Design in Product 2023 Full Program Announced
We’re excited announce the full program and workshops lineup for Design in Product 2023! On November 29-December 1, these experts will take the stage to tackle real questions and discussions surrounding the design and product fields.
What is Design in Product 2023 about?
Design in Product is a conference dedicated to the intersections of—you guessed it—Design and Product. Whether you’re moving into a product role, or looking to be a better partner with product peers, Design in Product will prepare you for success in product-centric organizations.
This year’s conference is centered around three themes.
- Aligning and partnering—Nailing the basics of alignment and partnership are table stakes for getting past the friction that often plagues the PM/UX relationship.
- Setting and defending priorities—Product managers and UX practitioners need to work together to set priorities, develop roadmaps.
- Influencing and politcking—Product managers seem to have mastered the trick of influencing without authority. Can UX practitioners learn to do the same?
Who are the keynote speakers for Design in Product 2023?
Ellen Chisa is a Partner at boldstart ventures investing in enterprise infrastructure, SaaS, and developer tooling companies. Before joining the boldstart team in January 2021, she was the CEO & co-founder of Dark (https://darklang.com) a programming language coupled to its editor and infrastructure.
Her opening keynote, The Values of Design, has the aim of answering questions such as “How can I create more business impact, while still feeling like a designer?”
John Cutler focuses on the messy overlaps and patterns of product—The Beautiful Mess (the title of his newsletter). John currently supports product teams at Toast as Senior Director, Product Enablement. Before Toast, he interacted with diverse product teams and product leaders worldwide as a product evangelist and coach at Amplitude.
John will close out this year’s conference with his keynote, The Alignment Trap, where he will explore what alignment really means in the context of complex unpredictable work.
Who else is speaking at Design in Product 2023?
Asia Hoe is a Senior Product Designer and a multidisciplinary product design leader who brings her obsession with detail and systems thinking to product development and design systems for organizations tackling today’s biggest issues in health, education, and society.
Her session, Partnering with Product: A Journey from Junior to Senior Design, will dive into our product designers and product managers can play to their strengths and find a way to meet at the focus of the products: the users.
IHan Cheng, Design Manager at Compass Digital, is an experience orchestrator who thrives in ambiguities and currently works as a Design Manager at Compass Digital. IHan blends optimism with practicality, excelling in bridging ambitious visions with viable executions.
You will be able to see her at #DiP2023 co-presenting the session, Design and Product: from Frenemy to Harmony with Iain McMaster.
Iain McMaster is the Director of Product at Compass Digital as well as an experienced Product Leader in the Food Technology industry. With a solid background in product development and a passion for innovative solutions, Iain brings a unique blend of expertise, collaboration and humor to every endeavor.
Iain will be co-presenting the session, Design and Product: from Frenemy to Harmony with IHan Cheng.
Laureen Kattan is a Principal Product Manager at Coforma with a decade of experience in product management across the financial and government services sector.
Laureen will be co-presenting alongside Julie Kim in the session, Centering Patients and Clinicians in a Complex Government Ecosystem, where she will discuss how to navigate challenges and foster success in support of the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) and its goal to relieve over-burdened clinicians and improve patient care.
Julie Kim is a civic-minded product designer, writer and maker. She leverages her past experiences in architecture and urban planning to bring unique perspective to her current digital design practice. Currently, Julie works at Coforma as Senior Product Designer.
Julie will speak alongside Laureen Kattan at the session, Centering Patients and Clinicians in a Complex Government Ecosystem—a talk about strategies for prioritization within a complex ecosystem of business owners, and centering patients and clinicians through a strong UX/Product partnership.
Dr. Chloe Sharp has over a decade of experience in research and has been a co-founder of a research and grant-writing consultancy working with multiple startups, scale-ups and SMEs across different stages of the product development lifecycle. She currently works as a Product Research Consultant and Coach at Sharp Insight.
Her talk, Using Evidence and Collaboration for Setting and Defending Priorities, will explain how UX Research and Product Teams can collaborate to identify innovation opportunities and develop products and services customer and users need.
Alfred Kahn is a strategic, outcome-focused design leader skilled in helping companies achieve business goals while navigating data-rich, complex problem spaces. He works at 84thomas as a Design & Strategy Consultant.
Alfred will be presenting the talk, A Seat at the Table: Making Your Team a Strategic Partner, will explore the ways Design can transition from being seen as a tactical resource to being seen as a strategic partner.
Shan Shen leads the product design experience in the e-commerce space, currently as a Principal UX Designer at Custom Ink. Her role is to empower customers to create unique custom products that foster deep engagement with their communities and promote their cause. She creates products and fosters a collaborative space where great ideas can thrive and make a difference.
At #DiP2023, Shan will highlight instances where UX terms consistently hinder collective problem-solving between UX and product teams at her session, Translating UX Terms into Business Contexts.
If you’re interested in viewing the full conference program, click here!
Will there be workshops at Design in Product 2023?
The short answer is YES! Following the conference on November 29, we will be offering two virtual workshops across two days. These workshops combine the cutting edge expertise of some of the world’s leading product and UX experts with the same high quality that people love about Rosenfeld Media’s books and conferences. Here are a few of the reasons why those at #DiP2023 are worth attending…
Great topics such as metrics and design for SaaS
Catt Small will be leading Saas Design Strategy Intensive: Stop Being a Paintbrush, Start Being a Visioner. In this workshop, you’ll learn and practice techniques to become a more strategic SaaS designer. Catt Small, an industry leading Staff Product Designer, will draw on her experience at Etsy, Soundcloud, and Asana to help you identify and navigate the political roadblocks that keep many designers stuck in the ideological playpen at SaaS companies. You’ll form alliances with designers from across the industry in the fight for better product decisions and higher-quality user experiences.
Who is this workshop for
- Senior Designers who want to make a substantial and meaningful impact on products and their subscribers
- Staff and Principal Designers who want to truly be heard, not just seen by peer functions
- Lead Designers who are frustrated by being left out of important decisions that affect their work
Adam Thomas will be leading Survival Metrics. In this workshop, you will learn to implement faster cycles of decision-making, interpret data collectively to increase confidence and build trust, clarify company values enough to model them in your team’s work, convince teams to change direction when necessary, learn how to turn strategy into something usable, and leverage data-informed decision-making.
Survival Metrics is a framework that helps teams find clarity in their strategy, use metrics to create a culture of data-informed decision-making, and build trust in the product organization so change doesn’t feel as risky. Survival Metrics clarifies the way forward, transforming the specter of change from a bogeyman into a boon.
This workshop will outline how product teams can leverage the three pillars of survival — being fast, data-informed, and politically safe — to plan for change to avoid ambiguity and get all stakeholders excited to move forward.
Pre-requisites
- A basic understanding of the creation of product (product engineers, product designers, product managers)
Who is this workshop for
- Product managers, product designers, product engineers who are struggling to adjust and operationalize strategy in the market
We have wise instructors—Catt Small and Adam Thomas
Catt Small is a product design leader, game maker, and developer who has 13+ years of experience working with companies of all sizes including Asana, Etsy, and SoundCloud. She is currently designing a more enlightened way of working at Dropbox. In her spare time, Catt makes awkward video games, writes, and draws artwork of all kinds. You can view her work on her website.
What can we learn by following our curiosity, embracing the unknown, and creating amidst chaos?
This is the question that propels Adam Thomas’s career as a technologist, product expert, and all-around thinker and creator. His answer so far? We can learn that our potential is limitless and we have an amazing array of options for living, working, and playing better.
Seizing every opportunity to dive deep into these topics and more, Adam regularly holds his signature workshop on product strategy, management, and leadership, publishes his newsletter on all things tech- and product-related, and is frequently booked as a speaker on podcasts, conferences, and other forums dedicated to bright ideas and big possibilities.
A humane schedule
We know there’s only so long you can remain engaged in a workshop. That’s why we spread it out across two days. Our virtual workshops will take place over two 4-hour sessions on November 30-December 1. From 9:30am to 1:30pm PT, our workshop instructors will be connecting with you virtually to host their lectures, activities, and more! Four hours across two days for one workshop of your choice.
Interested in attending? Register today!
Unveiling Rosenfeld’s newest book, Design for Learning: User Experience in Online Teaching and Learning
Want to motivate and engage those glassy-eyed, fatigue-stricken remote learners? The ones who’ve been inundated with virtual classes since 2020? Say hello to the ultimate game-changer: Design for Learning: User Experience in Online Teaching and Learning, a new Rosenfeld Media book release by Jenae Cohn and Michael Greer.
Whether you’re new to the world of online instructional design or you’re an old pro looking for some exciting new engagement strategies, Design for Learning can guide you towards creating a captivating, student-centered virtual learning experience that’s anything but dull.
Addressing the challenges of online learning and online course design
It’s no secret that the rise of screen-based learning brought challenges to students and teachers alike. The New York Times recently reported on a fall 2020 survey by Strada Education; it found that nearly three in 10 students said their ability to learn was much worse online than in person.
So what can course instructors do to support remote learners and help them to stay on track? Design for Learning has the answers.
What will you gain from reading Design for Learning?
In this brand-new book from online-teaching experts Jenae Cohn and Michael Greer, you’ll gain insider info on building your online learning space and keeping your virtual charges alert, engaged, and eager to learn more.
Teachers, learning development professionals, and anyone tasked with designing an online course (or a one-off class or workshop) will learn how to apply industry best practices to their virtual classroom, tackling such areas as:
- Incorporating text and audio
- Planning and producing videos
- Recording sound and voice-overs
- Facilitating live webinar presentations
…and much more!
What readers say about Design for Learning
Angela Gunder, Chief Academic Officer at the Online Learning Consortium, says, “I found myself nodding, grinning, and cheering as I poured through the chapters, as Cohn and Greer’s personalities sparkled within the prose, bringing their humanity and heart to our broad work in education.”
Meet the experts behind Design for Learning: User Experience in Online Teaching and Learning
Design for Learning co-author Dr. Jenae Cohn writes and speaks about online teaching for international audiences, serves as the Executive Director for the Center for Teaching and Learning at UC Berkeley, and has designed resources for teachers, facilitators, and coaches on ways to improve learner engagement online. She is the author of the book, Skim, Dive, Surface: Teaching Digital Reading (2021).
Co-author Michael Greer is an independent writer and editor who has taught online courses in writing, editing, and multimedia, and has served as founding editor of the journal Research in Online Literacy Education. He writes about user-centered design, interactive media, and digital publishing.
See for yourself: Take a look inside the book
There’s no doubt you have an invaluable wealth of knowledge in your field, but are your virtual lessons resonating with your students as well as they could be? With Design for Learning: User Experience in Online Teaching and Learning, you’ll be sure to advance your virtual instruction to the next level.
Want more? Check out a sample chapter (Chapter 1) for a snippet of what’s in store.
Becoming a changemaker: 3 takeaways from 3 designers of change
In an increasingly complicated environment filled with volatile dilemmas, how do we engender change? According to Maria Giudice and Christopher Ireland, authors of Changemakers: How Leaders Can Design Change in an Insanely Complex World, this requires leading with design.
In their invaluable book, Giudice and Ireland speak with changemakers across different disciplines to gain insight into the interplay between design and leadership. Here are three takeaways about creating change—each from one of the design world’s most influential leaders:
John Maeda, VP of Design and Artificial Intelligence at Microsoft, says to lead with clarity
“I’ve always tried to build a culture based on Kim Scott’s concept of radical candor. This doesn’t just mean being transparent. There’s transparency and then there’s clarity. I’m always driving toward clarity in roles and relationships and accountabilities.” Read more
Liz Ogbu, Founder + Principal of Studio O, argues that sometimes you may need to be the one who changes the system
“[Changemaking is] not accepting the status quo as the complete answer. My job is never to come in and say, ‘I’m going to do it the way it has always been done.’ I often come in with the premise that the way it has been done has not been good for everybody, and part of my mission is to make sure that everybody is done right by whatever we accomplish. So basically, that means that I’m often in a position of having to make change, and of having to adapt the system to achieve that goal.” Read more
Doug Powell, Former VP of Design at IBM, emphasizes that temporary setbacks are just that—temporary
“It might slow a team down when they are initially adopting and developing the behaviors and practices. That middle manager who is so resistant early on is thinking ‘Oh my god, it’s going to take two months for my team to really figure out how to do this well.’ But then once everything’s in place, then you’re going to be on a glide path and you’re going to be flying.” Read more
Want to learn more about becoming a changemaker and leading with design? Dive into Changemakers: How Leaders Can Design Change in an Insanely Complex World, available in paperback and all common ebook formats. You can also listen to authors Maria Giudice and Christopher Ireland interviewed on The Rosenfeld Review podcast here.
The DesignOps Summit Conference Program is Now Live!
The DesignOps Summit’s three-day main program (October 2-24) is now available. Don’t miss out on the premier annual event for people who lead design operations and teams. We’ve selected a lineup of diverse, talented speakers, and a variety of talks centered on our three themes.
- DesignOps is Changing: The pandemic, the war in Ukraine, layoffs, and now the explosion of AI… These global trends are directly impacting design organizations; we’ll cover what they mean and how they change the way you’ll practice DesignOps in the months and years to come.
- DesignOps is Practical: From design systems and documentation to AI tools and DE&I practices, we’ll address the approaches and techniques that you can and should adopt to impact your organization right away.
- DesignOps+: DesignOps is more than scaling and maximizing efficiency. We’ll dig into the human side of DesignOps, from nurturing your career and lifting up your team, to improving collaboration and growing a more inclusive DesignOps profession.
If you’re thinking of attending, keep in mind that our early bird registration deadline is August 15. Groups of three or more get 25% discount when registering concurrently (enter code GROUP).
Enterprise UX 2023 Conference Materials are Available
If you attended our recent conference, Enterprise UX 2023, head over to the program page to view the videos, sketchnotes, slides, resources, and session notes! If you didn’t attend, you can also get access to these materials by purchasing the recordings.
Podcast: Changemakers Maria Giudice and Christopher Ireland discuss their new book
Authors Maria Giudice & Christopher Ireland join Lou to discuss their new book, Changemakers: How Leaders Can Design Change in an Insanely Complex World, which comes out on January 17.
Get a taste of what they cover in the book, from systems thinking to navigating change, and how to look broadly at patterns to understand the context in which you are establishing change. The authors explain the wide range of industries they drew from in their research and interviews, as well as the highly emotional aspect of changemaking in society today. Bonus: they share some tools you can use to become a changemaker.
Maria recommends: The Knowledge Project podcast – interviews with an eclectic range of people. Host Shane Parrish is one of the best interviewers Maria has ever heard!
Christopher recommends: Non-profit Interact Project, which provides free design education to kids in underserved communities.
This week: What Every Designer Should Know about Interface Engineering
Bill Scott, veteran of Yahoo! and Netflix and author of O’Reilly’s Designing Web Interfaces, tackles interface engineering in our next live webinar, scheduled for 1-2pm EST this Thursday, February 26.
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Mobile Design Strategy: Don’t Make This Mistake
On September 12, our next event, The Mobile UX Summit, is coming to your virtual office! We’ve asked Josh Clark, Brad Frost, Theresa Neil, Greg Nudelman, Jason CranfordTeague, and Mike Fisher for 27 tips and 2 case studies on designing mobile experiences. You’ll walk away with new mobile UX insight and skills, get some questions answered—and the session recordings are included with your registration.
This week we talked to Greg Nudelman about an important mistake to avoid in mobile design strategy:
Greg Nudelman: I think one huge mistake people make is to assume that by using a simple app porting service they can turn an iOS app into an Android app. While this may work for some games (well… sometimes… and sort of), the same assumption FAILS for any content or search-driven apps in most other categories. The truth is there are about one million apps in each of the app stores (Android and Apple) so the competition is fierce in every category.
There is simply no substitute for knowing the OS conventions and using some of the basics as the anchor to start your mobile design. And OS formats are changing rapidly—witness nothing less than fundamental changes in both leading mobile platforms from Android 2.x to 4.x and Apple iOS 6 to iOS 7. And if you do decide to break the app conventions, it helps to know them first—that’s where design pattern books can be of help; books like Theresa Neil’s Mobile Design Patterns Gallery (O’Reilly Media, 2012) and my own Android Design Patterns (Wiley, 2013) are great resources. So to succeed with your mobile app, you will need to:
- Understand the conventions of the OS you are building for
- Start with a simple paper or sticky notes prototype to allow yourself to explore various design directions, fail quickly and cheaply and iterate rapidly
- Test early and test often to make sure the app uses the appropriate patterns and meets your customers’ needs and does so in an original, intuitive and delightful way
Good luck and see you at the Summit!
Sign up now to reserve your virtual seat at our Mobile UX Summit on September 12!
Podcast: Design Beyond Devices—Creating Multimodal, Cross-Device Experiences with Cheryl Platz
Cheryl Platz—Rosenfeld Media author, emcee of our Advancing Research and Enterprise Experience conferences, puppeteer, and Principal UX Designer at Gates Foundation—shares the inspiration that drove her new book Design Beyond Devices: Creating Multimodal, Cross-Device Experiences (due out in late 2020). If you’re an interaction designer, you’ll want to listen as Cheryl dramatically expands our understanding of one of interaction design’s final frontiers.
Cheryl recommends:
- Wired for Speech by Clifford Nass and Scott Brave
- Follow Cheryl on Twitter
- Get updates on her new book
Podcast: Making Conferences More Accessible with Darryl Adams, Intel’s Director of Accessibility
With the surge in popularity of, and need for, hybrid and virtual events, Lou sits down with Intel’s Director of Accessibility, Darryl Adams, to discuss how technology can make in-person and virtual conferences more accessible and inclusive to speakers and audience members with disabilities. He also speaks to how accessible conference design can be improved and fine-tuned for speakers with disabilities, and help those without disabilities feel more comfortable presenting. What kind of accessibility principles and design factors should conference hosts consider for audience members with disabilities and those without disabilities when setting up for in-person and virtual events? How does this technology increase engagement and diversity in attendance? Listen as Darryl and Lou touch on all these topics, and more.
Darryl recommends: Demystifying Disability by Emily Ladau
Darryl Adams is the Director of Accessibility at Intel.?Darryl leads a team that works at the intersection of technology and human experience helping discover new ways for people with disabilities to work, interact, and thrive. Darryl’s mission is to connect his passion for technology innovation with Intel’s disability inclusion efforts to help make computing and access to digital information more accessible for everyone and to make Intel an employer of choice for employees with disabilities.
