Sentient Socks: The Future of Fashion and Tech with Liza Kindred

How much do you want your socks to know about you? Should they alert you that they need to be repaired or be made of self-cleaning fibers? Or should they be able to go one step further and order you a new pair as soon as they’re worn out? Lou sits down with Liza Kindred, founder of Third Wave Fashion, to talk about wearables, tech, and how “me” commerce is leading the charge for mindful tech.

Liza will be speaking at To Be Designed, our future and tech virtual conference on April 25.

Bubbles of Belief: Dave Gray Talks Liminal Thinking & Current Events

Technology is unintentionally conspiring against you: making sure you only see more of what you like and agree with. How do we as a people expand our point of view when arguments are no longer productive? Dave Gray’s returns to talk with Lou Rosenfeld about how his latest book, Liminal Thinking, applies to Brexit and the recent U.S. election.

“Accessibility is the Oil Change” with Sheri Byrne-Haber

Sheri is the author of the upcoming book Giving a Damn about Accessibility, and a speaker at Design at Scale 2021 this June 9-11. In this latest Rosenfeld Review podcast, she discusses the critical importance of starting projects and products with a mindset of accessibility. Spoiler alert: it’s far more difficult to go back later.

VMWare, where Sheri is currently an Accessibility Architect, recently launched an Accessibility Champions program, increasing their hires with disabilities and those with interest in specialized training. She and Lou talk through the program and other ways you can scale accessibility—even while acquiring new companies, as Sheri has experienced (more than ten in two years!)

Sheri recommends:
Haben Girma, the first Deafblind graduate of Harvard Law School
Lily Zheng, DEI Consultant

Data-Driven Design with John Paul de Guzman

Being simultaneously data-driven and creative seems paradoxical. So does building statistics into the creative process. John Paul de Guzman has managed to do both. As the founder and chief creative of Frost Design and Consulting Group, and speaker at the upcoming DesignOps Summit, millions of Filipinos have been impacted by their work with major FinTech and telecom projects.

Much of the UX/UI talent in the Philippines is self-taught, often struggling with the gap between academic training and industry expectations. To address this, JP developed a systematic approach to training and design processes.

John Paul and Lou discuss how Frost has embraced data-driven design, which, contrary to the creative chaos one might expect, has led to more efficient workflows and better client outcomes. By integrating tools like Trello and Figma, and leveraging AI for task management, John Paul has significantly reduced administrative overhead. This approach allows designers to focus on their work rather than getting bogged down in busy work. They can track work in real time, eliminating the need for status meetings and improving overall productivity—a win-win for both the team and their clients.

What You’ll Learn from this Episode:

How John Paul and his team at Frost systematically integrated data into their creative processes
How John Paul addressed the talent gap in his company
The tools he uses to track workflows and achieve always-current status on projects
How probabilistic analysis helps predict project timelines and manage client expectations more accurately
How John Paul is integrating AP in the project-tracking process

Quick Reference Guide:
0:13 – Introduction of John Paul
2:16 – The path that got John Paul where he is today
5:18 – What it means to be data-driven
8:39 – Systematizing the data-driven design process by tracking workflows
11:58 – Mapping the workflow
16:01 – Break
18:45 – Tools for probabilistic analysis and managing time
24:11 – The level of granularity John Paul’s team tracks
25:56 – Handling aspects of work that are more conceptual and difficult to atomize
30:46 – John Paul’s gift for listeners

Reflection in Action with Jodi Forlizzi

Jodi Forlizzi has taken an unusual path to get where she is today. With an art degree from the University of Arts in Philadelphia, she began working as a technical illustrator at the University of Pennsylvania. Transitioning into UX design as the internet expanded, she pursued a Master’s in Interaction Design at Carnegie Mellon University where she is now a professor. Jodi’s work focuses on responsible AI and diversity in computer science. Her talk at the upcoming Designing with AI 2024 conference will explore the evolving role of AI in design processes and products.

Jodi distinguishes between “designing with AI” and “designing AI,” arguing the importance of designers’ involvement in the entire product development lifecycle. She highlights the challenges of AI innovation, such as data availability, value generation, customer adoption, and ethical considerations and emphasizes that designers have a place in all realms of AI development.

Jodi’s interview offers a glimpse into the evolving landscape of AI-driven design and the pivotal role of designers in shaping its future. With a blend of historical context, personal anecdotes, and insights, she inspires designers of all stripes to embrace the challenges and opportunities presented by AI innovation.

What You’ll Learn from this Episode

How Jodi went from a Master of Fine Arts degree to working on responsible AI at Carnegie Mellon
Why designers are needed in all phases of AI development
How careers morph as technologies develop and become obsolete
Lessons from history and the “friendly vending machine”
Why solving for “Drunk Island” problems is usually more helpful than chasing a loftier issue

Quick Reference Guide
0:25 – Introducing Jodi
2:59 – On boundaries around innovating with AI
6:40 – 4 reasons AI models fail
8:07 – The role of designers and the challenge of starting the design process from the middle of the double diamond
11:49 – The role of bridge builders
14:48 – The morphing of careers due to the emergence and prevalence of AI
17:19 – Commercial break – Managing Priorities: How to Create Better Plans and Make Smarter Decisions by Harry Max
18:26 – AI as a design material
21:08 – Constraints and structure on AI as a design material
24:39 – Jodi’s gift for the audience

AccessibilityOps for All

The Cigna Digital Design Operations stood up a new Digital Accessibility and AccessbilityOps team. Digital accessibility as a general term is the inclusive practice of ensuring that digital products (websites, apps, PDFs, etc.) can be used by everyone — including those with a disability or physical impairment — while retaining functionality and usability. Our team ran into many roadblocks including establishing processes, team structure, organizational support, and human resource issues, including onboarding a new team member who was blind. This case study showcases the steps, challenges, and lessons learned standing up a Digital Accessibility Ops team at a Fortune 100 Health Insurance company.

A Design Ops Girl in a Dev Ops World

DevOps has spent a decade focused on tooling that allows developers to code, deploy, monitor, and optimize quickly and efficiently. Along the way, many within that community forget that the people within that community and the developers that they serve are, first and foremost, people. Hear what happens when a Design Ops professional finds herself embedded in a DevOps team, helps them see each other as people, and applies a bit of design thinking, tools and techniques to help them learn the skills necessary as the people they serve move from the information age to the conceptual age.

Greg Petroff and Lou Rosenfeld discuss how GE woke up and got serious about UX

Four years ago GE discovered it was one of the largest software companies in the world–but not building software very well. Hear how Greg Petroff, as GE’s Chief Experience Officer, slowly built a community inside the company to evangelize the importance of design in a developer-focused culture. Greg will give the opening keynote at the Enterprise UX 2015 conference in San Antonio this May 13-15.

Panel: Design Systems and Documentation

Designers need to work with developers. One of the core ways they have learned to do this is by taking something from the designer’s playbook—pattern languages—and mapping that against one of the chief learnings from contemporary engineering: componentization. By using design systems and associated object based documentation systems, design leaders have helped to reshape the designer/developer universe and improve operations within the software development lifecycle. Facilitated by Dave Malouf.

Principles of Team Wireframing

Wireframing is not just making sketches; it’s about team communication. Make handoffs clear, know why you’re wireframing, and annotate your work. Roles like Product Managers, Designers, and Developers all benefit from wireframing for different reasons. PMs can clarify requirements and sketch ideas, designers can generate multiple options, and developers can understand what’s easy or hard to code. So yeah, wireframing is great for teams, not just designers.