Past Events

Ladies that UX Richmond (LTUX) and Think of Us are sharing the story of their rewarding partnership. Why? Because we want others to replicate and improve upon our model. Our hope is that you walk away feeling empowered to use your professional skills to do good in the community.

You'll hear about the LTUX and Think of Us partnership from both sides, and then we want to hear from you. What are you passionate about? How can you prioritize giving back? Who can you think of that would benefit from a partnership like this? Let's not leave this at hypotheticals - we'll share what we've learned along the way so that you can get involved!

Whether you work in the nonprofit space, or you're just trying to find ways to use UX to build a stronger partnership with your community, this workshop is for you

Together we’ll:

• Look at simple, short, shareable formats to capture the content strategy, audience needs, business needs, and content requirements
• Practice documenting the content strategy for real-world scenarios
• Discuss how to use what you capture to keep everyone aligned — and not let that work go to waste

On top of hands-on practice, you’ll leave with a sample format to use when you get back to work.

About Sara

Sara Zailskas Walsh started out in journalism and ended up doing content strategy and UX design for home building, airline, smartphone, and financial industries. She’s currently doing experience strategy work at CapitalOne.com in San Francisco, where she’s learned to tolerate kale if it’s prepared certain ways.

Come learn how we incorporate users directly into our strategy and design process by using personas, in-person and remote interviews, and usability tests. We will end with a tour of our own usability lab and also discuss ways that YOU can (cost-effectively) incorporate user research into your process.

A good content management system helps you provide epic customer experiences. A great CMS goes one step further—it helps you deliver enjoyable user experiences to the editorial and marketing teams that use it every day.

Understandably, the CMS user experience is often sidelined in favor of the front-end, customer-facing experience. After all, there’s only a select few content creators that will be exposed to the back-end, right?

But at the end of the day, these two aspects can't, and shouldn't be separated. A thoughtfully-designed CMS user interface is paramount to delivering great customer experiences. And, a great experience for content creators will reduce staff costs, training costs, and technology customization costs over time, too. 

Taylor Horak of Authentic will show us how to face the UX of the CMS head on. From tips for the discovery phase to employing content modeling, Taylor will reveal how to craft a simple-to-use, efficient platform that supports infinite website redesigns and scales well.

About Taylor

Taylor is a consultant at Authentic, working as a client advocate throughout the design and implementation process to deliver sustainable content management solutions. A typical week for Taylor includes leading a client discovery workshop, developing end-user training, and designing flexible content models.

80% of us own a smartphone. And when we’re on our phones—which we are, constantly—85% of the time, we’re using apps. But we’re picky: most of us only use 5 apps regularly.

How do you make a great app—one that makes it into your users’ top 5? It starts with content. A web content strategist who successfully made the switch to mobile will show you the ropes: how to make your app findable in stores, how to engage your users with push notifications that don’t annoy, and even how “traditional” web SEO impacts your app (it does!).

This talk's for you if you have questions like:

• How is app content different from website content?
• How can I make my app findable, both in stores and on the web?
• How can I make my app usable?
• How can content strategy help me keep users engaged with my app?
• What do I need to know to successfully include apps in my overall content strategy?

About Melanie

Melanie works as Senior Content Strategist at WillowTree in Charlottesville, Virginia. She has taught content strategy at General Assembly, and helped create websites at Razorfish, Rackspace, cPanel, and other interesting companies.

At our October workshop, Zuula will share insights about the impact clarity has on business results. They'll explore how organizations are using plain language to achieve that elusive win-win: helping the customer and meeting company goals.

Zuula will also provide writing and content tips for bringing your plain-language messaging to life.

About Zuula

We’re not just communication professionals — we’re clarity fanatics. Whether we’re training financial advisors, branding communications, or editing-away legalese, our goal is to help you use language to create the ultimate sophistication.

We’ve seen the difference that clear communication makes for people, businesses, and society. And we’re on a mission to rid the world of confusion, one client at a time.

Synopsis: In Design Disruptors, enter the world of 15+ industry-toppling companies—valued at more than $1 trillion dollars combined—with one unifying secret advantage: the transformative power of design. The film chronicles the true nature of design and the design-driven business revolutions being shaped around the world through the designers’ eyes. Get a never-before-seen look into the perspectives, processes, and design approaches of leaders at industry-toppling brands and discover how these companies are disrupting billion dollar industries through design.

About Justin

Justin is a video producer, director, and editor. He's led on-location video shoots across the country and has extensive experience making video content for marketing campaigns, customer testimonial videos, and product videos, as well as social video. Prior to joining The Martin Agency, Justin was the Marketing Manager, Video Production at Snagajob.

About Christina

Christina began her career at The Martin Agency, developing social strategies and building communities for Kraft’s Cool Whip and Stove Top, Walmart, GEICO and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. She went on to work on the social media team at Capital One and and then to Big River, where she built a social media and content strategy offering and worked on the sweetFrog, Virginia Farm Bureau and Wicked Taco accounts. She is also an adjunct professor at Virginia Commonwealth University.

About Ladies That UX

Ladies that UX creates a space for women from all levels to engage and talk about their experiences and get support and inspiration from their peers.

In a field dominated by men, Ladies that UX is all about giving women the chance to support each other, push the UX boundaries, and promote female skill and talent.