Now published: Research That Scales by Kate Towsey!

What It’s Like To Be a User Researcher at Compass

Join the moderator, Kayla Farrell (Sr User Researcher), as she runs a Q&A session with Chelsey Glasson (Staff User Researcher), Sean Fitzell (User Research Manager), and Jared LeClerc (Sr User Researcher), as they discuss life as a user researcher at Compass.

(Remote) Service Design: A Transformation Case Study

Alana Washington will illustrate how rapid iteration, 100s of virtual post-its, and a bit of design therapy helped transform our service model during a global pandemic.

The Power of Difficult Conversations: A Case Study on How We Introduced Design Ops in the Federal Government Space

A large federal agency was interested in improving the experience that individuals have with their digital services, as well as the velocity at which they were able to improve those services. But through our research, we found that they didn’t have the design roles, tools, or processes in place to support this goal and make it successful.

As a digital services firm that specializes in human-centered design and design ops, we came up with a plan to get them where they needed to be. We started by having a difficult conversation with them about design maturity, what it would take to be successful, and how design ops could help. We then introduced a series of training sessions on human-centered design, which prepared us to have conversations about design roles and processes, as well as tools. And finally, we were able to collaborate with them through a series of engagements to see how these things should work in practice.

Through our experience, we learned this is not an uncommon challenge. There are likely many entities (both public and private) that know they need to evolve their design practices, but don’t know how. By sharing how we introduced design ops to a federal client, we hope to inspire others to help promulgate design ops in a wider variety of sectors and client types.

Scaling Empathy, A Case Study in Change Management

Organizations of all sizes often struggle to reap the full benefits of change, especially in times of transformation, despite huge investments in technology and process. This is often because employees don’t understand how their role is changing. It may seem simple to just clarify roles and responsibilities, but as with consumer facing products, people are unique, complex, and motivated by factors that aren’t always easy to discover. Additionally, designing for the employee can also mean designing for stakeholder buy-in.

This is a story about a real world approach to building practical application of empathy across multiple disciplines and reporting lines, overcoming reservations, navigating politics, with the goal of building a lasting partnership where employee UX design/execution is a team sport and never outsourced.

Integrating generative AI into enterprise products: A case study from dscout

Join dscout for an in-depth case study walking through a first-year journey of integrating Generative AI into an established enterprise product. In a session tailored specifically for product teams, the speakers will delve into the paradigm shifts in UX professionals to technical relationships, strategies, and processes.

dscout’s Jonathan Fairman, VP of Product, and Kevin Johnson, Head of AI, will discuss how the stochastic nature of AI technologies led to the move of a piloting approach to development and traditional wireframe testing of concepts no longer possible.

Ahead of Competition: Learn What UX Benchmarking Can Do for Your Business Today

In our session we will deal with efficient and fast possibilities of UX measurement. Does the web presence or app look attractive and inspiring to new and established users? What are the strengths and weaknesses compared to the competition? We will present insights from our UX Online Benchmarking, which show that the implicit first impression is decisive. Get first insights about the eCommerce, insurance, and travel industries!

Leveling-Up: A Single-Player’s Guide to the DesignOps Team-of-One

Design operations is not for the faint of heart. In many ways, design operations for the team-of-one is a choose-your-own-adventure game; it’s essential to choose your own path in this new discipline. In this session, you will learn about the challenges encountered, and lessons learned from the perspective of a single-player design operations manager at EA, one of the largest gaming companies in the world. You’ll walk away from this talk with a strategy guide on how to navigate design operations in your organization, and the methods and best practices you can use to be a resilient team-of-one.

AI as Infrastructure

Dan Hill is the director of the Melbourne School of Design at the University of Melbourne, and author of Dark Matter and Trojan Horses: A Strategic Design Vocabulary and Designing Missions. And he’s the opening speaker at the inaugural Designing with AI 2024 conference, where he’ll be presenting “Designing for the Infrastructures of Everyday Life”.

Like it or not, AI is a growing part of our infrastructure—not just the infrastructure of our phones, our computers, and the internet—but that of our physical world. It’s increasingly used to support the very fundamental systems that maintain our cities, hospitals, utilities, and educational systems. On some levels, this is cause for concern. After all, we’ve seen other implementations of AI (think riding-sharing services) that have not lived up to their promise but have instead aggravated some of the problems they sought to address.

Dan is a big-picture guy with an ability to draw principles from history and other sectors. He understands that utilizing AI is inevitable. The challenge is recognizing the interconnectedness of our various systems and working together to build infrastructures that truly create better life experiences for all.

What You’ll Learn from this Episode:

  • The many facets of infrastructures
  • How AI is currently being used and how it might be used in the future to support our infrastructures
  • Why ride-sharing is not exactly an AI model worth repeating
  • Why the Japanese and Finnish models work well in those environments but aren’t necessarily transferable to more diverse cultures
  • Why quality of life will only improve with a more holistic, integrated design approach

Quick Reference Guide
0:37 – Introduction of Dan
3:49 – AI as infrastructure
8:30 – How AI might be used to further support infrastructure systems
12:09 – Will the impact of AI actually make life better?
18:59 – Plug for Managing Priorities by Harry Max. Get 15% off!
20:15 – The metaphor of designing looking through a lens and technology’s impact on the material world
26:16 – Helpful models – the Japanese and Finnish cultures
31:52 – Dan’s gift to the audience

Solving Big Problems: Examining the Value of Creativity and Diversity with #EX19 Curator Dave Sifry

Dave Sifry is one of our curators for this year’s Enterprise Experience 2019 Conference – the 5th edition, which will be more focused on cross-functional collaboration. Dave brings a background in computer science, has launched and advised an impressive variety of startups, and now works in the Bay Area with a focus on organizational design.

After getting a computer at the age of 9, Dave realized he was hooked on programming, and the joy of figuring out problems to help create solutions for products and companies. After founding several companies and learning from both mistakes and failures, Dave shares the insights he gained from those experiences. From how creativity in an institution can create more innovation company-wide, to the importance of team diversity, Dave brings a wide range of perspectives to this year’s conference curation team.

“Could you make it worse?” Redesigning HealthCare.gov

A self-described “failed architect,” Sha Hwang joins Lou to discuss the challenges of scale when merging two companies, and his journey from Trulia and Stamen Design to being part of the team that rescued Healthcare.gov and, subsequently, founding Nava, a public benefit corporation formed during those efforts.

Sha Recommends:
Civic Technologists Practice Guide www.amazon.com/Civic-Technologis…ide/dp/1735286508

Sha will be speaking at Design at Scale 2021 this June 9-11. rosenfeldmedia.com/design-at-scale…/the-lost-year/

About Sha’s talk, The Lost Year: The pandemic made it painfully clear that the failure of critical public services causes real harm, both physical and financial. Our healthcare system is being overwhelmed, millions are pouring onto unemployment, and we’ve seen an unprecedented number of people trying to access government programs. It has never been more important for government services to be simple, effective, and accessible to all, yet we’re far from that vision today. In this talk, Sha Hwang, co-founder and chief operating officer of Nava Public Benefit Corporation, will discuss the opportunities designers have to build government services that prioritize equity and resiliency—and the responsibility that comes with designing systems that serve millions of people.