Sometimes we get so focused on winning small victories of the present – like sign-off on UX or design support – that we’re blindsided by larger issues from the overall business context. This case study tells the story of a team who experienced this first-hand and learned some lasting lessons as a result.
Like any good tale, the story features heroes, villains, and dramatic twists. Hear how product management and user experience joined forces to tackle a serious business problem. Learn how their field research with potential customers busted some big assumptions and uncovered an incredible opportunity. Then find out what happened when they presented that opportunity to an executive team wrestling with disruptive innovation.
This case study will illustrate:
We know craft is important, but how does it fit into the ambiguity and complexity (or wickedness) of enterprise UX? What is the role and place for craft in designing enterprise software? There’s massive scales of objects, convoluted processes with buyers (not users), and politically charged organizational matters. Whew! My talk proposes shifting our notion of craft from “precious object” towards “facilitative anchor”, guiding crucial conversations about what matters most: goals, values, criteria. Thus, craft becomes a tool for the designer to achieve alignment and provoke useful dialogues.
To demonstrate, I will share 3 stories from my career at Oracle, Citrix, and CloudPhysics, of how I used craft to clarify issues and build relationships. Each offers slight variations on the “facilitative anchor.” The first is about a “reactive” model of craft. The second is what I call “interpretive” craft. And the final story involves “collaborative” making. Craft becomes a path to teamwork, and a model of design leadership through making.
Key takeaways:
This case study presents design research methodology to understand user experience and explore design in collaboration with users. I will present along with my teammate, Sapna Singh.
Description of issue/topic: Through a design studio at OSU, our team of graduate design, business and occupational therapy students undertook a 14-week class in which we worked with a group of five residents at a senior living facility to co-design a new shoe shopping experience.
How we will address the topic: The presentation will begin with background information into the growing 65+ demographic. Our presentation will provide supporting statistics as well as information about the needs and issues of this growing group.
Then we will discuss why our team selected the topic of clothing, and shoe shopping in particular. We will introduce the co-design process and discuss how we implemented this research method with the elder co-designers, challenges we faced with this new (to them/us) method, and recommendations for future work in this method.
Our presentation will summarize our insight into the elders’ current shoe-shopping experience and our learnings about their ideal experience.
Finally, we will share the process prototype we developed and recommendations for further research.
What attendees will learn:
The user is more than what’s in front of the screen. In this talk, I’ll show how tools can become natural extensions of the user and explain the neuroscience behind the process. But I’ll also show that tools change us, and in fact even change how we see the world. Some philosophers say that this is the most natural thing ever, and hence call us “natural-born cyborgs” (Andy Clark).
Attendees will learn:
Want to make a cool product? Think that “cool” is subjective and elusive? Not so. Karen studies cool — how cool is that? — and will share her framework for creating engagement through cool experiences.
Keynote
Jesse wrote the book on game design, but there’s so much value in it for designers of all kinds. You won’t want to miss Jesse reveal his secrets of game design… and discover how these secrets can inform your work.
The process behind making a blockbuster film is similar to creating a meaningful website or app. Through the lens of cinema, we’ll walk through practical ways that UX design teams can work together to deliver an award-winning final product. Whether you’re making a low-budget indie for a non-profit or the next summer smash for a Fortune 500, we can learn a thing or two from film.
We’ll take two approaches: (1) a deep look at the filmmaking process and the lessons learned from over a century of refining roles and (2) the challenged wrought by the independent and digital film revolution and its similarities to the commoditization of modern web and application design.
What we’ll cover:
You’ll come away with:
Mingle with a select group of premier design companies. Explore new career opportunities and learn more about these UX-driven companies:
These companies are interested in meeting you and many will have job opportunities to talk to you about!
