Work and clients

The summer of Voice UX

Working with CitizenLiteracy and SpeakUnique over the summer of voice

I worked on two interesting projects over the last two months. To my surprise, both services operate in the area of voice technology. This is uncommon in my practice; as much as we often hear about the ‘voice being the future of UX’, the technology is still in its infancy. When talking about it, most professionals think about Alexa or Siri implementations. Useful, but with their limitations. Two projects that I worked on lately use voice differently. To be able to influence their development was a privilege.

Voice for learning

CitizenLiteracy is an app designed to help adult speakers of English learn to read and write. As statistics point out, 15% of UK’s population struggles with these basic skills. The app is built around the unique programme of lessons developed by the City of Glasgow College and its partners. The challenge of optimising the app was significant. How to build an interface for someone who can’t read? I engaged in an expert review and ideation exercises to offer recommendations for improvement. Focusing on accessibility and inclusion, I worked with the CitizenLiteracy team to provide them with not only immediate solutions to their problem — but a framework for future development. They now understand basic User Experience methods that can allow them to take the idea even further.

As time goes by, our collectively developed ideas should surface in improved app versions. 

Check CitizenLiteracy out and keep an eye on their moves. A beautiful initiative run by forward-thinking people. 

Speech synthesis with SpeakUnique

I’ve heard about SpeakUnique from my dear friends at Euan’s Guide. This innovative service uses AI to generate authentic synthetic voice from samples provided by the user. As such, it is an incredible assistive technology that would benefit anyone who’s gradually losing their voice. My task was to improve the coherence of the journey between the SpeakUnique’s website and their app. I also offered recommendations for improvement to the app itself, to bring it in line with accessibility and usability standards. The voice synthesis engine does an incredible job, and listening to my computer-generated voice is something I’ll never forget.

I am sure that the technology and service developed by SpeakUnique will improve the quality of many lives. 

Here’s what Alice Smith, the CEO of SpeakUnique says about our experience of working together:

Wojtek came very highly recommended from a number of people who I spoke to when looking to commission a UX review of our website and app, and he definitely lives up to his reputation! Wojtek took the time to understand our product, our users and our current user journey. His review and suggestions were both thorough and thoughtful; his findings were presented to the team in a clear and detailed manner, meaning that all his comments came with an explanation and suggested solution. We really enjoyed working with Wojtek and look forward to working with him again in the future.

Alice Smith, SpeakUnique CEO

Visit the SpeakUnique website to learn more about what they do. It’s hard to amaze me nowadays — but they did it, and I am still impressed. 

What a summer! 🙂

UX Booster — learn UX with me

Today is special. UX Booster is born.

UX Booster is a blog and a learning device. It’s an idea inspired by my six years of professional blogging and teaching UX in Poland. It’s the best time to bring my expertise to English-speaking UX starters and career changers. Yet, I am not going to end there; the blog will also carry a lot of advanced UX and service design content.

Visit UX Booster and make sure you follow it on social media channels (LinkedIn, Twitter and Youtube). Subscribe to the newsletter. There will be tons of free content coming your way: articles, webinars and training.

Onwards!

Product discovery and validation for CogniHealth

CogniHealth is a startup that provides educational support to families affected by long-term conditions like dementia. I have joined their team for a series of activities that allowed us to:

  1. Understand what are the current barriers and expectations surrounding the use of CogniHealth’s core product, CogniCare app,
  2. Ideate and validate CogniHealth’s business model.

It is great when stakeholders work closely with designers. CogniHealth’s openness towards new ideas paved the way for a brand new service. We started the engagement with the analysis of the company’s mobile app (by means of customer consultation and an expert review resulting from it). Eager to improve the existing proposition, my new CogniHealth colleagues worked really hard during the workshops focused on exploration of different business models. The outcome was the concept of a new platform.  Once developed, not only will it provide important advice, but also monetise the organisation’s proposition. Following the ideation phase, we tested the concept and the prototype. The final deliverables of the new system’s information architecture model (IA) and content model marked the end of an engaging and interesting project.

One of my favourite ways of working with clients is to teach them methods of my work, so they can later do simple things themselves — without the need for an expensive consultancy service. This time I have passed some knowledge and skills to Pooja and Pranav, who are keen on developing a solid usability testing practice in-house.

In response to my work, Pooja Jain, one of CogniHealth’s Co-Founders, said:

“It has truly been a pleasure working with Wojtek. He has the ability to look at design work keeping technical and business feasibility in mind. He has helped shape and bring a feature idea to a well thought-out and tested prototype. He is organised, communicates in a clear and efficient manner and is on-time with deliverables. Moreover, it was a great learning experience for us — he taught us the skills required for user testing, always there when we needed his advice and equipped us to take this work further. We enjoyed working with Wojtek.”

Developing a product and worried about its launch on the marketplace? Get in touch, perhaps I could help.

Strategic UX training for startup initiatives with Creative Bridge

Creative Bridge is a programme targeted at prospective startups from within the creative sector. It is a part of Creative Informatics, a partnership between the University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh Napier University, Creative Edinburgh and CodeBase.

Each of the experts engaged in the programme delivers a session on a particular subject. I am responsible for the strategic UX workshop on understanding customers. Participants explore:

  1. The concept of outcome-focused design, contrary to the mainstream feature-driven delivery approach,
  2. Methods for conducting quick customer interviews,
  3. Basics of the Jobs To Be Done framework that helps them appreciate the need for answering real problems, and provides a method for validation of their initial research.

So far it’s been going very well — both groups I interacted with were attentive and focused. These people have some amazing ideas! And they ask important and smart questions. All I can do is to wish them well in their startup journeys. It’s a privilege to be able to equip them with tools they need to lead their future businesses into fruition.

Yasmin Sulaiman, who invited me to participate in the programme, summarises the experience of our professional engagement so far:

Working with Wojtek makes my job much easier! From the planning stages to the delivery and  post-session debrief, Wojtek is well-prepared, punctual and detail-oriented. Most of all, he’s a charismatic workshop leader and is great at keeping all the participants involved and active over a 3 hour period. Wojtek’s regular session on Understanding Customers has become one of the highlights of Creative Bridge, and he’s generous with his time during 1-to-1 advice sessions with our participants. It’s a pleasure to work with him.

Learn more about the Creative Bridge.

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