JL - UX speaking and community

Speaking

Growing a business with UX

This talk is about growing a business through good user experience. When you hear this, you may think that I just mean “good design means more customers”, but this talk goes deeper than that. I will talk about applying UX throughout a business and how this kind of user focused thinking, can allow your business to grow more organically, with less penny pinching, less cost and in less time.
Talk given at:

UX conf London

Create Leicester

Designing for Employee Experience

Employees deserve a great experience, whether it’s their technology set up, their performance assessment or even their payslips. This talk ran through my findings over the last 5 years, working on employee experience, covering the pitfalls and joys.
Talk given at:

Uxify bulgaria

Read an excerpt up on Medium

UX is everywhere

I spoke at Ladies that UX in London about how UX thinking can help improve your lives and the lives of those around you.
Feel free to have a read of the full write-up.
Talk given at:

Ladies that UX

MK Geek Night (developer edition)

Empathy and inclusion in design

Spoke about inclusive design which helped inspire designers and non-designers to think about accessibility

Booking.com annual meeting

Empathy day

Community projects

MK Hackathon

A collective was co-set-up by myself and a couple of friends to do Hackathon in Milton Keynes aimed to do something to improve the local area.

We have ran multiple events to create apps/software that helps the community in some manner.

Coaching and mentoring

I try to offer mentoring to individuals from time to time and have provided coaching at various events such as:

Django Girls

Girls Code MK

Outside of UX

I'm an obsessive learner so like to learn new skills and be creative as much as I can.
As well as making digital art, spending quality time at home, and organising the home I like to:

Play role playing games online

I like to play sci-fi based roleplaying games such as Starfinder or Star Wars DnD.

Learn magic and solve puzzles

I love learning card tricks and picking up puzzles such as Hanayama cast iron puzzles.

Experience food and fitness

I enjoy learning to cook new things and am on a mission to get stronger.

Working with me

As well as getting stuck in to the work, I always consider the longer term ideas and the point of view of technology and business in my product designs. I'm obsessively positive and use my problem solving skills to think around politics, technical limitations and improve team working.

I’m one for finding solutions and getting on with things. My favourite part of UX is solving the problems that come up. Whether its trying to find data, finding the right piece of UI or merging business, technology and users, I’ll always find a way forward.

Whether its within design or team processes, I'm a facilitator of decisions and action. I can flex from leader to listener when needed and I'm always looking to assist where I can. I'm known for helping out, moving things forward and making things simpler.

"Working with Jessica was an absolute pleasure. She is a great communicator, and has the unique ability to inspire others to work towards a common goal. [...]
She is both a visionary and one who comes up with pragmatic solutions to improve the user experience."

A. Blok - previously Booking.com

"Jessica's hard work and dedication to delivering excellence even under difficult circumstances makes her an outstanding member of any team. [...]
She is one of the most fastidious and courteous professionals I ever had the fortune to work with."

A. Segebrecht - previously Northampton University