UXmas 2014 is coming soon—get involved!

Do you have an idea that you’d love to share with this community?

Every December, with the help of our friends at Thirst Studios, we publish UXmas, a digital advent calendar for the UX community. A new article is revealed every day of December in the countdown to Christmas Day.

Past contributors have included some of the biggest names in the industry, and this year [B]your name[/B] could be on that list.

Would love to see some forum members submitting articles. Read all about it, and if you have any questions, post them here! :slight_smile:

How exciting!! I’m definitely submitting something and I hope the rest of you lovely community members do too! :slight_smile:

What a wonderful opportunity. I was first introduced to UXMastery because of UXmas!

This sounds like a neat idea. I’ve never written before, but getting involved is what it is all about I guess :).
You guys have some really neat ideas!

I’m going to draft an outline tonight and submit as well. If anybody needs a proofreader, let me know I’d be happy to help .

Hi great idea, i’ve been knocking a few ideas around in my head, this is the perfect motivation to put them down on paper. P

I know I’m running it a bit close, but I’m struggling to come up with a good topic to write on for this. One having never written anything before on UX, I’m a bit weary, as I read a lot of different blog posts and articles that get published, and I do not want to write about something that has already been covered to death.

Any suggestions about how to come up with topics that people will want to read, that will be useful, and haven’t been overdone?

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 :slight_smile:

Feel free to send any ideas to me if you need feedback.

Ash

Awesome advice Ash. Does that give you a good starting point Natalie, or do you need further direction?

The cool thing about UXmas is that it’s not as formal as the stuff that we’d generally publish. We’re looking for fun, quirky, getting into the spirit of Xmas type stuff as much as we’re looking for brilliant UX publications.

My draft is done and sent off! :slight_smile:

How are the rest of you going? Anyone need help or feedback?

The deadline for submissions is just 12 hours away. If you’re planning on submitting, don’t miss out.