The other week, our very own Sandra Gonzalez was invited to talk at the Talk UX conference in Manchester. The main purpose of this conference was to examine the different areas that make up the user experience (UX) role, from research to data schema, in order to showcase the breadth of knowledge in UX and the fantastic work that is being done with it.
Although Sandra had originally intended to talk about teaching children how to create paper prototypes and how to carry out user research, an opportunity as perfect as the Talk UX conference in Manchester, with a room filled with the countries finest UX Designers, was too good a chance to let them know how they can really use UX for good, by teaching children how to become designers and makers.
But how did our team prepared to support her talk weeks before the actual day? We at TheASX.org started planning how we were going to make the most of the opportunity presented to us at the Talk UX conference. As a team, we came to the conclusion that our main strategy to get people talking about the need to address the coding orientated curriculum installed by schools in the UK, was to run a series of tweets which ran parallel with Sandra’s talk at the conference, so people would be able to keep the ideas in circulation, rather than simply listening to Sandra’s talk.
Prior to the conference we could never have predicted how successful the idea to run a series of live tweets would be. Our idea to get people talking about Sandra’s speech was highly effective as indicated by the media storm that followed the event, which you can see for yourself with our #UX4G #TALKUX Twitter feed.
Overall, Sandra’s talk managed to generate 91 retweets and 75 favourites, illustrating how much of a success our strategy was, especially as Sandra was only allocated 5 minutes of speaking time, compared to the majority who had half an hour! The fact that Sandra’s quote about teaching children to design before we teach them to code was the tweet that got the most retweets in the whole conference – 22 retweets, clearly shows the impact made by the speech and how people agree with the main point we were trying to get across, that children need to be designers and makers before they are coders!
Our aim at TheASX.org was to get people thinking about the need to reavaluate the current curriculum inplace at schools, and as a team we undoubtedly managed to meet our targets. Not only was the talk an overwhelming success on Twitter, but Sandra in person was met by huge applause at the end of the talk and got the whole room, which included the likes of big UX players such as the BBC, Bloomberg and Skype, thinking about the increasing need to make children designers and makers, before they become coders. See for yourself how Sandra’s speech went down!
Sandra’s speech undoubtedly stole the show and captured the hearts of those in attendance, but I should also mention the brilliant work carried out behind the scenes by myself and the other interns at TheASX.org. My job was to ensure the speech was Twitter friendly and was compatible with the 140 character limit, but in particular Ruta and Ester warrant extra special recognition for their roles in the success of the speech. Ruta was responsible for devising the word cloud included in the speech, which clearly illustrated the overuse of the word ‘coding’ within the 10 articles about the new UK curriculum and emphasised our intentions at TheASX.org, to raise awareness of the benefits of teaching to design as they learn to code. Ester was also fundamental to the success of Sandra’s speech, as she was on hand to produce the series of tweets that ran parallel with the talk; without Ester our whole Twitter marketing strategy would not have been possible!
This is just one of the many examples as to why being an intern at TheASX.org is so enjoyable, made particularly rewarding by the sense of admirableness of the work that is being carried out. We set out with an objective in mind and everyone does their bit to make sure we pull through, to great effect! With Sandra at the helm and our brilliant team of interns behind her, we’re making waves in the world of UX and shaping it for a brighter future!