The UX elephant in the (smelly and noisy) room

So, since you work as a subject matter expert in UX, you want to give a course about this topic.
Hence you decide to organize an informative session to make people know about that.
So far, so good.

Now, even though I am not an UX expert, let me share with you some tips about the worst way to do that.

The place in general/The first impression

To start off, carefully select an office which is undergoing some maintenance.

Do your best so that the attendees will never forget the nauseating smell of paint which is going to welcome them.

The specific room to host the event

Make sure to book a medium to small room and schedule another meeting at the same time in the same space.

Take into account that noise will be a key factor here, since it will definitely increase the probability that your potential students:

• get distracted by the other ongoing meeting
• can’t focus on what you are saying
• get upset
• have a headache
• will always remember such a terrible experience

The presentation

If you agree that to project a Power Point and to start reading it to your audience is not a good idea, be aware of an even worse option: start doing the same without even projecting the presentation; just keep it for yourself.
If one of the attendees —who, for a change, is not me— politely asks if you could project the presentation for them, just reply no, it’s not possible, because we don’t have a projector.
As a workaround, show your screen to just a half of your audience (being the other half allowed to appreciate the beauty of the cover of your laptop in the meanwhile).

The language

Don’t be shy nor a wimp: choose a language you don’t master.
Take advantage of your lack of fluency in order not to look confident at all; as a bonus, make as many grammar mistakes as possible and notice how they grate against the listeners’ ears.

The message you get across

Humility is for weak-willed people: make the (risky and brave) assumption that the people you are talking to have already bought your product; act as though your potential students had already enrolled in your course.

That’s all! Congratulations! You have just built the worst user experience ever!

Closing the feedback loop

To sum up, since you most likely wanted to get feedback and to learn something about your (potential) users, I guess we can consider this a satisfactory experience: after all, you have learned that not all of them are going to do what you would like them to do…
Anyway, you’ll surely do better next time, especially if you don’t go again through the aforementioned steps.

My personal feeling

I know you are going to ask me if I am interested in this topic.
Of course I am! I would definitely enjoy learning something more about UX…

And also if I am going to take your course.
No, I’m not.

And you would like to know why.
Well, basically because I feel you are not entitled to give this course.
After all, if you are not able to put yourself in your potential students’ shoes, you might have absolutely nothing to teach me about user experience…