In this half-day workshop, you'll leave with a better understanding of the tools business people use to create and manage strategy, lead others, and tell the non-design story within organizations. It will cover the best leadership techniques, models for meaning and business strategy, effective communications, and point you in effective directions you might need for business and management experience. No math required!

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Defining a clear vision for the experience you want customers to have can make all the difference. When designing for cross-channel ecosystems, where customers engage through different channels at different times, organizations often focus quickly on scenarios and use-cases that can sometimes lead to experiences that feel disjointed.

Additionally, throughout the design process its not uncommon to encounter:

• A lack of empathy for customers and their situations
• Difficulty communicating the future vision for a product or service
• Organizational siloes where disparate departments are unaware of what each is doing and how it impacts the end users

Journey maps are a powerful tool in tackling these challenges. Using them to define a vision, a story of the ultimate "blue sky" experience you'd like users to have across all of their interactions with your organization, you can provide guidance in the design of a consistent, cohesive service, regardless of channels and touch points.

With journey maps your team can:

• Identify inconsistencies and rough patches in customers' current experiences
• Build empathy for customers and identify opportunities to consider their environments and emotions when making design decisions
• Set a clear vision that is easily understood by stakeholders and team members and use it to explore new design ideas
• Establish a strong foundation for prototyping and crafting an experience strategy
• Make design decisions that help ensure optimal experiences for consumers/patients across channels

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In this half-day workshop, we'll discuss the role of the UX strategist creating organizational change in customer experience, and the challenges and opportunities for the UX strategist in "redesigning" organizational attitudes and thinking around the customer. We'll look at how we can help organizations develop their customer centric maturity by creating a UX strategy that leverages the team strengths and evolves the organization itself:

• Culture: what the organisation believes
• Structures & siloes: how the business is organised
• Governance & sponsorship: who's in charge and how decisions get made
• Leadership & networks of influence: how the organisation really works
• Performance measures & KPIs: what the organisation measures and focuses on
• Incentives: how the organisation rewards people

We'll walkthrough examples of our experience in working through different UX strategy planning phases in supporting customer centred change.

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One of the most important practices for solving any problem is knowing how to frame the problem in the first place. As product teams adopt Lean UX approaches, it becomes important for them to move away from working with requirements and move instead to working with hypotheses. In this hands-on workshop, Josh will lead a small group through the process of hypothesis creation, and explore how this practice connects to every dimension of product creation, from strategy, to business model, to features and UI.

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Designers of all types know that strategy is important—and valuable. But, we don't always understand or practice it in the same ways as our other business counterparts. In addition, we often see things our peers don't but don't quite "get" how to effectively collaborate with non-designers to make the most of the opportunities we see. Intuitively, we know our research and perspective can change organizations, customer relationships, and even industries for the better but we also often feel at a loss how to bridge what seems like a cultural divide between us, our clients, and even our own coworkers. Nathan Shedroff will share definitions, understandings, perspectives, models, tools, and resources that can help designers develop the influence we seek to find within the larger organizational contexts of our work. He'll share how to bridge the deepest cultural differences that set us up for failure and the most important learnings one develops within business school (without spending the two years and $80,000!).

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It's no surprise that user experience designers can create great product experiences, but they also have unique skills that can improve corporate innovation at a strategic level. Aline Baeck has created a series of UX method workshops for product managers (PMs). These workshops help PMs foster innovation and solve problems within their teams. You will learn about the workshop's design, the most successful UX methods to apply, and how this workshop achieved Net Promoter Scores (NPS) of 85 and above. Aline will also demonstrate the most popular UX method created for the workshop: a project diagnosis tool that identifies strategic and tactical problems in product development teams.

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One important question in operationalizing the practice of UX strategy is "what's our engagement model with the rest of the organization?" For UX strategy teams, a variety of engagement models are possible, from partnering with business units to sponsoring and driving projects on your own. This case study looks at a project where the engagement model was a partnership with the Corporate Strategy department at Intuit, a fortune 1000 company. This case study shares all the juicy details on what corporate strategy brought to the relationship, what UX strategy brought, and what impact their partnership ultimately had on the organization. Why is this important for the UX strategy community? Because the juxtaposition of corporate strategy with UX strategy in the context of a single project sheds new and interesting light on where one starts and the other stops. This has important implications for our community as we seek to define and evolve our value to businesses.

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We've all been there. The business brief to improve the customer experience is clear. The insight from the customer and the business points to obvious opportunities. As a team we've designed innovative solutions creating a win/win for the organization and their customers. And then, like a patient rejecting the life saving transplant from an organ donor, the solution doesn't take. Or worse they do nothing. In many cases, it's the culture of the organization that is the barrier to step change improvement.
In this session we'll talk about the role of business culture in customer experience and challenges and opportunities for the UX strategist in redesigning organizational attitudes and thinking around the customer.

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As product teams become more collaborative, UX designers have an increasing opportunity to participate in strategic activities. Where designers used to work in silos with other designers, they are now increasingly collaborative players, working with product owners, engineers, marketers, and others. And these collaborations are taking place at every level, from the tactical choices teams make about feature implementation and UI, to the strategic choices teams are making about product direction and business strategy. Lean UX offers teams a framework to structure their work across these dimensions. In this talk, Josh will look at the new questions designers are facing, and explore the tactics, methods and processes teams are using to put this approach to work.

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Transitioning a design organization to lean design methods can be challenging for any company. Imagine the complexity when you have over 130 million users, are in 190 markets and are growing over 20% per year? Add to that a suite of mature products needing redesign, new products in development and competitive imperative of time to market?
A little over a year into PayPal's transformation, Karen will share insights into challenges & successes along the journey. Key areas of focus will be on how the effort has evolved and the challenges of driving both consistency & quality across teams. If you are already embracing Lean UX & Agile methods, you can get a pulse on best practices. If you are looking to drive this in your organization, you'll get a wealth of insight into how to get a lean initiative off the ground.

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A case study of how Turner Broadcasting approached creating a multichannel experience for March Madness Live that extended from Android and iPhones to iPads and desktops. The presentation will cover how the pillars of the cool project where implemented in the product, what worked and what did not work and how the UX design strategy set the team up for continued success.
The user-centered view of the interactions and experience led to the fulfillment of the business goals of improving the brand image which is expressed in the title of the presentation "March Madness is my BFF!" This is one of thousands of tweets expressing the joy fans felt while using the application.

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When you purchase something online and everything goes without a hitch: is it the absence of anything bad happening that contributes to it being a good experience? Come and ponder this reverse psychological viewpoint as it relates to UX and CX strategy and design thinking during this short exploration of a sadly typical bad airline experience. Come away with a new insight and perspective to your work and the experiences you generate. Learn how to incorporate service design thinking into your strategy to make sure that people are delighted with the experiences you influence.

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This presentation is about the development and creation of a research strategy for an innovative technology called Crystal Palace from Citrix Systems Labs involving using natural, gestural interfaces for mobile devices, namely iPhone and iPAD.
Some of the issues we wanted to explore with the research strategy include:

• What do you do when you have a great technology that your team has developed and you're looking for a product opportunity or a way to integrate the technology into a useful application?
• How do you research the best way to design/create interaction that do not exist today in most technology environments? How do we get the most out of user research given – users can't imagine these type of solution for problems they encounter today?
• How research and research activities can help create cohesiveness of vision and action between multiple engineering teams at disparate locations.

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Much discussion and attention has been given to customer journeys and experience maps in the UX field recently. Our team applied this research approach to the membership experience for an entertainment loyalty program. We talked to four distinct groups: newbies, fence sitters, recently renewed and lapsed members. By segmenting the audience, we were able to identify communications and interactions that led some members to satisfaction and deeper engagement and left others feeling unappreciated. In the end, we concocted a customer experience map that highlights critical points within the membership life cycle where interactions need to be customized toward member behavior.

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The key to sustained success within an omnichannel ecosystem is identifying and articulating the points of crossover and creating strategies to specifically address these moments of opportunity. In this session, Dan Saltzman will present a Service Blueprint Swimlane framework that has been used to help a number of clients create a vision and strategy for engaging customers within and across channels. This framework can be immediately deployed by both internal and external UX/CX professionals to help articulate omnichannel opportunities and to build consensus among teammates and stakeholders in crafting strategy.

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Big data is helping many companies become smarter. Now it's empowering UX practitioners to see patterns in mountains of data that would otherwise be underused or overlooked. Customer feedback, trends in support issues, analytics, usability test notes, customer interview transcripts, tweets, blog comments and more can be connected and searched to find serious flaws in designs and inform the next iteration.
Research has always been a core part of the UX workflow, but after a study ends, the wisdom gained often slips into obscurity and is never seen again. Aarron will teach you how to centralize all research data and stream new sources into the pool so you can learn more about your audience and make smarter design decisions.

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In this session, attendees will hear a case study of how Sage is leveraging big data to deliver a more personalized user and customer experience. Sage uses big data to provide just-in-time advice inside the product, to help partners identify training and consulting needs for their clients, and to show customers how they can improve the way they are using Sage products. What began as a user experience (UX) project to help new users get started and encourage existing users to use more of the product has turned into a corporate-wide customer experience (CX) project. The delivery of advice is helping customer support transition from a traditional break-fix model to a higher value role of a Sage Advisor. Even the Sales organization is able to provide more personalized service now that the account managers can better understand their customers. After this session, attendees should be able to: (1) Describe how personalized advice can be an important part of a UX and CX strategy. (2) Explain the relationship between a UX and CX strategy. (3) Identify the basic components needed to build and leverage a big data system for the delivery of personalized advice. (4) List the pros and cons of trying to create a UX/CX strategy like the one we created at Sage.

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UX strategy starts with learning about people and technology. It's messy, it's complicated, it's fascinating. The problem is how to communicate this complexity simply. And how to frame it in terms of business impact.
In order to get on the dashboard, UX has to embrace numbers. Numbers communicate the most important information at a glance. Numbers give strategists a way to track improvements and setbacks over time and across iterations. Without numbers, there is no meaningful way to compare the user experience of websites, mobile apps, or other technologies. And without comparing, UX strategists are working in a vacuum.
Using data from several large-scale studies, the session will focus on the three numbers you really need to tell a compelling story and go big picture without losing the ground-level insights.

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Best practices in UX have long been based on a linear development model: research first, then design, then build. But more and more organizations are adopting iterative models of product and service development, with short production cycles and minimal long-term planning. As the first UX researcher at a small company that practices Agile development, I have needed to rethink the way research relates to UX strategy: not just how to fit research in, but how teams make use of it in their daily decision-making. I will walk through the framework I have developed for research planning, which I call the Empathy Cycle. In addition, I will discuss the importance of each team member's working model of the customer, and why the goal of UX research should be to improve, not replace, those working models.

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UXers have tried and true methods for figuring out what will result in a good experience for users. What does "good" mean for the business that's offering the experience? In fifteen minutes or less, Dan Klyn teaches simple method for modeling service provider intent in ways that equip all project participants with a powerful language for describing what "good" means.

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What is UX Strategy? What ISN'T UX Strategy? Are there absolutes? Should there be? With UX Strategy professionals coming from a wide variety of academic and professional backgrounds, there doesn't seem to be any widely accepted definition. Are you a UX Strategist? Have you seen others calling themselves UX Strategists and ... politely disagreed? If there was a test for a UX Strategist, would you qualify? Do you have all of the requisite skills? If not, do you know you should be working towards, what skills and experiences you need to round out a role as a UX Strategist? Well, this presentation won't answer any of that. Regardless of more tangible criteria, surely there are some basic fundamentals of UX Strategy, right? The answer to that is a resounding yes. But are they fundamentals we can collectively agree on? ... (cue the sound of crickets). In this presentation and discussion, Ronnie will present "10 Commandments" for consideration.

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You've got the vision and strategy deck ready. Your persuasive arguments are all laid out. You've even written the job description for the rock star team you know you need. The pieces are falling into place for executing on the Perfect Experience Strategy. But darn it, you've just got this little nagging feeling that you might be missing something.
Odds are what you lack is a certainty that your organization can really pull it off. Will it be able to do what needs to be done? You need to know what your organization needs to be good at, and who needs to be how good at it, in order to accomplish strategic goals. As the strategist, to make sure that that your company really has what it takes, you have to discover the full range of work it needs to handle and people to enable. You have to be able to assess the people, skills, and skill levels that exist and need to be created.
This session will discuss two of the most important frames of reference for assessment, Context and Capabilities. Understanding the details of these within your organization for discovery relative to experience strategy will provide insights about advantages, liabilities, strengths, and weaknesses that are often not immediately visible. From there you will be able to make choices about plans, priorities, hiring, and other systemic approaches that are most appropriate for your situation. Join me for an empowering, interactive session.

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In this presentation, I'll share details for how I created the User Experience Center of Excellence at Vistaprint. I'll cover how the creation of our centralized entity created a better foundation for UX strategy and present key learnings that will hopefully inspire others to increase organizational effectiveness by asking more questions.

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Dick Fosbury is an American track and field athlete who challenged the conventional approach to the high jump with an unorthodox "back first" technique that became known as the Fosbury Flop. His innovative approach to a sport that seemed to have reached its limits was ridiculed at first, with sportswriters labeling him "the world's laziest high jumper" -- but today variations of the Fosbury Flop are used by almost every high jumper.
We need to challenge conventions, too. Many of the design conventions used in web, mobile and device interfaces have evolved from systems and processes that no longer connect with our audiences' realities: a floppy disk as a metaphor to "save" information, push buttons as control devices and typography standards derived from mechanical typesetting.
As designers and strategists, we need to think like Dick Fosbury, to deconstruct analogues, and to free ourselves from outdated ideas so that we can develop the new interfaces and interactions of the future.

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