UCD Bristol returns for the 24th time this January with an evening of lightning talks from several talented speakers including:

• Jane Scaife, Sparkol
• Dave Martin, CX Partners
• Sheff Barker, Immersive Labs
• Magdalena Faizov, Independent
• Dave Ellender, Mace & Menter + UX Bristol

We’re still pulling together summaries and biographies which are slightly delayed due to Christmas. This is what we have so far.

Jane Scaife, Sparkol
A Comedian and a UX Designer Walk into a Bar… Lessons from Stand-up

Psychology study, copywriting and stand-up comedy all inform Jane’s work as UX Designer at Sparkol here in Bristol.

Conducting user interviews to find out the motivations and needs of users of Sparkol’s animation products, Jane has seen parallels between conducting good user research and crafting a good comedy set. What can be learned from the comedians - and what is it that they may be doing more effectively than UX Designers?

Dave Martin, CX Partners
The Value Of Tech Discovery
Dave is cxpartners' Creative Technologist. A multi-disciplinarian who can empathise with both developers and experience designers.

Dave explains how he works alongside user researchers at the inception of a project to identify opportunities and constraints by carrying out a Technical Discovery.

Magda Faizov, User experience and interaction designer
Sustainable UX. How to deliver better services for the future
Magda Faizov is a freelance UX designer with a background in coding and testing digital services. She worked with various private and public sector clients across the UK.

Magda will demonstrate how sustainable UX strategy can improve digital services. The talk aims to define the key areas where the described approach can make a positive impact on the service delivery process.

Dave Ellender, Mace & Menter + UX Bristol
Incubation - or why ‘sleeping on it’ leads to better research insights

Dave Ellender is a design researcher at Mace & Menter. He has worked with users of all ages, including a few over 90 years old and some as young as 4. As well as the web, Dave has worked with technologies including interactive television, touchscreen kiosks, interactive furniture, trains, robotics, intelligent homes and even smart clothes. He co-founded the popular UXBristol conference in 2011 and is a published academic in the field of human-computer interaction (https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2559636.2559681).

User research is hard. Making sense of the messy contexts and behaviours we discover is demanding, especially under time pressure. Stepping back from the trees to see the whole wood is rarely easy to do quickly. We all instinctively know this: some things are best slept on… but why is this? In this talk, Dave will share some stories, theories and a case study to show how you can do this in practice.