1. User Experience@TechSmith
Barb Hernandez User Experience Manager
In UX, we are passionate about creating great user experiences. We believe that people should just be able to use software and not have tolearnhow to use software. We strive to create designs that are easy, elegant, and delightful, and to turn user research data into world-class software and web services.

2. The UX Team
Three and a half years as a formal department
Five years ago: one designer and a part time researcher, no department
Now: five designers, two full-time researchers, department and department manager
Development / product driven organization
User focused, feature driven
Core value to the company
Research to understand the user and their problems through out the process
Design to make sure we start and end with the right solutions
Getting in the Agile groove
3. Success@TechSmith
Start at the core, expand from there
Product development
Integrate and engage
Product management is next
Retrain and reframe
Be as close to the decision-making as you can
Find success and build on it
4. Cradle to Grave Design
Solve real problems
Look for valuable solutions
Design great interactions
Encourage incremental design, evaluation and development
Involve the team
Collaborative design
Create finished art
5. In-Product Branding
6. Look and Feel
Unify visual style
Unify interaction models
Look like the same company
Work is slow
Limitations in tool set
Priority but not
Cross-platform design issues
True platform specific experiences with a one product, two platforms philosophy
7. User Research
Usability testing and other methods
Answer design questions
Avoid being the tie breaker
Design exercise facilitation
Persona development
Communication and interaction with teams
Collaborative analysis
8. Core Skills: Design
Visual design and communication
Graphic design
Workflow modeling
Interaction design
Problem solving and root cause analysis
Leadership
Facilitation
Open mind
9. Core Skills: Research
User research methods
Usability testing
Survey creation
Recruiting
Ethnographic methods
Facilitation
Leadership
Data aggregation and analysis
Collaboration
10. Where We Live
Closet to the action
Integrate with Product Development
Part of the Customer Engagement organization
Work with Product Management
11. Success
Relationships / embedded designers and close relations with researchers
Assertive championing of users
Doing things well
Providing opportunities to see real user use the product
Facilitate team work
12. Where We Are Going
Influencing what gets built
Currently informally
Moving toward making it a best practice
Work with our new market research organization
Data collection and aggregation
13. Fodder
Team-based (a.k.a. collaborative) usability test analysis
Personas
Consulting model or work directly with teams
Specs or no specs
Agile