IAC20 Conference Sessions

Our designs don’t live in a vacuum, yet many of us may be reluctant or unsure how to begin engaging others with our work. Developers have code reviews, graphic designers have “pin-ups”, but what should feedback cycles look like for UX designers? How do you start a culture of design dialogue within an organization/team? No fear! We got it covered. During this presentation, we’ll discuss the following through two case…

The premise of the talk is to introduce a new framework for product design called “Design Script” which unfurls from an uncanny similarity between a well-directed movie and a well-designed product. For example, while writing movies, a lot of time is spent polishing the plots and nourishing the characters. Likewise, while designing products a huge chunk of time is spent understanding the problem at hand. However, in movies, once the…

Technology has manners. Sometimes it can behave nicely. It can be considerate towards our needs, our context, our preferences, even our humanity. When our needs or context change, it can adapt accordingly, providing interaction patterns that match our changing circumstances. I call these computer behaviours [modes] or manners: how we want our product or service to behave in a number of different contexts. In this short talk we’ll look at…

Making positive change happen in digital experiences is possible. Let’s see how by investigating three case studies—one failure, one success, and one triumph. First let’s talk about a mostly unsuccessful attempt to influence user behavior at yellowpages.com. As the local search platform introduced ratings and reviews for businesses, it set out to not only encourage users to write reviews but also to do so in specific ways. This included detailed…

Personas are about helping an organization make sense of the audience so it can make more audience-focused decisions. The goal is more than just usability, it’s about want-to-use-ability. By facilitating deeper, more empathetic connection between an organization and its audiences, you can convert the organization’s raw data into insights about what really drives audiences. To be transformative, personas must evoke a sense of empathy with the audience. That happens only…

Changing times require new ways of working. As leaders (and we’re all leaders!), our role increasingly resembles that of an educator. Whether it’s working through and with cross-disciplinary teams, or creating safe spaces and structures in which everyone is encouraged to contribute, it’s time to reboot how we think about shaping organizations. This talk will explore “Facilitating Structures”, a different lens for all we do.

Users’ minds take shortcuts to get through the day. Usually they’re harmless. Even helpful. But what happens when they’re not? In this talk I’ll use real-world examples to identify some particularly nasty biases that frequently lead users to make bad decisions. I’ll then talk about some content strategy and design choices we can use in our apps, designs, and platforms to redirect or eliminate the impact of those biases. Finally,…

We are in the business of change. The bridge from “what is” to “what if” begins with our models and maps. And yet, as a “move fast break things” mindset undermines research and planning, it is we as designers and information architects who struggle to adapt. To fix the interface, we must fix the culture, but to do so, we must go from sensemaking to changemaking; and that’s a chasm…

“Agile Transformation may be defined as the process of transforming an organization’s culture and nature to one of agility, driving a fundamental change in the way people think and feel.” (A. Mersino) If transforming culture was as easy as applying a universal formula, updating furniture and deploying coaches throughout organizations, we’d be well underway to have changed the world. And if releasing value was as simple as delivering software in…

If you’re fumbling around trying to figure out what taxonomy to use with your content, you’re not alone. You need to ensure that the taxonomy meets your business goals and your technical needs. You may also be required to think about short- and long-term uses. It’s a lot to wrangle. This presentation will show you how to use content modeling to define the taxonomy for your content and will explain…