Erika Hall

Co founder of Mule Design and author of 'Just Enough Research'

Clearleft Says

We’ve been desperate to get Erika Hall over to UX London for the past three years, and finally we’ve managed to make it happen. A great speaker with a valuable message, we know you’re going to appreciate our persistence.

Talk
Thu 19 May, 2016, 11:50

Beyond Measure

Site analytics. The quantified self. Big data. We can track, measure, and store more than ever before. This is naturally exciting to designers and technologists who want to make better informed decisions. But more data doesn’t necessarily create more meaning, and might even make it harder to see what matters. Human experience does not reduce to an engineering problem and what we can’t count still counts in an increasingly quantified world.

View slides

Workshop
Fri 20 May, 2016, 14:00

Collaborative Research

Research may be considered the purview of a few isolated specialists in an organisation, if it’s considered at all. When you have to move quickly and collaboratively, how do you make sure that you and your team have the information you need to design and build a new product or service that delights your target users and meet your business goals?

Research can be much faster and more flexible than you might imagine. In this workshop, Erika will cover the most immediately useful research principles and practices for anyone busy doing other things. You’ll learn how to fit research into virtually any timeline, type of organisation, or process.

This is an interactive workshop for anyone working with a product or design team, whether or not you’ve ever participated in research.

We will confront these useful ideas:

  • Misconceptions about research cost time and money.
  • It’s impossible to work collaboratively without research. And it’s a waste to do research without collaborating.
  • Research is a really simple process when you break it down.
  • Most objections to research are a smokescreen for secret, irrational concerns.

By the end of our time together, you will have:

  • Tools to make a case for research in even the most resistant organisation
  • A framework for choosing the best questions and methods for your project
  • Techniques you can put into practice immediately, no matter how much time or money you have

View slides

About Erika Hall

Erika Hall is the author of Just Enough Research. In 2001, she co-founded Mule Design Studio in San Francisco where she is the Director of Strategy. Erika speaks and writes frequently about cross-disciplinary collaboration and the importance of natural language in user interfaces. In her spare time, she battles empty corporate jargon at Unsuck It.