Session type: Single Day Workshop (Virtual)

As a digital designer, you must think beyond the user interface to the underlying structures that give your systems coherence. These structures should serve the needs of your users, your organization, and society. To do so, you must understand your organization's strategic directions. This fast-paced workshop introduces strategic thinking for designers.

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.)

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.