 Hi, everyone. I'm going to get going because there's like the big ceremony and stuff at six isn't there So I'm going to get going and thank you for coming to my talk This is the last talk of Drupal con And I'm going to talk to you for the next 20 minutes about UX and how we can use a power of UX to make Drupal better and Sell it more effectively in the process. I'm Emma. I'm the user experience manager at Edinburgh University Our web of states built on Drupal So I'm going to draw my experience from that role for my talk today But I'm also going to draw my experience of contributing to Drupal over the past year as part of different groups Okay, so here's what I'm going to cover. I talk quite quickly and I try and pack a lot into my talks I like to give good value for my talks so you can scan my QR code there You can get access to this deck and also a resources deck because I'll cover some quite big stuff in this talk today That won't have time to go into in detail So you can follow that up afterwards if you're interested, but here's what I'm going to cover I'm going to talk about the promote Drupal initiative and how we've used UX as part of that group to understand how people decide on Drupal and CMS is in general I'm then going to set that in context thinking about the Drupal ecosystem I'm going to show you a huge map I made And talk about how improving UX in one part of the ecosystem can have a ripple effect I'm then going to leave you with some an introduction into a couple of practical approaches habits If you like and that you can adopt in your work to improve UX and help promote Drupal in the process Okay, so quickly about promote Drupal. We've heard a lot about this Today and the initiatives and earlier in the week in the Drees note We're a group of individuals we meet every couple of weeks and we have a focus on making Drupal Promoting Drupal more effectively increasing adoption and so on so we bring together different expertise Some of us work in branding some of us content some of us UX there's some developers in there as well And we kind of brainstorm this we think about Messages we think about channels we think about everything really to do with promoting Drupal And one of the things we've been focusing on Over the last year really is thinking about how people evaluate Drupal as well as other CMS's to make decisions about that To make a decision about is this the right CMS for me and we will work closely with the Drupal Association with that So how do people decide on Drupal and what's that got to do with UX? Before I get into that, I just want to share this definition of UX Kind of a reminder for me a lot of my work with UX falls into UI making decisions about user interfaces Usability, but actually UX is way bigger than that UX is concerned with how people perceive product services systems How they expect them to work how they make them feel how they respond to them So with that it's really closely linked to behavioral psychology It's rooted in behavioral psychology and how we as humans think act and behave And for that reason it's really closely linked to decision-making so you can see a spectrum of how people make decisions So when you're in a kind of comfortable UX space when the UX is as you expect You're not thinking it's very easy to make a decision because you feel comfortable You can rely on norms and habits to make a decision Conversely at the other end of the spectrum if you're in a space where the UX is not as you expect It's kind of scratchy for one of a better word. It doesn't really sit with you That's when people will draw on other information gather data do some analysis It's a lot harder to make a decision. It takes a lot more cognitive load So when we're thinking about as we do in the promote Drupal group, how do we convince people to decide Drupal? We want to shift it towards that end towards the no thinking so that it's really easy to make decisions So good UX correlates with making it easier for people to decide on Drupal So what does good UX look like then for somebody evaluating all the CMSs that are out there Drupal is one of them To get into this we did some work in the promote Drupal group And we delved into a lot of research the Drupal association supported us with this Sharing some of this research about Drupal personas and we did a deep dive into this research and under try to understand some common themes That were coming out About how people decide on Drupal and what what Drupal means to them? What CMS is mean to them and we use the construct that we use in UX called jobs to be done Which is a way of framing a priority for a person or a group of people in a particular context And four things kind of came out of that that when people are deciding on a CMS They want to be clear about digital experiences. It can achieve whatever organization they work in They will have things that want to achieve goals targets And they want to see a direct path of how that CMS can support them in that Kind of stretch goal connected to that is an inspiration path So they'll have a vision for like five ten years of where they want to see their organization And they want to see that the CMS they're going to choose is going to help them on that path and again that direct connection Practical side of things they want to size up the cost. How much is this going to cost me? Is this getting my budget to run maintain and keep this going and also? Compliancy issue right is really important. They want to feel reassured that whatever CMS they they choose Can take the compliancy boxes. They don't want to get sued They want to make sure that the data the privacy the accessibility and security is covered So to find out to address those jobs the evaluator person can go to various sources to get information To kind of help them make that decision Obviously Drupal.org is a key channel that they can go and we put out content and we did a deep dive into this as well Looking at the content that's on Drupal.org that can support this So case studies industry examples documentation guides, it's all there to be read for somebody making that decision But actually people make decisions based very strongly on what they hear and what they learn from other people who are like them So that's where things like word of mouth comes in reputation what they learn from technical forums peer networks What they hear from staff? This is the kind of thing that is more impactful when it comes to like satisfying those jobs And that's where this stuff comes in there's too much to read on this slide And that's deliberate because I don't want to spend too much time on this Kind of winds me up that this stuff is still out there about Drupal But it is out there So when people are making decisions about is Drupal the right CMS for me they do find stuff like it's just for developers It's too technical. It's a steep learning curve as less optimal content experience And so on so that is all out there in the ecosystem So that brings me on to the ecosystem and this is where the big map comes in Because to try and change this to try and make Drupal shine and to promote Drupal better We need to understand that the part of Drupal that we work in we have access to the bigger ecosystem And that can help promote it more effectively. So to do that. We need to visualize it I told you that there was a big map, right? So when I work I work in UX and we do you research in UX I mean he's I'm gonna put all that research and for me This is how it usually turns out on a mirror board a big massive map and this maps out Like in my head who's impacted by Drupal on what they care about because for me It was important to understand the work I'm doing with Drupal How can that help promote it better the work that we're all doing all the great stuff that's happening in Drupal How can we make how can we turn that into promotion? So if you like maps you can get this from my resources thing if you don't like I've got your back It's fine. We're just gonna use it as an illustration I'm gonna talk about a couple of examples to show you what I mean and explain how Caring about UX and concentrating on UX in your corner of the Drupal ecosystem can actually have a better wider effect So let's take documentation So documentation tends to fall in with developers, right? That's something that they care about In the usability group Aaron and I there every Friday and we look at documentation and we think how can we improve this documentation? How can we make it more user-friendly? How can we make it more intuitive and that benefits the developers that are using it? But also there's a knock-on effect because better documentation needs to better onboarding swells the stuff on Drupal.org in the resources section increases the talent makes training easier and the big kind of star one is the one that's gonna help promote Drupal more effectively because Over time caring about the UX of documentation helps to push the needle with stuff like technical communication and that stuff that the C-suite the CTOs the CIOs the chief executives care about and those are the folks that are in a position to make decisions on their CMS Let me give you another example with taxonomies. Hopefully some of you made Michelle Jenkins talk earlier today about taxonomies was brilliant Again taxonomies is something that we tend to think like developers deal with these and they grapple with these and they make them work So if they improve the UX and they care about the UX then that that makes things better for them But also that can get noticed by marketers because they can realize how taxonomies can help them deliver optimized experiences personalization Related to that content specialists get excited to see how adaptive content can come in content localization And again the big kind of shiny stuff is this getting picked up by industry ports insight data Gartner garner reports the stuff that crosses the desk of the people that are in positions to make decisions about CMS So some in all that up basically care about UX because it makes Drupal better And that can have an awkward effect in the ecosystem And I guess conversely like think of it the other way don't don't let suboptimal UX come into Drupal because We have a really great thing going here We have a community and we have the power to actually make the UX as good as we wanted to be and that is not the case There's a lot of software that we are forced to use in our lives So like there's my shameless plug there But I understand that UX is hard and nobody understands that more than me because I'm a UX manager So when you do it you really want to make sure it has the most value and why not make sure it helps promote Drupal in the process So to do that I'm sorry But we have to go back to these because these are out there And so we need to adopt one of these myths misconceptions one that resonates to you and take it and like get Comfortable with this being a problem that you're going to kind of hold in your brain is the first stage the second stage is moving into UX design processes, so Think of those as problems think of those as blockers think of them as challenges to overcome Basically get comfortable with being in a problem space Some of you may have seen this before this is the double diamond It's a UX design process. It's right. It's a design process and we adopt it as part of UX work The idea is you start off at one end of the diamond in the problem space You ideate over lots of problems pain points surface them all you narrow in on the priority one The one that's really the big hitter or more than one you then ideate again come up with some more solutions And then you focus in and deliver Your ideal solution and then you do it all over again And it looks really nice and easy when it's like that But in my experience with something like Drupal We are so spoiled for solutions. We have all the solutions. We have multiple solutions for everything But what's really difficult is trying to match those with the problems because the problems are big and woolly and poorly defined And then those myths and misconceptions that it's hard to kind of attach the solution to that problem and really make the solution shine So practical empathy is a kind of habit or a mindset that you can adopt to with an adopted problem And to kind of help you address How to to address to help you kind of take it on board and hope help you address it So practical empathy I've summarized the entire book in one slide, but the practical empathy is a technique that in the young pioneered She does a lot of work as UX as various talks about this And it's all about getting into the head of the person that's experiencing this problem because a problem is really only a Problem until you it's not really tangible until you understand who's Experiencing it and kind of understand why they're experiencing it because then you can start to think about how you make it better So you take your big problem from your myths and misconceptions Which everyone you want and think about like who who does who cares about this and who's got the power to make this better What matters to them and how do they deal with this now if this is big enough Is this a big enough problem in their life that they have to deal with it now? So I'm going to give you an example here like that. It's too technical Think that's out there this I see as a problem I see that marketers have the power to help address this problem And I think this problem matters to them because they really want to be able to sell Drupal And they need tangible case studies examples to be able to to do that And tangible experiences they really need to translate the tech into something that they can talk about Stuff they care about in general. They're masters at stories and narratives, right? Think of them I guess as a town crier in the village analogy they want to shout about Drupal But they need stuff to be able to shout about and tell it into a story They want metrics they want data because they'll have targets and goals in mind And they really value rich descriptions the more detail the better Because they don't have that now because this problem doesn't this problem exist and that is difficult to get this information about Drupal now Drupal ends up being sold on a promise on a kind of vague Abstract flexibility consistency compliance that kind of thing and it's hard for people to understand How does that relate to my organization? Why should I adopt Drupal? So when you've gone through that process it and that like that process takes a while right Problem mapping getting comfortable with problem takes a while But it sets things up for the next stage moving into that solution diamond which is and here's another technique I'm going to share with you which is opportunity Solution mapping this comes from another bit continuous discovery habits Which I love because it really is a habit that's this kind of mindset how this works. This is a opportunity solution tree You set in mind your problem you set in your mind like the desired outcome the behavior change you want to see So that would be marketers being able to wax lyrical about all the tangible wonderful digital experiences Drupal can achieve The opportunities come in what you know about that person what you learned when you empathized with them from that practical perspective So taking the narratives and stories Maybe this solution space there in terms of gathering weak notes Maybe there's an opportunity to work with agencies to gather reflective notes on Implementation so that that could provide information for stories later on You take the data and numbers thing that you know matters to marketers and think okay What have we got in terms of data's and numbers metrics that we've got now And what are we not measuring? Probably more to the point that we could be gathering to start getting that information together to put in front of marketers to help them do their job Rich descriptions again. We have a wealth of information in documentation It's chiefly aimed at developers, but maybe there's a way of framing some of that so that it's more in more plain language It's kind of D technical and it says quite a lot of talks this Drupal con about technical language and technical writing So perhaps there's an opportunity there and like these are all question marks because they're just ideas But hopefully you can see how you can take a problem drill it down And then get to solutions and see how some of those solutions that we've got already in Drupal can feed into those bigger problems So I'm going to wrap up because I can hear clapping but just to recap obviously UX will save the world right talk done So we've just talked about how UX has been used in promote Drupal We've talked about how UX is linked to decision-making and it's not just about interfaces We've talked about how you should care about UX in whatever part of Drupal you work in because it can have a wider effect And I've left you with a couple a taster into a couple of techniques about how you can adopt that Probably have no time for questions But if you want to connect with me afterwards and hit me up for questions quite happy to do that. Thank you