Survey about UX Needs & Possible Ideas

If you are in the Toledo region and a practicing user experience professional, I want to hear from you. What do you need to do your job better?

If you are a business leader in the Toledo region who realizes the UX of your products & services is crucial to your business success, I want to hear from you. What does your company need?

If you are a student (at UT, BGSU, elsewhere around here) or someone who lives here and just wants to get started in UX, I want to hear from you. How would you like to begin your professional journey?

I created a survey to help compile information about needs and reactions to possible ideas for addressing those needs. It should only take 3 minutes to fill it out: I kept it pretty short.

• Survey: UX Community Needs for the Toledo Region

Below are the important elements of the survey (for anyone who wants to peek ahead).

I have contacted many folks by email and already gotten a good response. More people are welcome to give their input: thus this post and related tweets, etc.

At some point, I will compile the data and share with the community (exactly when depends on how busy I am: this is fun but not the top thing on my to-do list). I will post something here and schedule a session at Seed Coworking, where we can discuss the results as a group. I would also like to get people to break into smaller teams to tackle specific needs or solutions.

Thanks in advance for your responses! If you want to be sure to catch the results, leave your email address at the end of the survey. And/or follow @UXToledoRegion.

We are collecting information about User Experience needs for the Toledo Region. We would also like your reaction to ideas to address these needs. Please take a few minutes to fill out this survey. It will help us plan local UX community activities. Thanks in advance!

NEEDS

What do you need to improve the user experience (UX) of the things you create? The things you are creating might be web sites, software products, paper brochures, smartphone apps, hardware, healthcare services, events. And more.

• Practice doing UX
• Awareness and understanding of UX by others within my company
• Better tools for doing UX work
• Insights into innovative UI & interaction designs
• Knowledge of advanced UX techniques
• More commitment from my clients to pay me for UX work
• Training and formal education on how to do basic UX methods
• A UX "tribe" to hang out with, get support from
• Case studies showing how others do UX
• UX talent to hire

IDEAS

What can we do to address your UX needs? Below are some of the ideas that have been suggested for the Toledo Region.

Scale: Bad idea | Good idea | Great idea, will help | Awesome idea, will pay $

• Plan road trips to UX events in Detroit, Columbus and other nearby cities
• Launch a UX book club
• Set up a site where we can show off our UX capabilities
• Schedule UX reviews so we can talk about UX and help improve local products and services
• Collaborate with AIGA Toledo
• Set up an online area for discussions (e.g., Google group)
• Arrange online webinars and virtual training
• Create hands-on training of UX methods
• Rejuvenate Refresh Toledo
• Create a marketplace for UX work (where clients and agencies can meet)
• Organize a local conference about UX
• Set up a mentoring program for students and others new to UX
• Evangelize UX to local business leaders
• Build a directory of UX people/companies in the region
• Establish a local chapter of a professional organization (like IxDA or UXPA)
• Create a Meetup group, schedule meetups
• Add more UX events to the Toledo Web Professionals program
• Set up an exchange program with other cities (to help us get up to speed faster)
• Compile a list of classes to take (e.g., BGSU CS 3240)
• Suggest the best national UX conferences to travel to