Design, Consequences & Everyday Life

This session examines design interactions beyond screens — supermarkets, train stations and kiosks alike — to examine the ways we’ve grafted the digital world into everyday life without bringing along the users of these tools and technologies. We’ll explore the ways that friction causes bottlenecks in the delivery of government services and how designers can use research and collaboration to uncover these pitfalls before they’re too hard to fix.

Inconvenient Insights: The Researcher’s Role is to Stay Curious

There is no shortage of data in our organizations, including that which comes from research studies, in today’s “data-driven” organizations. Due to sheer volume, attention is often focused on the myriad tools and methods that exist to gather and manage data, not on the importance of establishing context and coherence across data sets. This talk will explore how researchers are uniquely qualified to use a mixed-methods mindset to transform fragmented data collection into meaningful insights, examine the barriers that challenge this outcome, and learn from real world examples about how to get stakeholders to demand the same.

Sheryl Cababa on Systems Thinking for Designers

Sheryl is the author of the soon-to-be-released Closing the Loop: Systems Thinking for Designers.

With a background in journalism and political science, and having worked at or with Adaptive Path, Substantial, Frog, Ikea, Microsoft, and the Gates Foundation, Sheryl has an interest in the big picture of systems thinking and how it applies to designers.

Working on projects of enormous scale that could directly or indirectly affect thousands or millions of people can put researchers and designers in a state of paralysis as they realize the potential consequences of their work. Systems thinking can help move us out of that state of paralysis and into one of thought, collaboration, and action.

Sheryl explains how systems thinking fills the gaps that design thinking alone can leave behind.
• Expand your scope from the user to anyone who could be affected by the product.
• Don’t just ask how the product will be used. Asked why the product is needed at all.
• Expand your thinking. Think broadly about who the stakeholders are and the various contexts that could be impacted by your design.
• Imagine different solutions that you might not be able to execute, solutions that might require a policy change or a different business model.

An approach like the above will feel slower – at least initially. If you have impatient supervisors and engineers, gain alignment with them by getting them involved in the process.
• Help them understand the status quo and envision the future.
• Have them go through the exercise of creating visual maps with you.

What you’ll learn from this episode:
• The relationship between design and systems thinking
• How design thinking falls short
• How systems thinking fills in the gaps by expanding your thinking and looking outside your scope of expertise
• Why systems thinking feels slower but is more collaborative and more efficient in the long run
• How to gain alignment with your decision-makers

Quick Reference Guide
[00:00] Introduction
[01:44] Ways to overcome decision paralysis
[04:55] Navigating the complexities of the world through systems thinking
[06:45] The problem with formalized systems thinking
[08:24] Design thinking vs. systems thinking
[13:22] The kinds of interventions that drive successful innovation
[15:42] How long-term thinking helps overcome compliance issues
[17:38] The difference between Cloud Space and Clock Space
[22:10] How designers can tell their superiors to slow down
[25:22] An easy way to gain alignment with your decision-makers
[30:38] Sheryl’s gift to the audience
[32:05] Parting thoughts

Steve Sanderson and Lou Rosenfeld discuss how big organizations can hatch bold ideas.

Lou Rosenfeld and Steve Sanderson break down ways designers can use experimentation as a tool for innovation in enterprises. Steve also gives a preview to hot topics to be covered around innovating in big business at Enterprise UX, San Antonio, TX, May 13-15.

Becoming a ResearchH.E.R (Highly Enterprise Ready)

I very quickly noticed how my entire professional journey had molded me into a UX Researcher that had a broader reach with teams, people, customers/users, and industry knowledge. In the Enterprise space I was/am able to successfully leverage so many of my other skills obtained in my other positions to make me a dynamic well-rounded researcher outside of just knowing principles, cognitive behaviors, data synthesis, and writing reports. It was the culmination of all of me, owning and leveraging ALL of my experiences that allowed me to connect the UX dots to my previous 15 years of experience. Eventually, I was doing onsite interviews with various Silicon Valley companies and then landed at LinkedIn. I am a ResearchH.E.R – Highly Enterprise Ready.

Real-world lessons to improve your conversion rates (Videoconference)

In this talk, Erin tells stories about the lessons she brought with her from brick-and-mortar retail into the world of e-commerce. She draws parallels between what we do building digital products and what shopkeepers of yesteryear have taught us (and likely forgot). She also shares some fun experiment examples that were inspired by serving customers face-to-face in a physical shop.

Why Your Design Team Is Quitting, And How To Fix It

We’re on wave three of the great resignation. Job opportunities abound for designers of all stripes, and loyalty is at an all time low as we reassess our changing professional needs and ambitions in this new world. Liam Thurston leads a team of 55 designers and researchers at Loblaw Digital, building commerce, loyalty, and healthcare products for all Canadians.

Thurston’s team weathered the great resignation with resilience and thrived in the face of change; it left them even stronger.

In this talk, Thurston will teach you practical tools and processes for creating a Design Practice North Star, skills matrix, and an inclusive set of cultural rituals to build trust and create safety for your team, especially within a large organization. If you’re looking to level up your leadership practice in order to acquire and retain incredible talent who generate outstanding outcomes, this talk is for you!

Demystifying Multimodal Design: The Design Practice You Didn’t Know You’re Doing (Videoconference)

Did you know that you’re probably designing multimodal experiences? Most designers today are working in a multimodal environment, but haven’t been trained to make the most of the many capabilities the latest generations of devices provide. Your customers have a small universe of devices, and they now come with the ability to handle far more than traditional haptic input like keyboards and mice. Gestural input, from swipes to hand gestures in video calls to stylus input, is becoming more common. Audio input and output are becoming more important in a world where digital assistants are poised to make a second surge powered by large language model AI. Visual output has become much more nuanced, and sometimes spans multiple devices. How do you wrangle all of this, optimize for great experiences, and still keep the human at the center? By becoming more consciously aware of the different inputs and outputs we’re working with – and the many ways these inputs and outputs include and exclude our customers – we can build more resilient, more inclusive, and more powerful next-generation experiences.

Shaping design, designers and teams

Jason will share the latest of his work over the past decade developing visual frameworks for design teams, leaders and designers to map their skills and define their future professional development.

Through his role as a team leader, and with workshops he runs with the community and his clients, he has seen how valuable it is for designers to self-reflect on who they are, and project the areas in which they feel like they should develop. Whether that’s within, or beyond the context of the organization in which they work.

“Let’s Talk About Data and Crisis”: Public Digital Service Delivery = Open Data + Human Centered Design (Videoconference)

The public relies on government services during critical and meaningful events throughout their lives—from birth, travel, education, and healthcare to retirement and death. The global COVID-19 pandemic inevitably impacted these critical functions of our lives, and underscored the need for increased government technology and communications.

Digital platforms have proved to be key and effective agents in delivering critical and urgent information or services in the event of a public crisis, as opposed to physical infrastructure (imagine Dr. Fauci posting a paper bulletin to convey the latest national statistics for COVID-related data!). On the other hand, both private and public entities rallied around open data initiatives to inform critical policy decisions, share information, and work together to develop critical digital infrastructure that provided testing sites, kits, and results (e.g., call centers vs websites; office visits vs telemedicine).

To fully scale solutions such as these, we must first consider how we:

1. Use data to inform our technology in solving problems;
2. Provide assistance in a timely and approachable manner for end users; and
3. How we use data to invest in critical features and to quickly deliver information.