 

• Testing a half-baked site to unstick a ‘design by committee’ situation
• Getting around limiting organizational protocol and red tape
• Rallying multidisciplinary groups and stakeholders

Vanessa Turke has been having fun with Drupal since 2006. Starting out as a volunteer content creator for a non-profit, then moving into Drupal administration, training and support before beginning a career specializing in Drupal as a full time solutions architect and in 2008. She has finely honed the ability to translate business requirements and website usability research into detailed UX and functional specifications for many different verticals including education, ecommerce, publishing and enterprise. She enjoys collaborating with stakeholder groups and multi-disciplinary teams to solve complex user journeys and workflow challenges.