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!
CloseNathan researches, speaks and teaches internationally about meaning, strategic innovation, and science fiction interfaces. Previously, Nathan worked with Richard Saul Wurman at TheUnderstandingBusiness, and later co-founded vivid studios, a decade-old pioneering company in interactive media and one of the first Web services firms on the planet. Nathan's books include "Experience Design 1.1," "Making Meaning," "Design is the Problem," "Design Strategy in Action," and "Make It So."
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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:
As the ultimate user advocate, Megan helps create experiences that ring true with the audience(s) while exceeding clients' business goals. Her forté is illustrating the relationship between a customer and an organization over time and across channels. Megan has worked with clients including Bank of America, Aetna, Constant Contact, and McKesson to sharpen their understanding of their audiences, and design new experiences founded on rigorous research, with an eye for future opportunities.
CloseIn 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:
Tim is a Partner at Foolproof, one of Europe's largest experience design companies. He leads Foolproof's Strategy & Planning practice, developing and deploying their experience strategy framework, methodologies and expertise across a range of global clients. As a UX strategist, he works with brands such as Sony, Shell, HSBC, and Santander to map their existing customer ecosystems and build the UX vision, roadmap and KPIs for transforming their businesses. Twitter: @timothyloo
CloseOne 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.
CloseAs a designer and leader, Josh has worked in hardware and software, consumer and enterprise, mobile, web, and desktop. Before joining Neo in New York City, Josh was head of product design at Wall Street innovator Liquidnet, and also led pioneering interaction design teams at Cooper. Josh is a founder and past President of the Interaction Design Association. He is the co-author (with Jeff Gothelf) of "Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience."
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ClosePaul Bryan is a user experience strategist and researcher who started designing e-commerce web sites in 1995. He consults with large organizations on the strategy, direction, and design of their e-commerce web sites and mobile apps. Paul organizes the UX STRAT conference, and manages the UX Strategy and Planning group on LinkedIn. He's currently co-authoring a book on UX strategy for Morgan Kaufmann, and teaches user experience to graduate business students at the University of Georgia.
CloseDesigners 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!).
CloseNathan researches, speaks and teaches internationally about meaning, strategic innovation, and science fiction interfaces. Previously, Nathan worked with Richard Saul Wurman at TheUnderstandingBusiness, and later co-founded vivid studios, a decade-old pioneering company in interactive media and one of the first Web services firms on the planet. Nathan's books include "Experience Design 1.1," "Making Meaning," "Design is the Problem," "Design Strategy in Action," and "Make It So."
CloseIt'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.
CloseAline has spent most of her career in Silicon Valley, where she applied her design expertise to industries such as national defense (SRI, International), information systems (Dialog Information Services), medical devices (Acuson), telecommunications (Nortel), b2b internet (Centegy), and small business solutions (Intuit). Her latest publication is a chapter on design thinking in "UX Best Practices: How to Achieve More Impact with User Experience".
CloseOne 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.
CloseLeah Buley is a design strategist at Intuit, where she works on the future of small business and personal finance. Previously, Leah was a lead experience designer at Adaptive Path, a pioneering UX consultancy, serving clients in financial services, media, consumer products, and the non-profit world. Leah is also the author of the book "The User Experience Team of One." She writes and speaks regularly on tactics for inviting colleagues and skeptics into the user-centered design process.
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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.
Tim is a Partner at Foolproof, one of Europe's largest experience design companies. He leads Foolproof's Strategy & Planning practice, developing and deploying their experience strategy framework, methodologies and expertise across a range of global clients. As a UX strategist, he works with brands such as Sony, Shell, HSBC, and Santander to map their existing customer ecosystems and build the UX vision, roadmap and KPIs for transforming their businesses. Twitter: @timothyloo
CloseAs 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.
CloseAs a designer and leader, Josh has worked in hardware and software, consumer and enterprise, mobile, web, and desktop. Before joining Neo in New York City, Josh was head of product design at Wall Street innovator Liquidnet, and also led pioneering interaction design teams at Cooper. Josh is a founder and past President of the Interaction Design Association. He is the co-author (with Jeff Gothelf) of "Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience."
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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.
As a Senior Director for User Experience Design , Karen works on the future of money through the design of PayPal's online products . She is also leading the design team's transformation to Lean UX and Agile methodologies. Previously, Karen led online product design for a global division of JPMorgan, where her team revamped an entire generation of technology used by a global client. Karen has long been an advocate for collaborative and iterative processes, as a way to enable a faster feedback loop with users.
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The BlueZones Project is a campaign to improve the health and well-being of individuals and communities. Business, Schools and Individuals in these communities are organized to make changes based on the research of Dan Buettner as published in National Geographic and his book "The Blue Zones." Dan Buettner's work looked at behaviors common to five so called "Blue Zones" which are communities around the world where a disproportionate number of individuals live to be healthy to a very late age.
The primary purposes of the BlueZones Project site are to register new participants and facilitate taking actions that improve everyone's well-being. The site needs to reinforce a sense of momentum to help draw in reluctant community members. It needs to help re-engage those that may have become detached from the campaign or not fulfilled the actions they pledged to take.
This presentation will provide background on the "Blue Zones Project" and the genesis of this innovative community campaign. It will then discuss the User Experience Strategy, site design and results achieved to date.
Colt leads the healthcare practice at Roundarch Isobar, a leading interactive agency. Colt guides the teams and the clients on digital strategy, quality of the design and implementation, and alignment with business strategy. He is also responsible for business development, project delivery and client relationship management for organizations including Healthways, US Air Force, US Army, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Centers for Disease Control, and the Census Bureau.
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Greg is a marketing professional with 20 years of experience and special expertise in behavioral economics and network science. Greg is responsible for design and implementation of engagement and incentive strategies that maximize utilization of Healthways products by leveraging behavioral economics principles. Previously, Greg oversaw the marketing and communications for the Healthways BlueZones Project.
The author of the books, PyroMarketing (HarperCollins, 2005) and Faith-Based Marketing (Wiley, 2009), Greg was the marketing director for The Purpose Driven Life, the fastest selling hardcover book in American history. He's taught principles of marketing at Vanderbilt and speaks at events like AdTech New York, TEDx and the Forbes CMO Summit. Greg currently works as Engagement Strategist at Healthways.
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.
Klemens Wengert works on on large multitrack engagements at Turner Broadcasting. He has successfully collaborated on some of Turner's largest projects including March Madness Live 2013. and TV Sync applications for the Big Bang Theory, Falling Skies and Team COCO. Before working for Turner, Klemens was a independent consultant for clients including Intercontinental Hotels Group, Wendy's, and Techtarget.
CloseWhen 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.
CloseLinda is a senior UX strategist and experience designer based in Santa Cruz, just "over the hill" from Silicon Valley. As a former business analyst, Linda offers clients insights into discovering and implementing better ways of doing things. Linda's mission is to help companies shift their approach to more human-centered design, and develop in-house expertise for agile practices and continuous innovation.
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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:
Quynh's expertise lies in Research Management, Qualitative Research, Focus Groups, Ethnography, and Usability Testing. Her specialty is in bridging the gap between the end users of products and the folks who architect, design, and develop products. To do this, Quynh designs and executes research that examines how users do their work, and then infers the areas of opportunity for a product or technology. LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/quynhpnguyen
CloseMuch 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.
CloseJill has been designing, researching and evaluating user interfaces across a variety of platforms, including web, mobile, public kiosks, and hardware devices, for more than 15 years. Her approach is deeply rooted in user-centered design principles, and she has worked with Fortune 1000 companies to incorporate those principles into their development lifecycle. Jill has improved customer experiences for brands including UPS, NPR, Turner Broadcasting, Dell, and Paychex.
CloseThe 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.
CloseDan's company, EffectiveUI, is an award-winning provider of experience design, strategy, and products. Dan's expertise is in addressing complex business challenges through design thinking. With more than 10 years of experience in software design and development, Dan has helped build products like QuarkXPress 8.0 and Fuser.com. His clients include Comcast Media Center, The Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee, Oracle, MySpace, Fidelity, Merrill Lynch, Wells Fargo, and public radio giant KCRW in Los Angeles.
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ClosePaul Bryan is a user experience strategist and researcher who started designing e-commerce web sites in 1995. He consults with large organizations on the strategy, direction, and design of their e-commerce web sites and mobile apps. Paul organizes the UX STRAT conference, and manages the UX Strategy and Planning group on LinkedIn. He's currently co-authoring a book on UX strategy for Morgan Kaufmann, and teaches user experience to graduate business students at the University of Georgia.
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ClosePaul Bryan is a user experience strategist and researcher who started designing e-commerce web sites in 1995. He consults with large organizations on the strategy, direction, and design of their e-commerce web sites and mobile apps. Paul organizes the UX STRAT conference, and manages the UX Strategy and Planning group on LinkedIn. He's currently co-authoring a book on UX strategy for Morgan Kaufmann, and teaches user experience to graduate business students at the University of Georgia.
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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.
Aarron is the author of "Designing for Emotion" from A Book Apart. Aarron taught design at colleges in the US and Europe for nearly a decade, and speaks at conferences around the world. His design guidance has helped the White House, the US Department of State, and dozens of startups and venture capitalists. Twitter: @aarron.
CloseIn 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.
CloseRob is responsible for the Sage Advisor product, which leverages "big data" customer intelligence to deliver a more personalized user experience. Previously, Rob founded a user experience consulting practice which operated for over 10 years. Rob's career spans several user-centered disciplines, including user assistance, training, usability, design, and product management. He is especially interested in research around big data, motivation, and innovation.
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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.
Pamela's company is a user experience research and strategy firm for Fortune 500s, startups, and other smart companies in financial services, tech, entertainment, healthcare and e-commerce. Over the past 15 years, she has logged thousands of hours in the field trying to better understand how people use technology, and has led hundreds of UX studies on almost every type of site you could imagine. Lately, she's been running large-scale competitive studies on top websites. Pamela's last name is pronounced 'pav-li-check.' Twitter: @paminthelab
CloseBest 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.
CloseAs UX Research Lead at Inflection, Andrea studies the role of public records and other 'people information' in daily life, integrating qualitative with split testing, data analysis, and customer support data. Andrea believes that organizations should learn from everyone who touches them-- customers, potential customers, partners, competitors, employees- and should understand the cultures in which these people operate. She helps teams reach the insights they need, so that understanding shines through in their products and services.
CloseUXers 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.
CloseDan Klyn is co-founder of The Understanding Group (TUG), teaches information architecture at the University of Michigan School of Information, and serves on the board of the IA Institute. He does IA work for clients including Herman Miller and JSTOR, and his research focus is also his hero: Richard Saul Wurman
CloseWhat 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.
CloseRonnie has served in UX leadership positions at Accenture, Dun and Bradstreet, Gextech (Spain), MISI Company and Slalom Consulting. While at MISI / NTT Data, Ronnie co-developed their Strategic Experience Alignment methodology. He has provided customer experience design thought leadership to over 120 clients from the C-suite strategic level to the team tactical level. He is the Lead Adjunct Professor/Program Director for Rutgers' Mini-Masters program in UX Design, and a past board member of UXPA.
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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.
For over 20 years, Phillip has worked as an interaction designer, an occasional developer, a word crafter, and a member, builder, and leader of design teams. In various roles at start-up, medium-sized, and giant companies, he's done strategic planning, problem finding and solving, systems thinking, product development, and program management. He embraces the ambiguous and values principles over rules.
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Defining and executing any strategic initiative is a challenge. In an organization of any size it requires more than just vision and know-how to overcome organizational ambivalence and inertia. Building highly productive, collaborative relationships is essential to executing many aspects of UX strategy. UX teams and initiatives face these challenges on a regular basis as well as being burdened with the problems of addressing critical skill gaps and orchestrating new types of work among both functional and organizational silos.
Innes & Friedland will discuss proven approaches for addressing some of the common organizational impediments to creating great user experiences. Learn how to define high level messages that resonate with executive stakeholders as well as how to set objective, measurable goals that foster collaborative relationships within virtual teams. We will highlight a number of situation-specific collaboration models, including those applicable to Agile, in order to help you achieve win-win outcomes and enable your overall UX strategy.
At Informatica, Liam leads a global team of designers and researchers to drive UX innovation company-wide. Previously, he held UX leadership positions at companies ranging from startups to Oracle, Microsoft, and Siebel Systems. Liam has experience across a variety of domains including: business intelligence, office productivity, CRM, enterprise applications, data integration, data warehousing, and system administration.
CloseJon Innes is founder of UX Innovation LLC, a product design management consultancy that specializes in helping companies improve their design & research practices. His experience spans a wide variety of domains including consumer and enterprise software, consumer hardware, IT projects, and e-commerce website design. Jon has led UX projects for several members of the Fortune 1000, such as Intuit, Cisco, & Siebel, both as a consultant and as part of an in-house team.
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Are you frustrated with your company's inability to think beyond the next quarter? Tired of being a fast follower? Business support is critical to successfully releasing new and innovative products to customers, however most companies only commit to looking at immediate and short-term results.
The Customer Experience team at Citrix courageously launched an innovation program to generate, incubate, and mature ideas with the ultimate goal of converting successful inventions into needs-based products. We took risks, failed fast, and learned from our mistakes. We'll be sharing our insights on:
At Citrix, Reena creates cutting-edge customer experiences, along with holistic processes and frameworks. Before joining Citrix, Reena was UX Manager at Rogers Communications. Reena also managed a design team at Research In Motion, spearheading the product and brand design of BlackBerry mobile, desktop and internet applications. Reena's portfolio includes CGI Group, Bell Canada, and Ontario Power Generation.
CloseElizabeth has 10 years of design experience, from product design and interior design to managing design teams. Currently, Elizabeth is leading strategic projects at Citrix, including remote access and collaboration products that transform millions of lives. She has been featured on Radio Johnny for process innovation, and will be working with Makerspace to hold "design thinking" workshops for kids.
CloseIn 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.
CloseIn 2011, Susan influenced Vistaprint's executive leadership to reorganize a distributed UX team – thus creating the UX Center of Excellence. The team has since doubled in size, and provides UX input and strategy into the development of products that empower 15 million small businesses each year. Susan has over 14 years of user-centered design experience at software start-ups, enterprise solutions and e-commerce companies.
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It would be an understatement to say that selling UX, especially strategic UX, to organizations is hard. In fact, many times it is nearly impossible! Even with the best explanation and facilitation in the world, many businesses struggle with justifying an investment in strategic UX, particularly in tandem with business and product leadership. How then can UX strategy practitioners and managers ever reach those with the purse strings - and convince them that spending money on strategic UX initiatives is a proven way to realize and increase business value?
These two speakers will explore this question. Paul and Lis take a component approach to the problem by looking at business value and UX strategy in small segments, and then plotting the intersections of those segments. This reveals the importance of UX strategy in terms of business success, and helps product and business leaders relate to the need for strategic UX practices.
At Centralis, Paul works with clients to create experiences around business and product goals in the context of research and overall design. Previously, Paul was responsible for user experience at Gogo, the in-flight internet/entertainment company. Before that, Paul worked at ThoughtWorks, where he led internal experience design workshops and provided key design work for Fortune 500 companies. Paul's portfolio includes Orbitz Worldwide, Stanford Hospital, NorthShore University HealthSystem, iCrossing, and Daxko.
CloseAs an independent consultant based in New York City, Lis helps businesses of all sizes ensure that their products and services meet business and user needs, and are successful and enjoyable. Lis' consulting clients include ESPN Mobile, espnW, and ViacomMedia Network. Lis also contributes to the UX community's knowledge by serving as an Advisory Board member for Future Insights events. Twitter: @lishubert.
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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.
A serial instigator, Brad directs the WebVisions conference, an event that explores the future of the web. Previously, Brad also launched the Hackathon for Social Good, where programmers and designers develop websites and apps for non-profit organizations; Arduino and robotics workshops for students; 24 Hour Comics, a marathon drawing challenge for illustrators and comic book artists; and more. In his day job, Brad is the Creative Director at Hot Pepper Studios, an award-winning design company.
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ClosePaul Bryan is a user experience strategist and researcher who started designing e-commerce web sites in 1995. He consults with large organizations on the strategy, direction, and design of their e-commerce web sites and mobile apps. Paul organizes the UX STRAT conference, and manages the UX Strategy and Planning group on LinkedIn. He's currently co-authoring a book on UX strategy for Morgan Kaufmann, and teaches user experience to graduate business students at the University of Georgia.
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