This immersive workshop provides practical tactics for designing, building and maintaining taxonomies and ontologies. Based on hard-won lessons learned from work with everything from large fortune-50 enterprises to small ecommerce sites.
The workshop provides:
Taxonomy/Ontology basics: a foundation to start creating a consistent vocabulary within your organization. We also call out the unique needs of building a taxonomy to serve the needs of large enterprises.
A framework for shifting to an enterprise taxonomy model that meets the needs of your enterprise and the individual business units, systems, user profiles, and interfaces.
Discussion of the impacts of a taxonomy project on technology, governance, workflows, marketing, analytics, search, compliance, and the interaction with master data management
Practical tips for providing stakeholders with resources to navigate internal tensions around implementation
Examples and case studies of large scale enterprise taxonomy projects.
When we design our IA and other key design elements guided by a Usage Maturity Matrix we ease users into, and draw users deeper into, our design ecosystem. We intentionally emerge richer information, features and functions as our users are ready to experience them. In this workshop, participants will learn what a Usage Maturity Matrix is, will then breakout into an exploratory exercise using a UMM on their own digital spaces (or samples provided.)
If you're reading this, you're likely part of the estimated 70% of people who've dealt with imposter syndrome at some point in their professional careers. Imposter syndrome is the psychological pattern where one doubts their skills and persistently fears being exposed as a "fraud". It knows no limits to who it affects, and designers Madeline Packard and Shara Rosenbalm are no exception. These designers explore design methods and offer a few tools to battle imposter syndrome and subdue your inner fraud.
No one's story will begin, or end, with your product. In order to create useful, impactful and delightful designs, we need to consider the entire end to end user journey, from recognizing a need to meeting a goal, and determine how (or if) your product fits into the customer's experience. Join Associate UX Director Chelsea Watson to explore how the established design thinking processes of creating user journeys, story maps and customer personas can come together in a narrative approach to IA and content strategy through storytelling. Together we’ll create proto-personas to help establish empathy for users, and craft a story of our persona's end to end journey, ultimately allowing us to translate key narrative moments into content, IA and design requirements. Chelsea’s ran collaborative workshops using this process on a number of projects including a digital vision for Metrolinx (Ontario’s regional transit provider), a cross-platform client management tool for Royal Bank of Canada, and for other projects for clients including Freedom Mobile and Walmart.
A well-designed workshop is an excellent, people-centered way to get work done. Whether it's a participatory session that replaces a standard meeting, or a full-blown, multi-day experience, workshops get teams and clients to explore options, analyze alternatives, and come to consensus.
But successful workshops don't happen by accident. They’re time- and resource-intensive to plan and deliver, and require particular skills and knowledge. UX practitioners are uniquely positioned to develop and facilitate excellent workshop experiences. However, workshop approaches and how-tos aren’t often taught in school or on the job. Furthermore, in today's still-telescoping timeline for necessary social distancing, the ability to facilitate work getting done through collaborative online sessions is more important than ever.
The Art and Science of Workshop Design gives participants a flexible framework for building and facilitating workshops. Starting with the foundations of workshop design and delivery, participants will learn how to leverage design thinking methods to create collaborative sessions that are fun and effective. They will explore design activities, tools, and techniques, and develop their unique facilitator’s stance. Participants will have the hands-on opportunity to create and practice leading an exercise, and will leave with a customized Action Plan to take the next step - which may be leading a working session on the job or delivering a workshop at a future conference.
The workshop is itself structured as a template that models and demonstrates workshop design. The presenters will peel back the layers of each component to show how it has been built, how it contributes to workshop goals, and how it can be adapted to different types of meetings and groups. This layering also enables the workshop to offer value to participants at all levels of experience: the foundations and main components of workshop design will be made clear for beginners, and each topic and activity can be engaged at either higher or deeper levels.
Participants will receive a workbook that they will use throughout the day and which will be a valuable resource as they plan and carry out their own workshop sessions. Workshop boxes will be sent to advance registrants, while downloadable materials (followed up by shipped workshop boxes) will be provided for last-minute participants.
Topic highlights include:
The narrative arc of a workshop
Establishing the participation contract
Deep dive into roles and skills (vision, logistics, activity design, facilitation)
Adapting and creating workshop exercises
Managing participation (opening and closing the "fourth wall," engaging all voices, handling challenging personas)
Well-Being in the workshop (healthy snacks, physical movement, centering)
Creating an action plan for your own next workshop
Sessions will be recorded and made available to registered attendees.
