Agenda

Focus On Design Goals, Not Personal Opinion

Conversations with team members and stakeholders about the quality and effectiveness of design can be challenging, even frustrating. Communicating design feedback that is actionable and useful comes from practicing critique. Critique helps team members become better at both facilitating and receiving feedback from both peers and stakeholders.

Adam Connor and Aaron Irizarry, authors of Discussing Design, examine the language we use to talk about design. They’ll share tips and strategies for implementing a productive process for using critique to navigate difficult people, draw out useful feedback, and create a more collaborative environment for discussing design.

Tour The Newest Features of CSS

CSS, and what is possible and supported in browsers, is developing and changing at a rate far faster than we have ever seen. Things that were deemed impossible a few years ago are now possible and available to teams to explore. Learn how your team can begin to incorporate some of these new creative possibilities into their work.

Rachel will share practical ideas for using the new CSS. She’ll show us how it solves problems that were hard to solve in the past, and the creative opportunities it holds. She’ll explore the newest features, from fonts to color options, layout, and animations.

Applying Design Techniques To Complex Issues

Can design have a greater impact beyond commercial settings? That’s what Jim Kalbach, author of Mapping Experiences, pondered when an organization dedicated to countering violent extremism approached him to facilitate a workshop. Jim shares his story of applying design thinking techniques and experience mapping to a very real-world problem: hate.

Framing an experience map is tricky, as we have to determine what to show from research, as well as what to leave out. How do we determine the best approach to structure and organize our maps? Jim shares his approach to these tricky questions as he delved into researching and facilitating a mapping workshop with ex-violent extremists.

Grow the Skills of Both New and Seasoned Professionals

For a business to thrive, it must find and retain strong UX talent that creates customer-centered products and services. Most professionals don’t have time to continually expand their knowledge of new technologies and tools, but their work relies on this currency. How can we stay up-to-date in a world constantly in flux?

Kate Rutter explores techniques to build a culture of continuous learning in the workplace for new and seasoned professionals who want to stay current on emerging tools and avoid stagnation. Learn techniques that UX teams can use to be agile and resilient in the face of ever-evolving technologies.

Use Friction To Your Advantage

Friction can be good or bad. With bad friction, inelegant interactions add time or frustration to efforts like paying a bill online or sharing photos from a device—and can cost your organization conversions, customers, and more. Good friction is introduced intentionally and thoughtfully and can enhance experiences and boost learning.

In this seminar, Stephen Anderson explains how to spot the six types of friction, how to think more critically about friction in your designs and its possible benefits, and how to give your customers an all-around better experience.

From Roomba to R2-D2

The next wave of technology is about to arrive, and surfing that wave are robots of all kinds, from household companions to industrial robots, to self-driving vehicles and drones. These robots will infiltrate all manner of services, from taking on household duties to assembling and delivering goods. How can we design for them?

Dan Saffer will use his experience designing Kuri, a new home robot, to teach lessons about designing robots. Safety, privacy, displaying robot intent, cooperation and movement between humans and robots – all of these will need to be considered when we design social robots.