Get ready to experience a 24-hour digital international conference that asks the question: “Journalism, now what? “. This conference is still available to you free of charge for the time being, at this link. Enjoy!
In December 2020, Constructive institute asked me to sketchnote 6 of the conference themes and capture their highlights. From a mix of panel debates and talks I covered important topics such as Covid-10, terrorism, News Deserts, polarisation and stereotypes. We travelled around the world, from Aarhus Denmark, to Delhi in India.
In the end of November 2019 I had the pleasure of attending an event about Sustainable Business by Implement Consulting. They had invited Dorethe Nielsen from Novo Nordisk to speak about the project: Circular for Zero.
I invite you to take a journey through this sketchnote, where I have captured some of the main points of the 2+ hour event on one overview.
My most important takeway from Implement Consulting’s part of the talk:
“Do not make a sustability strategy or even just a sustainable strategy – make a sustainable business. “
Novo Nordisk has the ambition to have a completely ZERO footprint – and they set out clear goals to reach this along the way. My most important takeway from the Novo Nordisk part of the talk, was the overview of all the projects that they are working on from a circular perspective. From thinking of the supplier footprint, to the 6000 company cars.
Overall a circular mindset is to RE-USE, Minimize consumption and turn waste into new resources.
This is all possible because they thought execution and funding in the strategy from the beginning – as well as closely collaborating with top management. The CEO has even ended up being their biggest supporter! Lastly they made it a key point to create engagement with the employees, as well as seeking out inspiration actively.
This morning at Talent garden Rainmaking I attended two talks by industry professionals. Emma-Catrine Hvid from Nordea, had a wonderfully analogue presentation on “Sketching and ideation” using in handdrawn sketches on a flipchart to guide her talk. The majority of her time was a hands-on exercise “crazy 8” – which I already know and love. It is a great tool for getting fun ideas quickly. In just 8 minutes, the room collectively came up with 300+ ideas. I had a blast and would love to see what others came up with!
Anja Thrane, Client Director and Niels Tybjerg, Head of MarTech at @adviceas held a talk titled: “Answering the what and the why”.
My key take-away was that you should not just stop testing after product launch, but keep going (Like in curling). Focus on evolution rather than revolution. Because users are like lions, they act different in the zoo (in a focus group) from the Savanna (daily life).
One way to do this is through looking at the details of web analytics, and then using qualitative research to interpret the data you find, looking at context, channels used, and other needs.
Here is my updated TAPAS (Talent vs. passion) diagram with more of my skills on it than my previous visual resume. It is starting to become really useful as I add more and more information to it.
Next step is to find a way to split skills more up into sub-skills/programmes/tasks. Fx. There is a lot about testing that I do enjoy, and this diagram does not really reflect that. Same about fx. graphics design.
It is important to note that I would never expect a job to be only using skills I am 100% passionate about. 20% of my daily tasks coming from the right side of the axis will in many cases be more than enough for me to me thriving.
Try creating your own Tapas diagram! I will post those shared with me (on instagram) in my instagram stories.
I finally created a visual resume – which focuses on my sketching journey as an addition to my traditional resume.
When making my visual resume, I first and foremost included a journey with highlights focusing on how and where I learned visual facilitation. I needed a way of presenting my skills that would challenge myself to think about my skills in relation to which I currently want to develop more. I thus created the “Tapas” diagram, a talent vs. passion matrice of my skills.
This functional drawing works great as an icebreaker for job interviews or mentor meetings. To frame it all, I included a Venn Diagram to show that my skills come from the overlap between the fields IT, Business and Communication.
Update on sketchnotes from this conference. Expect notes by the remaining speakers to be added after some retouching. If you have any wish to see particular speakers, let me know and I will prioritise them. Expect to see at least the following speaker sketchnotes: Sheryl Cababa, Sara Watcher Boettcher, Julia Sommer, Darren Menachemson, Rune Nørager and Gry Hasselbach.
UX Copenhagen 2019 :
Jim Forrest: “Internet Go the F*ck to sleep”. See the full talk on youtube here. And read his medium article on the same topic here.
“Thoughts on how to take control of your life ONLINE & who to hold accountable including yourself”.
The talk started on a personal note, about when he first got into the web design industry back in 1997 and compared then to the NOW – with the added dimension of moving from the US to Denmark – giving examples of some services and their “always on” mentality, which rewards being addicted and always having what you crave accessible.
Some services are doing the opposite – like the B&H photo closing their shop AND their online shop on sundays. This makes us think about the responsibility of the service providers themselves. For example just think about the repercussions of file sizes changing – in the early days the use of the Internet had a lot of waiting time. Not anymore, it lurs you to just keep spending time on it and rewards your addiction.
Nicole A. Cooke: “The Dark side of information behaviour”. See the full talk on youtube here.
“How people are emotionally involved when interacting with information”.
The talk focused on how we use emotion to process information, and that often these emotions get in the way of us even evaluating information – even when we usually have a strategy for doing it. Sometimes we get stuck on a gut feeling.
“You can have the best content, but if something triggers a negative emotion you loose engagement with users”.
My key takeaway was a more nuanced language I can use to discuss the subject of fake news with – where I can distinguish between the 3 types of fake news: mis information, mis information and mal information.
Read her paper here – Cooke, N. A. (2018). Fake News and Alternative Facts: Information Literacy in a Post-truth Era. American Library Association.
Andre Jay Meissner: “Adopt and unknown unkown”. See the full talk on youtube here.
My key takeaway is to remember to focus on how what you create will do good, rather than just if it looks good and works well.
Fx. what happens to the data you collected after its first use? Be transparent and tell what and why upfront to the user.
I am going back to UXCopenhagen, and I am looking so much forward to this. To prepare I have added to my visual library, researching for example more icons and sketched for Ethics. I have also been hired to do portraits of all the speakers, so I have gotten busy making 31 of these things. Look forward to sketchnotes of summaries of the amazing talks, shortly after the 18th . 19th of March. During the conference I will post some on Instragram, especially instagram stories. Come find me at the conference tomorrow!
This week I am in Lisbon, for Websummit. I am testing out new formats for my sketchnotes, one is a paper format which is easy to do standing up in a crowd and the other the iPad Pro. I want to use this opportunity to play around with the iPad format, and test out different apps. A review of these apps AND my wish for the ideal sketchnote app will come online later.
To be honest I have not have time to review my notes from this conference yet and a lot of my notes needs work done and cleanup before I can post them. Perhaps during my next holiday or if there is a special insterest in it, I will post the notes, along with a summary of the conference highlights.
The past two days I have been live sketchnoting / graphic recording / visual scribing at the Design Matters conference in Copenhagen – an awesome conference for Designer made BY designers. A written summary of the sketchnotes will follow under each sketchnote.
I personally encouraged as many people as I could to start sketchnoting at the conference. I would love to see your notes if you did!
I have compressed these images – if you want a higher resolution image just contact me.
The first talk on the main stage was by Tobias Ahlin from Minecraft. My key take away from this was that he encourages us to:
Move from a paradigm of utilitarian work without any feelings, back to more expressive work! Emotionally engaging and simplicity is not in conflict!
Tobias used a matrix to prove this point – placing example cases from expressive to utilitarian and complex to minimalist.
I admit I am biased, because I really love the app, but the this talk was one of my favourites! Christine Cha and Vicky Tan from Headspace, did a talk about the brand journey of the company, as well as taking us through the their process of improving their onboarding retention. My key take away from this, was that:
Data can help you identify opportunities, not make decisions! Research and science can help you understand, and intuition can help fill in the gaps.
In just a few weeks Mckinsey Design will release a new big report on where to focus your money in the design process, based on looking at the 5% of cases that outperformed their peers. I am looking very much forward to reading it and perhaps summing it up visually in much more detail! Ben Sheppard, partner in Mckinsey Design, introduced the 4 areas tied to make design financials better. He emphasized that:
It is harder to outshine the competition and decide where to put the extra $. You need to focus on all 4 of these areas to elevate – or you should not bother at all!
These 4 areas are something we as designers would probably think is common knowledge, and now we have numbers as proof to celebrate the importance of design.
The 4 areas are:
More than a feeling (what would happen is half of your bonus was tied to your product’s amazon review?)
More than a department (no ivory towers, your team should work physically together)
More than a phase (involve designers in all phases)
More than a product (design for the entire experience).
Designer Jack Koloskus from the Outline spoke their platform and Why and how they plan to fix the big media struggle, and in the process enable non designers to make good content.
Masuma Henry did a talk about “the business of the underserved”. By taking us through a traditional design process and adding a step to each, she urged us to shift our focus to make a change!
You can make a change – no matter the design position you are in!
You need to start:
Including and representing people who isn’t today!
Promote shared values and expose viewpoints that need it!
Along the way she showed us great examples, only two of which were from Amazon themselves.
Starting with sharing her personal story about the first time she tried to create change and failed because she lacked the right approach, Anisha Jan from Dropbox, shared with us a talk about how small learnings can add up to big changes! She took us though the 4 steps in the arch of change, from listening for the unexpected to amplifying beliefs! This framework can be used to utilize findings that you have previously ignored, and turn it into big changes.
A fortune cookies without the words of wisdom would be a pretty bland experience.
Ben Hersh from Medium took us through how to make you use words better (inspired by cognitive science), by first making them clear, then friendly and then expressive!
Clear: Reading takes time and work, choose words carefully! Make the rhythm of a text more like a fairy-tale, to make it easier to read.
Friendly: When you are alone your brain makes conversations with yourself. Use “you” instead of “I”, and treat people like you do in person! Say thanks and be polite.
Expressive: Who says the words or its typography changes how you think of the text itself
Vanessa Li from TikTok (previously Musical.ly) took us through 3 lessons of how they reduced friction in design to create a more immersive experience. The lesson I took with me the most, was that even though they solved the problem of how to give money to broadcasters, they changes their minds and were not satisfied with the solution and made a new and much better one.
Did you know that 1/10 people have no clean drinking water? Charity water aims to change that, but how do they do that when 42% of Americans do not trust charities? Alyson Nakamura took us through the journey of Charity water and how their unique and close communication makes their doners feel close to them throughout their charity cycle of 21 months.
I am not personally into football at all – so to get me excited about Fifa19 was quite a challenge, and Felix Lai from Fifa18/Ea sports succeeded! The UX immsersion Matrix introduced in this talk functioned as a framework of describing how content go from abstract to realism, and functional to emotional. My biggest take away was that you can:
Use a UX Immersion Matrix and touchpoints to create a 3D emotional journey!
Man I wish there was a game like this but for something else than a sports – or maybe a different sport… like tennis or iceskating? I would be all in!
The last talk of the conference was by Teyosh, also known as Sofija Stankovic and Theodora Stojkovic. This talk went though some of the projects created by this pair, that balances benefiting society with something they find interesting. Dictionary of online behaviour can be found here, and I highly suggest you to have a look!
