Hey Natalie,
I’m home sick with a throat infection, so you’ll have to forgive me if I say something weird or doesn’t make sense.
I’ve been published a few times now but I know exactly what you mean about wanting to be original and new- you want to contribute something meaningful rather than regurgitate what you’ve read.
Approach this the same way you would any UX project - break it down into manageable chunks and don’t reinvent the wheel.
You have:
A very open brief - an article of some description that follows the theme of UX
You have a problem to solve
You have less than a week
your client is UX Mastery
your end user is the UX community - ie people just like you!
Ask yourself - what’s the first thing you would do if this was a project at work?
Here’s what I would do:
First get lots of post it notes and markers and start an affinity diagram. Write down everything that comes to mind on the topic of ‘UX’ and ‘UXmas’ and read and re-read the brief.
See what people did last year and the year before - you’ve got 2 years of previous work as reference.
What do you like about the previous years? What don’t you like/ agree with?
Start thinking about your own experiences - you still new, what does that mean to you? What do you think about UX? What is it like to be you and do your role? What do you want to tell the rest of us?
Next- challenge the brief and think outside it
What is an ‘article’?? Is it just text? No it’s not. In previous years there have been: drawings, games, recipies, comics etc
Have a think about all this and if you want to talk some more - I’m here to help
Feel free to send any ideas to me if you need feedback.
Ash