I have to admit it, I was really impressed with the first ever UX Cambridge that had it’s first day today at Clare College, Cambridge. Not only was it great to hear from UX gurus such as Leisa Reichelt but it was also really refreshing to know that my own UX obstacles are not just isolated to my own experiences, but to most of the guys I met. There was a healthy mix of developers, designers, business analysts and UX professionals which also came as a surprise as I thought this would be completely made up of UX guys. !/perch/resources/ux-cam-2012-.jpg(UX Cambridge 2012)! After a couple of hours listening to Leisa and her own strategy in getting others excited about the benefits of UX, I spent some time with Nokia Media discussing combining UX with Agile. It was interesting to see that a company of Nokia’s size has fully adopted the benefits of both a great user experience and combining this with an Agile mentality. Tim Geoghegan (User Experience Manager at Nokia Media) described expertly the pains and joys of an Agile path and stressed the importance of delivering at least ‘good’ output at the end of each sprint if ‘great’ is simply not possible within a compressed timeframe Agile thrives in. A really good point I will take from Tim’s workshop is to get ahead of the curve on Sprint 0, learning lean so that there is enough user data to complete each sprint before they begin. I sense he was excited about a WinMo application that is just about to be launched but was unable to give us any details at the time of the conference. Shame. !/perch/resources/ux-cam-2012-2-.jpg(UX Cambridge )! After a lovely lunch that was put on by Software Acumen I was eager to see Eewei Chen’s (BSKYB) workshop on prototyping within 180 minutes. Again, I need to be honest- I have never been a believer in persona building and the whole idea of random ideas based on requirements of an imaginary person. After a three-hour workshop where a small team of us literally brainstormed to wireframe prototype of a cinema mobile app in less than 2 hours, I am completely sold on it!!! Yes there is the uncomfortable process of imaging myself as a thirty something mother and what, if I was a woman, want to do with my children with my imaginary husband at the cinema although after sometime I got into my role. Yes you are left with a whole wall full of seemingly pointless thoughts and ideas, although once you start grouping these totally random thoughts into categories, giving them descriptive group labels and then put all these descriptions on a Effort vs Impact chart then becomes a pattern. You can almost see a kernel of an idea, a useful product and then you see the app. That is when you start going crazy with even more multi-coloured PostIts and designing your page layouts for your app. Great fun, great creativity and all within 2 hours!!! Great stuff and I am now sold on this chaotic process of UX role play. On top of all this, Eewei and the guys at Songkick.com point me in the direction of a great site for similar process, Gamestorming. A must for all professionals and those interested in UX. Already looking forward to day 2, especially if lunch is as good as today’s.