Last week we tuned in to the Web Heroines Emerge mini-conference. For those who haven’t come across it before, it’s a platform for celebrating women in the industry of tech – from web and design to development and start-ups – with a mission to increase the number of women in the UK within these fields… And I think the ‘mini’ comes from the myriad of multi-media these ladies got hands on with over the course of three days, topped off by a live panel hosted in the stunning British Library.
Emerge had an amazing line up of workshops and talks, from speakers including Jen Myers, Rebekah Lock, on generating design ideas, and Abbey Tosic, on writing for magazines and life as Usability Lead at 3M.
We joined some of the talks and here are our highlights…
Rachel Andrews from the special web development agency edgeofmyseat.com and author of The CSS Anthology spoke about launching a product from her experience of developing, launching and supporting her CMS product Perch. We really liked her ‘No FAQ Policy’ – “if it would make it onto a FAQ page it’s effectively a bug in your process or system that you need to resolve.” Rachel followed it up with a great example of a minor technical step that users were coming unstuck on when installing the Perch CMS and the solution, as easy as an automated message with instructions!
“Mobile is taking off like Gang Busters!” according to Annette Priest, an independent UX researcher and designer involved in the shaping of the usability standards, in her webinar on the essentials of mobile user experience. Effectively web UX principles hold true when considering mobile design
There were one of two fantastic talks on user experience, the other was on top tips for interviews that provide real user and client insight from Evgenia “Jenny” Grinblo, a self-taught designer who called on experience of her ethnographic study on go-go dancers.
Our favourite tips include:
- Focus on the other person
- Learn to love silence
- Ask “why” – followed by…
- Ask “why” again
- Check yourself
Overall, Emerge was a stupendous forum of web women sharing their expert knowledge in a mini- conference and inspiring a thriving community of web heroines. We’ll be posting a rundown of the panel, featuring Sarah Parmenter and Julie Howell, early next week.
It really was such a brilliant conference and so inspiring to attend as a young woman in the field. I happen to bring two gentlemen with me and they’ve been raving about it as well.
Looking forward to your write-up of the panel, Gill! And cheers for the kind words about my talk.