This Game is Never Done: Design Leadership Techniques from the Video Game World
You’ve probably heard a bit about “gamification”: how you can transform obligatory tasks into “fun” motivational ramps using techniques from games. Most of this is wrong! Behavioral science gets us a bit closer, but this session will focus on deep game design techniques that the video game world uses to generate lasting, rather than superficial, motivation. We’ll also dive into creative collaboration techniques used in game development to wrangle talent, the better to create awesome products.
Designing For Screen Readers: Understanding the Mental Models and Techniques of Real Users
Starting out with a ten-minute live demo from an expert screen reader user, Samuel Proulx will introduce you to not only how they work, but the thought processes behind using the Internet with a screen reader. What are some of the most important things to take into account when attempting to construct a mental model of a screen reader user? How do these effect the way you think about designing websites and apps? How can designers learn to move beyond thinking visually, to create designs that work for everyone? After this introduction, the floor will open to your questions! If you have burning questions about how people who are blind use the Internet, or what design patterns work best and why or why not, this is your chance! Ask any question at all in an open, safe learning environment.
Therapists, Coaches, and Grandmas: Techniques for Service Design in Complex Systems
Service designers can struggle to define our impact in complex organizations. This resistance can emerge because service design involves delving into root issues and encouraging transformative change. This approach can feel overwhelming or even unwelcome in environments unprepared for deep shifts; at other times, the problems are so tangled and complex that progress can feel elusive, leaving service designers questioning our own impact.
In these cases, the key to impactful work lies in a subtler approach: creating conditions for connection and growth rather than pushing direct solutions. Inspired by the roles of therapists, coaches, and grandmas, this talk explores three techniques for “bringing the dots closer together” within complex systems. By holding space, mirroring insights, and gently reframing perspectives, service designers can guide organizations toward meaningful change while honoring their pace and readiness. Let’s meet organizations where they are with understanding, trust, and gradual transformation!
Designing Health: Integrating Service Design, Technology, and Strategy to Transform Patient and Clinician Experiences
Healthcare in the United States often struggles to innovate in delivering optimal patient experiences across acute and non-acute settings. However, those service designers who work within large health systems get to experience first-hand on why it is extremely hard to implement changes in a singular or multi-level service interaction across healthcare touchpoints. In this case study, you will hear first hand learnings on how to influence the decision-making process of solutions that shape the patient and the clinician experience.
Ethics in Tech Education: Designing to Provide Opportunity for All
We know that ability is equally distributed among humans, but opportunity is not. As the need for skilled technologists grows, so must our ability to empower individuals with accessible tech training. The data that can be gathered about an individual’s learning patterns can help inform the ultimate personalized educational experience, accelerating the cycle from novice to master, or it could be weaponized – used to judge an individual and block opportunities for jobs and advancement. As we design experiences and systems, we become the ethical stewards of the impact we could have on millions of lives. It’s up to us to make the right, and often hard decisions. Hear from Mariah Hay, VP of Product at Pluralsight about her experience designing product for tech education, the choices her teams have made to avoid weaponization, and how human centered design can inform the ethical underpinnings of our missions, our companies, and our bottom lines.
Transforming Language with AI with Peter van Dijck
In the latest episode of the Rosenfeld Review, Lou sits down with old friend Peter van Dijck, author of Information Architecture for Designers: Structuring Websites for Business Success, one of the first books ever written on Information Architecture. Peter is now a partner of Simply Put, a Colombian company that builds and designs useful AI Agents—including the soon-to-launch Rosenbot!
Peter offers insight into the world of AI. Having been one of the first to speak about IA, it is fascinating to hear what he now has to say about AI. Join Lou and Peter as they take you through the journey where language itself is transforming from design to technology.
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
- An introduction to the Rosenbot, an AI bot that Peter’s company is developing for Rosenfeld Media
- Some basic vocabulary for speaking about AI and ML so you “don’t feel like an idiot”
- Mind-blowing truths about the potential of Generative AI’s language capabilities
- How writing has transformed from a design to a technology and learn what that means for how we interact with the data
- About the importance of highly curated information when training bots and the tricky balance that comes when you want to present less polished sources like unedited conversations
- The importance of the human side of things
- The biggest surprise that has come from working in the industry
Quick Reference Guide
[0:15] – Lou’s introduction of Peter Van Dijck
[3:00] – AI on a basic level
[4:59] – Generative AI’s language capabilities
[18:08] – How we interact with metadata and writing as a technology
[20:00] – How real-use cases make technology more exciting and instantaneous
[22:19] – Information about the new Designing With AI Conference
[23:33] – Some of the jargon around AI and IA
[24:16] – Introduction to Lou’s Chat Bot, the Rosen Bot
[24:39] – The importance of training bots on highly curated information
[28:34] – The tricky balance of curated and less polished content
[30:26] – The human side of things
[31:55] – Different interaction models
[37:58] – The biggest surprise working in the industry
[38:30] – A Gift For You
Designing For Screen Readers: Understanding the Mental Models and Techniques of Real Users
Starting out with a ten-minute live demo from an expert screen reader user, Samuel Proulx will introduce you to not only how they work, but the thought processes behind using the Internet with a screen reader. What are some of the most important things to take into account when attempting to construct a mental model of a screen reader user? How do these effect the way you think about designing for accessible, public use? How can civic designers learn to move beyond thinking visually, to create designs that work for everyone? After this introduction, the floor will open to your questions! If you have burning questions about how people who are blind use the Internet, or what design patterns work best and why or why not, this is your chance! Ask any question at all in an open, safe learning environment.
More Than Technology: Personalized Public Sector Experiences
Through GovDelivery, Granicus sends over 17 billion e-mails every year on behalf of over 5,500 state, local, and federal government agencies. As the first Fedramp approved communication platform of its kind, Granicus is uniquely positioned to develop insight and innovation based on the voice of the residents we serve. In this session, Granicus leaders Angy Peterson and Bob Ainsbury will share a vision of a personalized public digital experience– and the impact that could be possible through the power of data and human centricity.
How Technology Can Empower Marketing: a Chat with Theresa Regli
Does your company struggle to find and use video, audio, and image assets after you’ve created them? Do they disappear into a dark netherworld on your server? In this episode, Theresa Regli, author of Digital and Marketing Asset Management, breaks down what to ask before buying kludgy and expensive software. And which vendors rank highest on her list of otherwise lackluster DAM vendors.
The Unspoken Complexity of “Self-Care” with Deanna Zandt
At the July Civic Design Community call, hear from Deanna Zandt (she/her). The term “self-care” is thrown around a lot these days but there’s a more complicated picture than just taking a bubble bath and hoping for the best. In this call we talk about what’s missing from our conversations about self-care. We also discuss how human experience is fundamentally messy, but designers (and coders) like to make everything clean and neat. We’ve got to start reckoning with that. Our goal is that you walk away with a sense of the care structures that you have and need in your own lives, and a sense of what designing care into our systems could look like.
About our speaker:
Deanna Zandt is a writer, artist and award-winning technologist living in Brooklyn, NY. She spent 15 years working at the forefront of social justice, technology and media; after she burned out for the third time, she realized that maybe that work didn’t suit her particularly well. Currently, she spends her time: supporting other very impressive people and organizations behind-the-scenes with their technology; writing & drawing when she feels like it; walking and playing with her two dogs and their friends; connecting with humans near and far; and figuring out how to exist with meaning, fulfillment and as many giggles as possible. We’ll be talking (and very likely giggling) about her zine that traverses the constellation of self-soothing, self-care, community care and structural care.
