A Conversation with Don Norman: Reflections from a UX Guru on the Profession of Design | | BIBA | Details | 1 | |
Don Norman | |||
When people are asked to identify a UX guru, "Don Norman" is the most frequent response. Don has published 19 books and countless articles on user experience. His classic publication The Psychology of Everyday Things was first published in 1988 and because of its long-term relevance to the design world was revised last year with new examples and an expansion to include the role of emotion in user experience. In the interval between the two editions, expectations regarding product and services in technology and other industries have shifted significantly. Don is one of the first successful UX pioneers and continues to be a UX giant in industry, whose thoughts and opinions are highly valued by companies that want to deliver the ultimate user experience. We are fortunate to have Don as the keynote guest at our You in UX summit, where he will share his thoughts on the evolution of the UX profession and the industries we support. We also hope you'll take the opportunity to bring your burning UX career questions and obtain his sage insights. |
Free Advice: You Get What You Pay For | | BIBA | Details | 2 | |
Paolo Malabuyo | |||
Do you feel you need to figure out how to make Agile work for UX since
that's how everyone else is doing it? Should you try to create disruptive
experiences if you don't like how things are going? Should you trust your gut
and not worry about the potential pitfalls ahead of you? Throughout your design
career you'll receive lots of free advice. Some may be good and some may be
bad. However, beware of the good sounding advice that actually isn't right for
the situation, problem or you. Paolo Malabuyo is the VP of Advanced UX Design
at Mercedes-Benz R&D and has been a UX designer for 19 years. He has been
the recipient of lots of advice, both solicited and unsolicited, that has both
helped and hindered his career development. Sometimes what appeared sound
advice at the time later became, not just irrelevant, but actually caused
problems. He will share the top three pieces of advice he received that weren't
helpful and yet knows other UXers are still receiving the same advice today. He
wants to set the record straight and tell others why they should ignore certain
types of advice and take alternative paths. He will provide real-world examples
from his own career which spans the domains of enterprise, gaming, social, and
automotive to illustrate a set of lessons he's learned over the years.
Top Career Takeaways & Learnings for You: |
Career Conversations: Communicating Your Aspirations with Clarity and Impact | | BIBA | Details | 3 | |
Tonya Peck | |||
Are you still expecting your boss to know exactly what you want for your
career progress and disappointed when progress doesn't happen? Have you heard
that you're responsible for your own career, but feel cheated because someone
else should be doing more to help you? The truth is you can probably do more to
help yourself make the progress than you're currently doing.
Tonya Peck, Director of Global Learning and Development at frog design, has developed an approach for having the crucial career conversation at work. The approach provides individuals with a framework to prepare for the conversation so they can understand exactly what it is they want and what they need in order to achieve it. Then the next step is then having a plan and awareness of conversation tactics to engage in the critical career conversation with a manager, mentor, or peer. Large organizations have rarely provided people in the UX profession with a clear systematic path to career progression, often because the numbers were small and diversity of responsibilities broad. Organizational documented approaches provide some assistance, but to have the career you want requires you being proactive and intentional with critical conversations. The approach Tonya will share is not only powerful for career conversations, but for any quality conversation where you need to work towards a shared outcome. Top Career Takeaways & Learnings for You: or coachee |
Design and the Speed of Competition | | BIBA | Details | 4 | |
Patrick Whitney | |||
For almost twenty years three trends have contributed to the growth of
human-centered design: them, continually get shorter. characterized by companies knowing how to make almost anything, while being less and less certain about what to make. Designers have thrived in this situation because they look beyond features and see UX as a holistic system of interactions with all of the touch points that are relevant to users. In many ways design has succeeded. It is normal for design and research to be included up front. But now that it is standard procedure it no longer provides a competitive advantage, thus the speed of competition has increased. Companies have decreased time and certainty, which pressures designers to reduce the time to develop deeper insights. Add to this that for every ten or twenty ways for a project team to create a better user experience only one will lead to a viable business. This situation presents new opportunities for design. The ability to see problems in a broader context focused on the company, not just the user experience, is required to help identify what to build given all of its options. |
Getting "There": Embracing the Evolution of UX and Design Career Opportunities | | BIBA | Details | 5 | |
Thomas Lockwood | |||
The corporate world is changing. Fast. And there is a growing hunger to
understand the power of design, user experience and creativity. But what are
companies really looking to achieve? How can companies adopt a "creative class"
or design thinking mentality? And how should creative UX professionals
capitalize on these rapidly evolving and expanding corporate needs? Drawing
from his extensive UX experience of working with UX leaders and companies
globally, both as an advisor and leadership recruiter, Thomas Lockwood will
explore the current opportunities in UX, and design at large, from a corporate
and global point of view. He'll provide a perspective on industry changes in
product and service design departments, including customer experience and
innovation, and provide a few interesting company cases. He'll share his
thoughts on relevant trends in organizations, and discuss the links between UX
and other key corporate functions like innovation and customer experience.
Top Career Takeaways & Learnings for You: how to get "there" changes with a little career coaching organizations and expend UX capabilities to support the predicted changes |
PANEL -- Getting the Job You Want: Insight & Advice from UX Recruiters | | BIBA | Details | 6 | |
Thomas Lockwood; Bobby Morgan; Carrie Smith; Angela Yeh | |||
Have you been considering a job change, but feel intimidated about starting
the process? The reality is there are more UX jobs out there today than there
are qualified UX professionals to fill them. Companies are looking for UX
talent to shape the future of their products and services. If you are willing
to work hard and know how to work smart, you can find the job you want. And
this panel can provide you with strategies to success! What are the skills
recruiters and hiring managers are looking for today? What are the most common
mistakes people make during the interview process? How can you enhance your
resume and portfolio? This panel of experts can tell you. This group of
recruiters has cumulatively placed thousands of designers and researchers with
major companies around the globe, and gathered tremendous insights in the
process. Take control of getting the job you have been dreaming about by
learning from the experts.
Top Career Takeaways & Learnings for You: |
Elevating UX through the Introvert/Extrovert Spectrum | | BIBA | Details | 7 | |
Angela Craven; SuAnne Hall | |||
Behind every successful design engagement is a well-rounded dynamic team.
However, the culture and expectations of design agencies are largely built
around the outspoken, gregarious personality. Group brainstorming, on-the-fly
presentations, and open workspaces have become the norm in design settings. For
many of us, encountering personality types with more intensity than a high
school debate team has become a daily challenge, so how can we all be
successful while still staying true to our naturally-effective styles of
working and communicating?
As fellow introverted UX designers ourselves, we set out to discover just how many designers tend to be more on the introverted spectrum, and also uncover what makes them successful, what makes them tick, and how they use their introverted qualities as leaders to round out their teams and create great designs and experiences. In our findings, we heard deeply personal stories about lessons learned when going against natural tendencies and pretending to be a gregarious and spontaneous conversationalist, and inspirational stories about how displaying quiet confidence can be effective when dealing with powerfully strong voices in a large meeting. Whether the idea of introversion speaks to you, or you more readily identify with more extroverted qualities, everyone can benefit from tapping into their quiet side. Your career will benefit from a year's worth of research on this topic and advice from introverted leaders in the UX industry. Top Career Takeaways & Learnings for You: introverted and extroverted skillsets in order to make super teams of design professionals successful leader and influencer by utilizing skills that come naturally to you characteristics and skills inherent to introverted designers |
How Working Abroad Can Help You Reawaken the Designer Within | | BIBA | Details | 8 | |
Melora Zaner-Godsey | |||
Have you daydreamed about working in another country? Have you wondered
about the pros and cons of moving abroad?
Melora Zaner, Senior Director at Yahoo Design APAC, is an American that has spent the last 9 years in Asia working for multinational organizations. When Melora was still in the US she abundantly conducted international research -- disappointed to discover the hard way that it wasn't enough to develop global products. So she embarked on a journey to become a truly global designer. She decided to immerse herself in the culture, moving to Shanghai to build design studios across several markets in Taiwan, Hong Kong and China. Nine years later her experiences abroad have transformed her into a Change Agent and a far more inspiring leader. Melora will share how seeing the world through new eyes changed her as a person and allowed her to fall back in love with Design. Each day presented new challenges, such as navigating large cities with unique cultures and language, negotiating the price of services & goods using hand gestures, and growing young designers with little to no English skill to have common design process, language and skills. She found these designers to be hungry to learn, innocently innovative and inspiring. This reawakened her to the fact that design problems, and hence design inspiration, can be found all around us. These challenges allowed her to learn what she was truly capable of, growing her voice, creativity and confidence along the way. Melora will also discuss the challenges she and many others face working away from corporate headquarters and how she successfully navigated those complexities. We can all imagine what it would be like to leave all we know behind in search of inspiration and knowing! Top Career Takeaways & Learnings for You: |
Deciding Whether You Want to Be an Independent UX Consultant and Succeeding If You Do! | | BIBA | Details | 9 | |
Cory Lebson | |||
Have you ever considered becoming an independent UX consultant? But not sure
what might be involved or how to make the leap? Cory Lebson, Principal of
Lebsontech and President of UXPA International, has been a user experience
consultant for 20 years. He started his own consultancy and has written and
spoken about what it takes to become a successful UX consultant. In this
session Cory will talk openly about the pros and cons of being independent, as
well as help you think through what needs to be done before making the leap. In
addition Cory will share what to do once you have committed -- how to build
your brand and network, how to setup benefits, and how doing UX related things
without pay can help keep you employed. If you have ever considered becoming an
independent consultant you want to miss Cory's wisdom, humor and tales of
caution!
Top Career Takeaways & Learnings for You: consultant retirement, and vacation days) that are equal to or better than what you can get from an employer |
Using Your Powers for Good -- As a Career | | BIBA | Details | 10 | |
Cyd Harrell | |||
Almost every UX practitioner will tell you they entered the field with hopes
of making the world a better place. But often our daily jobs creating
commercial products, optimizing funnels, or improving entertainment experiences
for already privileged people don't satisfy that desire. Yet those are the
obvious jobs that are available if you want to be paid for UX work. Recently,
however, a whole world of civic design has blossomed. There are opportunities
to improve the experience of voting, participating in public dialogue, even
paying parking tickets -- in short to make the lives of many, many people
better through work on the citizen experience.
Citizen experience advocate Cyd Harrell will share her path from financial services through consulting to a full-time civic UX career. She'll discuss various models and opportunities for every practitioner to work on design problems that really matter, whether as a sideline or a major career focus. The public sector is undergoing an awakening about design, very similar to the private sector's awakening to UX 15 years ago -- it's an incredibly exciting and rewarding time to apply your abilities to the public good. Top Career Takeaways & Learnings for You: |
Navigating Change by Fully Embracing the Twists and Turns | | BIBA | Details | 11 | |
Donna K. Flynn | |||
Crooked paths through life and work are a marker of rich experience. How can
you harvest wisdom from all the experiences you collect along your crooked
pathways? How can you own your journey, even when you're not sure what's around
the next corner? And how do you choose to tell the story of your life? Donna
Flynn has made masterful transitions throughout her career, from cultural
anthropologist to international policy work to UX Research Manager at Microsoft
and most recently to Director of WorkSpace Futures at Steelcase. In this talk,
Donna will share things she discovered along her own twists and turns that help
her leverage each experience along the way -- such as learning more from your
mistakes than your successes, maintaining a beginner's mind, and reframing your
experiences and skills to open doors into new challenges, new disciplines, new
industries. Few of us trod a truly linear path through our career, but we all
have a rich compendium of experiences to weave into a narrative that can
empower us in every future step we take.
Top Career Takeaways & Learnings for You: |
Taking the Long View with UX: Successful Leadership Strategies that Involve Building Trust, Empathy, and Relationships | | BIBA | Details | 12 | |
Patañjali Chary | |||
Getting user experience to the business leadership table is often thought of
as a process of just building the right kind of user experience team,
collecting and sharing reams of usability engineering data, and educating, even
convincing people that "we are worthy" as UX professionals to have a seat at
the "big" table, and perhaps just "holding out". But are these kinds of
strategies, like "design by two-by-four" really effective in the end? Is there
a better way that actually works in the long-run?
What it actually takes to EXECUTE on a product designed for the marketplace (and not just come up with great ideas that never get built -- a far too often heard outcome in UX circles) is an entire set of collaborators. Business is all about trust and relationships, and therefore, so should UX be. Patañjali Chary, Vice President of User Experience at Ultimate Software, will tell you that in the end, it's all about building trust, empathy, and forging solid relationships with the entire product team and beyond. He understands that UX folks can sometimes be "nervous" when their designs are not accepted out-right or in "the now". Rather ironically, it's about learning to strategically "let go". In this talk Patañjali will discuss how he coaches his organizations to take the long view of UX success by first focusing primarily on building partner trust, even over compelling design, which requires a high level of patience and empathy. Top Career Takeaways & Learnings for You: the business process and cohesion strategy, just like a business does short term design wins |
Adventures of a UX Executive: Advice, Lessons and the Superpowers You'll Need | | BIBA | Details | 13 | |
Catherine Courage | |||
What are the responsibilities that come with the title VP, especially when
getting the title means moving to a new company that hasn't previously had
someone in that position before? How do you decide if it's the right move for
you? How do you decide if the company is genuinely going support the role and
not going to expect miracles overnight? If you have a UX VP does that mean you
finally have a UX nirvana working environment for people working on the team?
Catherine Courage found herself in this position almost 5 years ago, when she
was approached by Citrix to become their first VP of User Experience. She
accepted the position after some careful consideration about what she wanted
and what the company expected. Her success on the job has been recognized with
her promotion to Senior VP two years ago. Catherine will share her journey from
UX director to Senior VP and her approaches for successfully transitioning to
executive management and what her day job now looks like, and a few of the
surprises of being an executive. She will also reflect on what opportunities
are now available to her UX team because there is an SVP of UX, and also the
challenges that go with it.
Top Career Takeaways & Learnings for You: ready to support it management role large organization |
Career Shifts: Making a Change When You WANT to... Not When You HAVE to | | BIBA | Details | 14 | |
Joey Benedek | |||
Are you considering a change? Perhaps changing the product you work on?
Maybe wanting to switch to a new discipline? Or even considering changing
companies? We all need to make changes to stay engaged and grow our sense of
personal mastery. But what are the best ways to make career shifts? Joey
Benedek, Director of Software Product Management at Blackberry, has made a
variety of shifts during his career such as moving from UX Research into
Product Management, moving from individual contributor to people manager and
then executive, moving from one company to another. Across his journey Joey has
critically examined the process of career change starting with the motivations
for change such as a desire for personal growth or promotion, the enriching and
sometimes surprising benefits of making a career shift and finally how a move
can most seamlessly be accomplished by exploring opportunities, leaning into
your network of trusted advisors and being careful not to shift too many
variables at the same time. Join Joey as he recounts his own shifts which have
led him to a well-rounded, successful and fulfilling career.
Top Career Takeaways & Learnings for You: |
Two Shades of Green: Working at a Design Agency vs. Working on a Company UX Team | | BIBA | Details | 15 | |
Tjeerd Hoek | |||
Ever worked at a company and wished you had the opportunity to work with
multiple clients on completely different projects in very different domains? Or
worked at an agency missing the opportunity to, for once, drive a great idea to
its full completion, wishing you could 'own' on a single product through to
release? Design leaders on either side of this fence often cannot escape the
notion that the other situation is more desirable, especially when you're
having a tough day. But exactly how do these two environments compare? If we
got to walk in the shoes of the other person what would we learn, and what
could we do differently?
Today Tjeerd Hoek is VP of Creative for Europe at frog's studio in the Netherlands, but before joining frog seven years ago he was UX Director at Microsoft responsible for shipping major products like Windows and Office. He has the experience of working in both worlds in senior UX leadership positions. Tjeerd will share his journey of transitioning from an in-house design organization to a design agency. He'll consider the differences and unique challenges of the situations, and what experiences were invaluable from being a leader in a large software company as he moved to a globally operating innovation firm active in many different segments of industry. He'll also reflect on what he's learned from his agency experience that he now thinks would've been valuable when managing a UX team in a corporation. As an experienced UX leader Tjeerd will have perspectives on what these differences mean as a manager of UX organizations and as a leader in the client and team relationships. Top Career Takeaways & Learnings for You: work types |
PANEL -- Moving through Management: What it Takes to Manage UXers | | BIBA | Details | 16 | |
Chad Maxwell; Bojana Ostojic; Ian Swinson | |||
Are you considering becoming a manager? Are you already a manager looking to
sharpen your management skills? Being a UX manager allows you to support and
grow UX professionals which is a vital and rewarding experience. Our panel of
experts are long time UX managers and will share their expert knowledge accrued
in the trenches. The vision of management is often perceived to be the decision
maker, working on the best projects and delegating the rest. However this group
will tell you it is not as glorified as that -- it is the balance of managing
demands from above and below, defending resources, relationship maintenance,
glorified administration tasks and prioritizing time to be with your team. So
why do people step into management and what keeps them there? Many reasons.
This panel of talented managers will share their experiences as managers from what got them started, to what they have loved about being a manager, to key challenges they have faced along the journey. Whether you are already in management or considering the management path this panel will give you valuable insights and perspectives. Top Career Takeaways & Learnings for You: |
A Path to Success by Throwing Yourself in Completely, All the While on a Cloud of French Perfume | | BIBA | Details | 17 | |
Genevieve Bell | |||
Have you ever felt like an outsider at the company you work at? As if you
see the world in a different way than most of the people you work with? Have
you struggled to make sense of industry and embrace their regimes of value, not
just tolerate them? In 1998 Genevieve Bell decided to join Intel because she
believed they were in the middle of the most important conversation happening
in the world -- the future of internet technology. She deeply believed she had
an important and unique perspective to bring to that conversation. However, she
was a foreigner to the technology world. She describes her first days at Intel
as feeling like Alice as she stepped through the looking glass -- everything
was familiar and yet unfamiliar at the same time and the pace of technology was
a white rabbit whizzing to and fro. So she turned an ethnographic lens on
everyone and everything around her to figure out how to make what she was
deeply passionate about relevant to her new colleagues. In this talk Genevieve
will share her personal experiences of becoming crystal clear on what mattered
to her and then finding a way to not just understand technology culture, but
throw herself in completely, allowing her to make deep and lasting change.
Top Career Takeaways & Learnings for You: relevant to them |
What's Holding You Back? Getting That Promotion is More Than UX Smarts | | BIBA | Details | 18 | |
Gayna Williams | |||
Have you ever asked your manager the question, 'What do I need to do to get
promoted?' and received an unhelpful answer? Or have you worked incredibly hard
to later realize your manager didn't appreciate what you did? Most of the time
it's not your design or research skills that are influencing promotion
decisions, but less tangible skills that managers have a hard time identifying
and giving feedback on.
As a UX Director at Microsoft Gayna Williams interviewed other UX Managers to gain clarity on the skills that got UXers promoted and the mistakes that stalled their promotion paths. The results were consistent across UX Managers, and as it turned out, across other disciplines, too -- there is a common set of fuzzy skills that contribute to balancing out a portfolio of career skills. The key lies in reframing the conversation from getting yourself promoted, to thinking about what you can do to be indispensable to your manager. Gayna now works as a career and leadership coach and has turned this work into a powerful self-mentoring guide, consisting of thought provoking questions that have propelled individuals into action. In this session Gayna will expose common missed opportunities that can hold you back from promotion, and how you can start taking action on these opportunities in your current job. Top Career Takeaways & Learnings for You: job every day |
Build a Twenty-first Century UX Career: Passion, Purpose, Profit | | BIBA | Details | 19 | |
Surya Vanka | |||
How does a large company transform itself from a technology led company to a
user experience driven company? How do the skills, responsibilities and
partnerships of designers and researchers change as the transformation is
happening?
Surya Vanka has been User Experience Director responsible for best practices and UX engineering standards at Microsoft. He will unpack the five principles underlying Microsoft's innovative, integrated user experience model. He will showcase a ten year journey of developing an authentic design voice and language, and describe how this was born from clarity of purpose and a shared sense of mission. He will offer insights drawn from the cultural transformation of a large company that was known for technological prowess into one that is driven by user experience. Top Career Takeaways & Learnings for You: led transformation occurs |
UX Career Framework: 8 Dimensions to Help You Build a Plan and Move Forward | | BIBA | Details | 20 | |
Ian Swinson | |||
As UX professionals we spend a ton of time talking about design and research
activities but relatively little time talking about or formalizing a framework
for planning and nurturing our careers. While many of us have access to formal
career ladders, they are often interesting artifacts, but rarely useful tools
to help you plan short-term or long-term goals. In addition years of public and
contentious discussions about formalizing the UX profession have spawned lively
debates with little concrete progress.
To address this gap Ian Swinson, Senior Director or User Experience at SalesForce.com, conducted interviews with senior User Experience professionals across industries to investigate what have been pivotal moments in their careers. The result is the creation of a UX specific career framework and workshop that helps you systematically think through your skills and interests, then frame those into potential career paths. That insight then enables powerful and directed career conversations between managers and employees. At its core the process treats career planning as a design exercise. This UX Career Framework is not meant to serve as the ultimate expression of the myriad UX career variations. However, it is a powerful step forward in establishing a dialog about UX careers, what makes them unique, and how we can ultimately take control of our careers and design the future. Top Career Takeaways & Learnings for You: insights to systematically think through how your skills and interests combine into potential career paths employees |
Beyond the Money: The Joy of Using Your Skills to Help Someone | | BIBA | Details | 21 | |
Dana Chisnell | |||
What does it take to change the world using your UX skills? Have you found
yourself searching for a project beyond your day job that would allow you to
give back? Dana Chisnell is the person election officials across the United
States call on when they need to do something about ballot usability and
design. In fact, Dana is one of the US leading experts on the design of voter
guides and ballots. But she didn't set out with the goal of becoming famous for
this work. In this session Dana will share how her life changed because she
recognized she had something to share. Not something to sell. Not something to
get her rich. A set of skills she could share with people that wouldn't
otherwise have them. It began in 2000 when Dana realized the issue with the US
presidential ballots was not one of technology, but rather a design and
usability problem. That single starting point launched a 14 year adventure that
has led her to train thousands of government officials across the country,
conduct extensive research and co-found the Center for Civic Design. Learn how
following your natural curiosity can lead to rich experiences, new domain
knowledge, thousands of connections and deep personal fulfillment.
Top Career Takeaways & Learnings for You: workplace |
Empowering Teams to Achieve Extraordinary Outcomes | | BIBA | Details | 22 | |
Mike Tschudy | |||
Have you ever felt like you are pulling a team against their will toward
innovation? Are you ever frustrated when you can clearly see the path forward,
while partners feel like your approach is too radical? It is these contexts and
scenarios that make Mike Tschudy the most excited as a design executive. "There
is no such thing as a boring design problem" Mike says plainly. Change can be
difficult for anyone -- perhaps even more difficult in organizations that have
been successful in the past and are hesitant to risk their current revenue
stream -- a classic innovators' dilemma. However, that is often where
innovation magic is ripe to occur. Mike has learned to move cultural mountains
by hiring some of the best UX people, removing organizational and cultural
barriers to risk taking, empowering them to have a daring point of view,
building trusted relationships with partners then bringing everyone together to
achieve extraordinary outcomes. Mike's idea of holding everyone accountable to
extraordinary outcomes comes from having worked in diverse areas such as
automotive, technology, medical and finance, as he has come to understand the
patterns of what is necessary to grow great teams and achieve the unachievable.
In this session Mike will share lessons learned across his experiences about
what it takes to make an organization deconstruct their current offerings and
then move to a new state. Specifically Mike will discuss how in his role as
Head of Design for Intuit Consumer Ecosystem Group and Mint.com he has been
able to help the organization redefine their mission from helping people manage
their finances to empowering people to meet their dreams -- and why a
transition like that is a backbone to energizing an entire company toward
innovation!
Top Career Takeaways & Learnings for You: rather than conflict experimentation and accountability |
Amp up Your Credibility with Leadership Presence | | BIBA | Details | 23 | |
Sabina Nawaz | |||
Leadership is not simply about performance and hard work. Leadership roles
also go to those who look and act the part. The shorthand for this
characteristic is "executive maturity," or "executive presence." How you show
up as a leader might be a factor if you're a rock star designer or researcher
yet find that your impact isn't as high as you'd like it to be.
Sabina Nawaz has experience in software development as a leader of major products and as an architect of leadership development strategy across a global enterprise. She's currently a coach, trainer, and thought leader on the topic of leadership working with executives in many Fortune 500 companies. In this workshop she combines industry research with her work coaching leaders and her personal experience leading organizations. Sabina will coach you in the art of leadership presence and provide you with an action plan on how to raise your credibility as a leader. Top Career Takeaways & Learnings for You: impact with them presence |
Changing Times: Design is Not a Nicety but a Necessity. What Does that Mean to Your Career? | | BIBA | Details | 24 | |
Doreen Lorenzo | |||
There was a time when a designer in a company was considered to be someone
in a black turtle neck sweater at the back of the room. Not so anymore --
design has moved all the way to having a seat at the table, participating in
leadership think tanks, and influencing strategy in the C-suites. There's never
been a time where design has been in such high demand.
No one knows this more than Doreen Lorenzo, currently President for Quirky.com and previously President of frog Design. She has seen a tremendous increase in companies looking to design to save companies, create company cultural shifts, and deliver on the experiences their customers are demanding. These requests are coming from a broad variety of industries who have not previously considered user experience a priority. How are designers choosing to respond to the demand and responsibilities that go with new UX job responsibilities, and what skills does it tap? While demand in corporations for more design is high, innovative and creative individuals have more choice in how to see their ideas come to light with new crowd funding models and innovation models. Doreen is now CEO at Quirky.com which provides an extremely novel approach to developing products. Quirky has shifted the paradigm of listening to customers to listening to customer inventors. Top Career Takeaways & Learnings for You: industry is making |
From Ideas to Action You Dreamed it. Now Do It! | | BIBA | Details | 25 | |
Tracey Lovejoy | |||
Do you have a vision of what you want to be doing in five years' time? Are
you clear about what your main objective at work is at the moment? Do you know
what you want to have achieved by the end of today? Speakers at You in UX have
likely filled you with possibilities of new career potentials as well as ways
to improve your current situation. But how do you move from a list of possible
ideas toward implementing those that will move you to the life you've dreamed
of, all while balancing work, school or other daily commitments? Research has
shown that setting specific and challenging goals leads to higher performance.
If you want to succeed, you need to set goals. And once you have goals, you
need to figure out the steps to make them a reality and the tricks that will
keep you motivated and on track.
Leadership and Career Coach Tracey Lovejoy will present proven strategies to help you identify and clarify your goals, break down goals into achievable chunks and maintain momentum, even when you have lost confidence or willpower. Only you have the ability to take charge of your future. Don't let the new possibilities you've imagined become a distant memory. Start taking action today! Top Career Takeaways & Learnings for You: |
Shipping Innovation: Skills & Tools to Deliver on UX Vision | | BIBA | Details | 26 | |
Don Lindsay | |||
As UX professionals we have a vision of the experience customers expect when
they engage in using our products. Delivering on this vision is full of
challenges, and depending on where we sit in the organization challenges are
different. The skills required to handle the challenge may sound the same but
in reality they may be very different in execution.
Don Lindsay is a veteran in navigating corporate R&D so his UX organizations can successfully deliver on UX visions. He has led teams to deliver some of the industry's defining experiences including Apple's Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows and most recently Blackberry 10. These platform experiences are long-term development commitments and require the collaboration of extremely large engineering teams. He has experienced the challenges UX faces as he has moved between individual contributor, director, and VP during his career. Knowing the needs of each partner, and keeping the goals of the UX vision intact, will ultimately define the product that the customer will experience. Top Career Takeaways & Learnings for You: corporation priorities |
Demystifying Negotiations for Creatives | | BIBA | Details | 27 | |
Ted Leonhardt | |||
Learn to negotiate with confidence and win the fees and salary you deserve.
Ted uses real-world stories to demystify the negotiation process. Does negotiating intimidate you? Have you left a meeting with the vague feeling that you caved in too soon? Ted posits that feeling gun-shy and giving in too soon are common in the creative community, and that such costly missteps can be avoided. Using his own appealing illustrations and a light touch, the author identifies principles and strategies to help designers of every stripe earn more money. Top Career Takeaways & Learnings for You: |
Managing Complexity and Making Progress -- Is This an Oxymoron? | | BIBA | Details | 28 | |
Sara Ortloff Khoury | |||
When a large global retail company requests progress in user experience how
does UX leadership prepare to deliver? When the size and complexity of the
business and the organization is immense where should you focus? How do you
deliver results when the business you're delivering too is dynamic and
constantly moving?
Sara lives the experience of stepping into an executive leadership position which requires her to rapidly understand the complexity of the changing marketplace, enabling technologies, costumer behavior and innovate while deliver business results. She knows the strategic value of relationship maps to get up to speed and stay current with the right people in the organization. She knows how to translate between executives and teams and turn business problems into design opportunities. And she knows the importance of trust between herself and her team so they can continue being bold in expanding the impact of UX @WalmartLabs. Top Career Takeaways & Learnings for You: center |
PANEL -- Leveraging Organizational Savvy for UX Wins | | BIBA | Details | 29 | |
Rob Aseron; Melanie Fitzgerald; Christer Garbis; Jhilmil Jain | |||
Have you noticed that some people just seem to know what's going on before
it happens? Or some people's projects are promoted and get additional
resources? Or some people get invited to decision making meetings and others
not? The question you might ask is 'What does it take to be one of those
people?' This is all part of learning how to get stuff done outside of the
formal processes -- leveraging an understanding of, and information about,
people, teams and connections to achieve your objectives.
This panel will explore the successes and failures of experienced UXers that have been navigating the currents of large organizations for years. Across our panelists they have navigated at least 9 large organizations including Google, Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, Yahoo! and HP. Tune into the conversation to learn tactics they use to negotiate resources and strategies to achieve their objectives whether it's managing up, working with clients, or growing careers -- all through the lens of real world examples of successes and failures. If you are hoping to increase your ability to swim in choppy waters, you won't want to miss this panel. Top Career Takeaways & Learnings for You: |
PANEL -- Starting Your Own Agency: Using Your Design Thinking Skills in a New Way | | BIBA | Details | 30 | |
Luis Arnal; John Payne | |||
Have you ever considered going out on your own and starting your own agency?
Do you know what it takes? What the potential pitfalls might be? What it takes
to be ready to launch? Two world-renowned and successful agency owners will
share their journeys of founding their own firms -- from where the idea was
born, to humble beginnings renting a girlfriend's dining room table and working
out of mom's apartment, to hiring first employees and then opening new offices.
Luis Arnal, Founder and President of INSITUM, a leading innovation consultancy
with offices throughout Latin America, will share his experiences of setting up
a multinational business and the growing realization that building a business
uses the same principles he learned in design school: conducting research on
your clients, using frameworks to imagine the business, thinking of your
employees as your users then designing, prototyping and iterating toward ideal
experiences for a multicultural staff. John Payne, Founder and Principal at
Moment Design, a digital product design firm in New York, will discuss his
journey of creating company values that became both the core of how they design
their experiences and deliver excellence to their clients, as well as the
foundation of their company culture. You won't want to miss the opportunity to
hear Luis' and John's personal accounts of the challenges and fulfilling
rewards of starting your own agency.
Top Career Takeaways & Learnings for You: |
The Accidental Entrepreneur | | BIBA | Details | 31 | |
Rashmi Sinha | |||
Have you ever had an idea that you knew would make an amazing product? Did
you ever want to take that idea and make it a product? Did you do anything
about it or did you let the idea slip by, and then realized someone else had
released your amazing idea? You're not alone if you have had this experience.
However one HCI researcher did take action on her idea and turned it into an
extremely successful business and that was Rashmi Sinha, CEO and co-founder of
Slideshare. After Rashmi got her PhD she worked as a post-doc in the area of
human-computer interaction, next she set up her own UX consultancy. Then she
saw an opportunity to build a tool to fill a research need, that tool was
MindCanvas. And then a new idea came along and she co-founded Slideshare.
Sounds like a simple progression story? Not so, Rashmi had to face many
challenges as she transitioned from someone who knew how products were made, to
CEO of a major web service company. Slideshare, which was acquired by LinkedIn
in 2012, has more than 10M presentations uploaded. From HCI researcher to
co-founder and CEO of an amazingly successful company -- it is possible and
she's proof.
Top Career Takeaways & Learnings for You: prepared to learn on the job |
Feedback Without Frustration | | BIBA | Details | 32 | |
Scott Berkun | |||
"Why don't the engineers make it like I told them to make it?" says the
designer. "Seriously, why are they still complaining when I fixed the problem
and now it works?" says the engineer. Does this sound familiar? Is it possible
for developers, designers and marketers to talk about ideas without wanting to
kill each other? Yes! And it starts by taking control over how you get
feedback.
Scott Berkun has first-hand experience of walking in the shoes of an engineering manager, program manager of online experiences, and usability specialist in the tech industry. His latest book, 'The Year Without Pants' is an Amazon best seller and details his most recent work experience as team leader at Automattic working in the distributed engineering environment of WordPress. His career roots are in UX which has influenced his view of the world as he became an engineer, so he has been a giver and receiver of feedback from various seats on an engineering team. Top Career Takeaways & Learnings for You: |
Adapting to Lead UX through Major Shifts and Transitions | | BIBA | Details | 33 | |
Robert Dietz | |||
There have been major shifts in where and how UX has been applied over the
last two decades. Change has come about in technology capabilities (software
and hardware), market places and business models, demand and capabilities of
UX. Robert has trail blazed a UX path during these shifts. A website
design/build pioneer, he founded his own company in the mid 90's to focus on
transitioning traditional businesses to the web. Then at Microsoft he directed
innovation work establishing new online models for brands such as Encarta,
Office Live and Bing. Most recently he's transitioned to apply UX leadership at
Sears Holdings Corporation, a retail company with a 100+ year history, where
they are experiencing a business model shift that needs to embrace technology.
Robert Dietz has applied his UX leadership savvy to push teams beyond traditional toolsets and methodologies to deliver key business results. As Robert has led his teams to drive UX forward through significant transitions he has adapted his UX organizations to take advantage of change and, in some cases, be the catalyst for that change. He will share key insights on where shifts have required him to adapt his UX leadership approach, and what he sees as key trends that are happening now in the UX industry and what UX leaders need to do to prepare and take advantage of those opportunities, including the shift to data-driven design. Top Career Takeaways & Learnings for You: with the shift the dynamic UX world |
A Conversation with Phil Gilbert: What It Takes to Engineer Design into Corporate DNA | | BIBA | Details | 34 | |
Phil Gilbert | |||
Many of us face the challenge of shifting our company to a design mindset. Phil Gilbert, the General Manager at IBM Design, is doing something extraordinary to meet that challenge. And his actions have the potential to impact the role Design plays within the corporate world for all of us. Not only is Phil hiring more than 1,000 UX professionals over the next five years, he is working with the IBM senior leadership team to bring design thinking to the entire organization. We are fortunate to have Phil as our closing keynote speaker at You in UX to discuss this massive transformation, the strategies he is using to create this shift, such as Executive Design Camps, and what this could mean for the future of business and the future of Design. |