The First Community Roundup for 2015

Happy new year from UX Mastery. We hope it’s proving fruitful so far.

2015 is gearing up to be a big one for us, starting with the relaunch of our website and forums in the very near future. Can’t wait!

There are a few other things coming up on the cards, so read on…

Farewell Kim

This week we farewelled one of our team, which in some organisations is a fairly common occurrence, but when there are only four of you in the company, the absence of one leaves a bit of a hole! Our Managing Editor Kim has left us to begin a new career as a medic, which I admire her greatly for (I’m squeamish when it comes to blood) and we wish her the best of luck. As a result, I’m taking over the reigns of our Twitter and Facebook accounts, so buckle up because things could get a little bumpy.

Ask the UXperts with Dan Szuc

We’ve lined up the first Ask the UXperts session for the year and it’s one that I’m really excited about. We’re going to be chatting with Dan Szuc, co-founder of UX agency Apogee, about Designing Successful Projects. Dan has over 18 years experience in the UX world and recently co-authored the book Global UX with Whitney Quesenbery. He also co-wrote The Usability Kit with Gerry Gaffney, an implementation guide providing best practices and guidelines for UX design teams.

Where: Our Campfire chatroom
When: 10am Wed 25 February AEST (or find out what time it will be at your place).

Ask the UXperts sessions run for approximately an hour and best of all, they don’t cost a cent. They are text based so there is no audio or video, but a full transcript is posted up here in the days following the session. See you there!

World IA Day

Matt, Luke and I are very excited to be celebrating World IA Day together this year in Wellington, New Zealand. We’re heading down to attend Webstock for the couple of days prior. If you’ve ever thought about visiting NZ, Webstock is one of the best tech conferences that I’ve ever attended, and well worth the effort. I’m really looking forward to meeting forum member Natalie Eustace at the World IA Day event, and the icing on the cake is the fact that Dan Szuc (see above) is a guest speaker. All my worlds are colliding!

Some interesting threads to check out

One of our newest members, Solidair, asks about the best tools for journey mapping. What do you use?
Ash asks for some advice on transitioning to freelancing.
Ginmau asks for some advice on finding a mentor.
We throw around some ideas about what to do if you are in a UX team and things aren’t working.
Here we’re discussing the enigma of the space bar. Join in the debate.

I think that’s it for now. Over and out.