In today’s “60 Seconds With …” interview we hear from Kat Husbands, University of Glasgow, who joined the IWMW advisory group last year and continues to provide her advice and suggestions for this year’s event.
1. How do you describe to your friends/parents/next door neighbour what you do for a living?
I make things like websites and internal systems easier for students and staff to use, removing frustration and saving time and money.
2. Tell us something really cool about your job at the moment
The concept of user-centred design is starting to spread from our main website to our internally-facing pages and systems. This is exciting but also stressful as demand is already exceeding capacity.
3. What’s the most exciting thing about web and digital in the HE sector right now?
The growing move towards user-centred design.
4. What’s your proudest moment in your career so far?
Getting to go to UX Week in San Francisco, thanks to the UCISA Bursary scheme. It was fantastic to get such public recognition from UCISA of the value of the user-centred approach.
5. If you weren’t doing this career what would your dream job be?
Tough one, because I honestly never had a clue what I wanted to do until I discovered UX! Astronomer maybe?
6. What will delegates take away from your session at IWMW this year?
How to get started with user experience research, and (if I figure it out in time) how to survive as a team-of-one.
7. Any fond/embarrassing memories of previous IWMW events (if attended previously) ?
I loved duck-spotting around the lake at York last year, and bunny-watching on Kent campus the year before. Hoping Greenwich is as wildlife-friendly…
8. What do you like to do in your spare time?
Build Lego, climb, play samba drums, visit other cities.
9. What’s your guilty pleasure?
Buying Lego sets then not building them for aaaaages. Oh, the anticipation!
10. Sum up IWMW in one word
Community 😊
Kat Husbands is developing policy and practice for the University of Glasgow’s nascent User Experience Service, based in Information Services. She is endlessly fascinated by students’ behaviour and enjoys taking every opportunity to make things better for them through her work on internally-facing content, including the IT Services website and the MyGlasgow homepages.
Kat will give a plenary talk on “Grassroots & Guerrillas: The beginnings of a UX revolution” and chair the session on “Institutional Perspectives on Changing Times“.
