Now published: Research That Scales by Kate Towsey!

Unleash the Power and Fun of Creative Thinking in User Research (Part 1 of 3)

Bringing together market and user research (Videoconference)

Market researchers and user researchers face similar pressures: their work is becoming increasingly democratized and gaining attention (and scrutiny) from their organizations’ stakeholders. They’re also converging upon each other, sharing methods and space in the funnel. Where should they draw the line between their practices, and where should they join forces? Jemma Ahmed, Head of Insights at Badoo, explores the growing intersection between user and market researchers.

Theme 2: Research as Applied and Evolving Practice

We’re great at listening and empathizing, but those qualities can become millstones in business settings that require advocacy, assertiveness, and persuasion. We are often isolated in teams, which may limit our ability to learn and grow. How might we develop our skills and our team’s skills to become strong, valued partners in our organizations—while maintaining the attributes that enable us to make sense of the complexity around us?

Learning Velocity—The Insights Speedometer (Videoconference)

Measuring the success of research efforts is a critical capability in maturing our discipline and increasing our influence. This Advancing Research call is an opportunity to hear about “learning velocity,” how it’s being applied at Fidelity Investments, and what that could mean for you. Fidelity’s Jen Cardello, head of UX Research & Insights, and Jen Otto, head of Research Operations, shares how learning velocity has become a significant outcome that drives both ResearchOps initiatives (e.g., democratization) and the way they conduct and measure the effectiveness of research at Fidelity. Jen and Jen outline what learning velocity is and how it fits into Fidelity’s outcomes-based approach to research strategy.

Communicating the ROI of UX within a large enterprise and out on the streets

UX is being recognized as a significant business differentiator for new as well as established organizations. This recognition has come with inevitable questions regarding how best to express the value of design teams and quantify the influence of design thinking methods and practices on a company’s bottom line. Design teams are seeking new ways to develop and refine UX return on investment (UX ROI) models for use as communication tools across a wide range of products, services and complex business environments.

In this talk, JD Buckley will discuss an emerging model to communicate and measure the impact UX teams provide to businesses. Further, she’ll examine how this evolving process framework and model might be applied across other intricate environments inside and outside enterprises, including as a tool to reflect the impact of an anti-gun violence educational toolkit for middle-schoolers and educators.

Keeping Up with Rapid Growth—From Startup to Enterprise with Kit Unger

Kit Unger started her UX career as a “team of one,” and now manages a team of over 30 people as Senior Director of Experience Design at Smartsheet. We’re excited to have her as the leader of a group of presentations on “Keeping Up with Rapid Growth – From Startup to Enterprise” at Enterprise Experience 2020.

In this episode, she shares the role she wishes she’d hired for 20 employees ago, the elements of scaling a team quickly, and offers a preview of her EX2020 speakers’ presentations.

Closing Keynote: Getting giants to dance – what can we learn from designing large and complex public infrastructure?

Airports are vital pieces of national infrastructure. They cost billions, and can take decades to design and deliver. We expect them to meet the day to day needs of millions of users, operate totally reliably, survive changing climate conditions, whilst providing a return on investment for their owners and operators. Stephen Pollard from Arup will explore the past present and future of a major airport in London, looking at challenges and successes to understand how best to manage design at the nexus of people, process, technology, and large complex assets.

Charting the future of DesignOps: A community workshop (Videoconference)

Each year brings new advancements, challenges, and opportunities to the DesignOps community, but this time seems much different—for DesignOps people and the design profession in general. It may be high time to reexamine and re-map DesignOps’ context, framing, and direction.

We’re convening some of the leading DesignOps minds to reflect on the current state of our practice and its context and value in digital product and service organizations—and we want you to be a part of it.

Watch the recording of this interactive moderated session with David Malouf, Patrizia Bertini, Peter Boersma, Theresa Slate, Z Zheng, Jon Fukuda, and Bria Alexander. Together we set the roadmap and framed our goals—both for the next DesignOps Summit and, more importantly, for the future of the DesignOps craft.

We spent time together mapping out new scenarios for DesignOps in Figjam, and we opened up the DesignOps Summit’s Call for Participation during the session.

 

DesignOps in a Post-Industrial World: Crash-Coursing Complex Systems with Jeff Sussna

Lou and Jeff Sussna discuss the challenge of synthesizing development and operations in a digital world. How do you scale design as part of a responsive digital business when everyone is digital? Jeff Sussna is the author of Designing Delivery. As principal at Ingineering.IT, he helps clients apply Agile, DevOps, and Design Thinking to maximize delivery speed and service quality.

#metoo and the IA Community: Karen McGrane and Lou Rosenfeld Confront a Difficult Topic

In this episode of the Rosenfeld Review, Karen McGrane and Lou address the growing concerns over sexual harassment at the IA Conference and other industry events. Karen and Lou explore the #metoo movement’s impact on the industry and what steps we can all take to address what’s happening.