UXDay with Techyizu: Stickers, Role-playing and Beers!

This is a guest post by Whiplus Wang (王汇)

The Techyizu ”UXDay: Designing Shanghai” debuted on Nov 5th and provided an enjoyable user experience for me. UX design, as Techyizu said, is all about creating positive holistic experiences.

Agenda

•  9.00-9.30: Registration, Nice coffee and cakes
• 10.00-11.30: Morning Talks: Gregory Perez on Research, Hatti Lim on Ideation and Ryan Rowe on Prototyping
• 11.30-12.30: Arrange teams, select challenge and tasty sandwiches
• 12.30-2.30: On-location Research
• 2.30-5.30: Synthesis, ideation, prototyping
• 5.30-7.00: Sharing (with potato chips)
• 7pm+: Beers

// Food is always the source of inspiration

The tools, including stickers, role-playing and beers throughout the whole event, inspired every workshop participant to rethink their opinion not only on UX design but also on everyday life. [See Album and Weibo Stream]

1) The Stickers

The stickers, along with cardboard, are great tools for brainstorming, synthesis, ideation and rapid prototyping. Compared with the digital things, a sticker is easy for everyone to write on, move in position and talk about. It is fun to watch these colorful tiny pieces appearing, moving and finally forming our group’s ideas on the cardboard. Some groups in the workshop digitalized their sticky notes with a camera to use the screen for the final presentation.

// A prototype, seems like an App framework, made by the sticky notes and a cardboard

The organizers even used sticky notes for registration in the morning and arranging teams after lunch.

//Registration and team arrangement, all in one cardboard

2) The role-playing

The 2nd challenge of 3 was about the People’s Square marriage market. It encouraged participants to immerge themself in the experience : ‘Try to find a mate and observe how information is exchanged.’ When it came to the sharing segment, the role-play was full of fun observations.

For instance, one group’s role-play showed how under current conditions the marriage market suffers from high inefficiency and a lack of trust. It came from a real story they experienced in People’s Square.

3) Beers, delicious cuisine and more!

Food is the best user experience for any event, and Techyizu made it happen! From nice cakes in the morning to the tasty chips in the afternoon, foods provided endless inspiration for Designing Shanghai.

// Beers in the evening

According to the organizer, online registration for UXDay reached full capacity in just 2 days without marketing. It’s the latest in a series of tech events–including Demo Day and Bar Camp–put on by Techyizu. I’m looking forward to Designing Beijing, Designing Hong Kong and so on in the future!

[See Album and Weibo Stream]