The UX Level-Up

Ren Pope is the Senior Staff Data Modeler and Ontologist at a little company called Etsy. Ren's background is in technical writing, data analysis, and knowledge management. In this episode of the podcast, Sophia and Ren discuss how to build a taxonomy around cosplay, how information architecture is more like information archaeology, and why it's important to understand the context of meta metadata.  LINKS: Connect with Ren on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rlpope3/ Try CMap: https://cmap.ihmc.us/ Ontology Dojo Presentation: https://bit.ly/ontology_dojo2 Meta Information Architecture:  https://bit.ly/metaia

Andrew Hinton is the Senior Manager of Design Strategy and Research at Honeywell. He is a seasoned public speaker who has graced the stage at the IA Conference, UX Lisbon, UX Week, and the IA Summit. He is also the author of the must-read information architecture book, "Understanding Context." In this episode of the podcast, Sophia and Andrew discuss the meaning of embodied cognition, the pitfalls of being a physical creature in a digital environment, and why sometimes, creating inconsistency can help you be consistent.  LINKS: Follow Andrew on Twitter: https://twitter.com/inkblurt Keep up with Andrew on his website: https://andrewhinton.com/ Buy yourself a copy of "Understanding Context": https://amzn.to/3sAZ3k1

Cornel Hillmann is a CG Artist, XR Designer, and Entrepreneur. He is the owner and creative director at STUDIO.CGARTIST.COM and Emerging Entertainment and has worked with brands including Panasonic, Jaguar, the Singapore International Film Festival, and other big names. Hillmann is a leader in XR (Extended Reality) design and he wrote the handbook on getting started in designing for the Unreal VR game engine, "Unreal for Mobile and Standalone VR: Create Professional VR Apps Without Coding." His upcoming book, "UX for XR: User Experience Design and Strategies for Immersive Technologies" is about how existing UX concepts will steer the transition of current digital environments into the new frontier of XR. In this episode, Sophia and Cornel discuss how Timothy Leary steered Cornel into virtual reality design, what UX designers can learn from XR, and whether or not reality is a hologram.  LINKS: Follow Cornel on Twitter - https://twitter.com/CornelHillmann Connect with Cornel on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/cornelhillmann/ Keep up with Cornel on his website - https://www.studio.cgartist.com/ Preorder "UX for XR: User Experience Design and Strategies for Immersive Technology" - https://www.amazon.com/UX-Experience-Strategies-Immersive-Technologies/dp/1484270193/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=cornel+hillmann&qid=1615512136&sr=8-1

This is our last episode of 2020! We are revisiting the December 2019 episode with Ben Callahan. Ben is a design system expert and the founder and president of Sparkbox. At Sparkbox, Ben has created an amazing workplace that facilitates learning, exploring, asking questions, and pet projects. We talk about how that awesomeness came to be and what’s working well today. (Team leaders, please take notes.)  We also talk about taking time to tinker and figure yourself out—while the world seems to change right underneath your feet. Of course, we get into design systems, too.  We nerd out on documentation and discuss how being on the “design system team” can be a great part of company hazing >cough, cough<  onboarding. If you are revved up to apply for Sparkbox’s apprentice program, here’s your link: https://apprentices.seesparkbox.com/ Connect with Ben on Twitter: https://twitter.com/bencallahan Connect with Ben on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bencallahan/

This week and through the end of the year, due to it being the holidays and all that entails, we will be revisiting our most popular, most-OOUXy episodes from the UX Hustle Podcast, the podcast I started back in 2018 and have since handed off to a new Host, Amanda Worthington. We will start back with new episodes in 2021. Caroline Sober-James has journeyed from database architect to UX designer to a fellow object-oriented UX evangelist. She’s the UX Director at Acumium in Madison, WI, where she strives to lead her team with “radical candor.” We discuss how leaders can create an environment for innovation and how team members can demand it. We look at how OOUX can help with client meetings as well as debate how OOUX applies to fantasy games, board games, and classic Nintendo. Enjoy! LINKS: Follow Caroline on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wildwend Connect with Caroline on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolinesober/ Radical Candor: Affiliate Link! Caroline’s slides: https://www.slideshare.net/csober/better-game-design-with-objectoriented-user-experience-ooux ***Sign up for Sophia’s newsletter to get notified about upcoming OOUX Certification Courses! www.rewiredux.com/newsletter

Carrie Hane ran her own content strategy firm for five years before joining Palladian Partners as Senior Digital Project Director, where she uses her content structuring super powers to provide Palladian's clients with a unified digital communication strategy. But you may know her from the must-read book she co-authored with Mike Atherton, "Designing Connected Content." In this episode of the podcast, Sophia and Carrie discuss what exactly a content model is, why navigation is the most volatile layer of the content stack, and IA in UX education.  LINKS: Designing Connected Content (Affiliate Link)  Follow Carrie on Twitter: @carriehd Connect with Carrie on LinkedIn: Carrie Hane

In this episode of the podcast, Sophia takes us on an audio walk-through of the "calls-to-action" methodology of her ORCA process. She will guide you through how to get started designing complex systems, how to make a CTA Matrix that's based on real-world objects, and why doing so will pay dividends before you even start sketching your UI. You might want a pen and paper for taking notes 😉 LINKS: Sophia's 2016 article, "OOUX: A Foundation for Interaction Design" - https://alistapart.com/article/ooux-a-foundation-for-interaction-design/ Get on the wait list for Early Bird pricing on Cohort 4 of the OOUX Strategist Certification program - https://www.rewiredux.com/waitlistsignup

What’s up OOUXers, this conversation with Dan mall is bonkers…Dan Mall is one of the leading experts in design systems — he’s the cofounder and creative director at Super Friendly, a design collaborative that brings design system guidance, leadership, and execution to companies like Capital One, Girl Scouts, Harvard, Carnegie Mellon, and so many more. He’s the creator of a new design system course, not out yet, but check out the link below to sign up for updates so you can be the first to know about it. Dan and I discuss the personality traits that make a good system designer, how to start a design system project the right way, we debate the pros and cons of “flexible cards” which can lead to what I call masked objects, and we come up with a plan for how OOUXers can fill a needed gap in the design system world…putting components in context and rooting them in the real world valuable objects that users and businesses care about.  LINKS: Get on the waitlist for Dan’s Design System Course: https://superfriendlydesign.systems/classes/design-systems-with-superfriends/ Dan’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/danmall Josh Clark’s referenced article: https://bigmedium.com/ideas/boring-design-systems.html

Today's episode is an audio WORKSHOP that’s going to teach you the basics of OOUX and the ORCA process. If you listened to the first episode, you should have a zoomed-out, big picture Idea of what OOUX is all about. But in this episode, you’ll actually get to practice OOUX!  NOTE: If you are driving or walking, feel free to keep listening to about the first 25 minutes in which I give an overview of the process and reiterate some of the main OOUX principles.  Once we get into the exercises you will get SO MUCH MORE out of this if you sit down with a pen and paper and follow along. And if you did this with me while listening to the UX Hustle episode I recorded back in August, it’s definitely not going to hurt to do it AGAIN. Especially if you feel like everything didn't fully click into place.  Okay, after the intro tunes roll, we will jump right into it. IF you want to know more about OOUX, sign up for the OOUX Newsletter so you can get the inside scoop about upcoming trainings and Cohort 4 of the OOUX Certification, which will start at the beginning of 2021.  Sign up here: rewiredux.com/newsletter.  Also, please join us on Meetup at meetup.com/objectorientedux/ to participate in the OOUX Happy Hour. Our next Meetup—which is not even announced yet—is going to be all about OOUXing your UX Portfolio. So if you need or want to revamp your portfolio you definitely won't want to miss out on this event and the dynamic community we are building at the Meetup. Ok y'all, happy OOUXing! LINKS: OOUX Happy Hour Meetup: https://www.meetup.com/objectorientedux/ Sign up for the OOUX newsletter: rewiredux.com/newsletter Print the design challenge: https://docs.google.com/document/d/112yt3HzDMpg52syDMjdiIJoZD2HdxS1K5zS4wxsqiXM/edit#heading=h.def9ka4ztfqd

October 20, 2015 was when Sophia's article on OOUX debuted on A List Apart. In this episode of the podcast, Sophia shows you how her philosophy and process have changed since then, how OOUX was forged in the crucible of CNN Election Night 2012, how OOUX can help you speak the same language as your back-end developers, and how noun foraging fits into her ORCA (Objects, Relationships, Calls-to-action, and Attributes) process. Enjoy! LINKS: Read the A List Apart article: https://alistapart.com/article/object-oriented-ux/ Subscribe to Sophia's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/SophiaPrater Read Content Everywhere by Sara Wachter-Boettcher:  https://amzn.to/2DRWO3w