Wednesday, September 3
Dan Hon
Designing Away the Empathy Gap
Find out why empathy is a core business value—and why, far from being a “mushy” emotion, it’s the key to designing user interactions that result in increased sales and satisfied customers.
There’s a shift happening in the world. If you pay attention, you can see it in the way that Silicon Valley is building the new products that will change our lives, in the way that established businesses are operating and in the way governments are deciding to interact with us.
Some of these organizations are learning the hard way, whereas others are making decisive moves. But all of this points to an inescapable fact: there’s a gap in empathy between these organizations and us, as audiences, citizens, consumers and individuals.
What’s the empathy gap?
It’s the gap in understanding between an organization and its audience.
A recent example of the empathy gap might be Google’s introduction of new consumer technology like Google Glass, an augmented reality piece of headgear that provides a constant (and arguably useful) connection to the internet in the corner of your vision. But Google’s Glass also comes with a camera that can take stills and video, and the product ignited controversy when people felt the device violated social norms by appearing to encourage users to record others in their vicinity.
In the case of Google Glass, it’s easy to mount a defense: there was nothing different, its proponents say, between a person using Google Glass to take a photo and using a mobile phone to take a photo. But there’s undeniably something visceral and physical in the reaction that certain audiences had to a head-mounted camera, able to surreptitiously record. The science fiction writer Neal Stephenson, in his book Snow Crash, called such wired, always-recording individuals Gargoyles—hardly a warm and inviting description.
The empathy gap doesn’t just apply to Silicon Valley and stereotypical (and untrue) accusations of autism spectrum disorder engineers releasing new technology into the world. It turns out that, rightly or wrongly, this gap is experienced everywhere from the world of travel, where an airline’s customer service can frequently feel indifferent to the needs of those on a long journey; in government, when theoretical legislative policy reaches implementation; and in finance, where the entire world is struggling with income equality.
The situation we find ourselves in is not that the empathy gap is a given and that it must exist. It’s that the existence of a gap is indicative of a choice.
It exists when parties’ interests aren’t identified and are misaligned.
It exists when one party doesn’t understand (or willfully ignores) the other’s needs and emotional state.
What’s worse is that it doesn’t look like the empathy gap is narrowing. Like financial inequality, the gap is instead widening: despite more tools and technology that allow us to connect, the businesses, organizations and government bodies that we interact with every day are feeling more and more distant.
This session is the story of how a more connected world made it easier for some organizations to widen the gap of understanding between themselves and their audience, and what other organizations are doing to combat it.
3 Main Takeaways:
- See the consequences of an empathy gap.
- Find out how organizations are using our ever more connected world to narrow the empathy gap
- Learn how you, as an individual, can narrow the empathy gap through design.
Clarissa Peterson | Co-Founder, Peterson/Kandy
Designing Responsive Websites
Responsive web design allows you to create websites that provide an optimal user experience across devices. In this session, you’ll learn why the process for designing a (good) responsive website can be very different than the traditional web design process—and how to change your workflow to create a great responsive site. Discover why responsive sites need to start with a content strategy, and why performance needs to be part of your site's design. Learn why a mobile-first approach is the most effective way to make sure your site works well across different devices and device types. Find out how your team can successfully work together to create websites that will look good and work well on any device.
3 Main Takeaways:
- Learn strategies for designing responsive sites as part of a multi-disciplinary team.
- Find out some of the key user experience considerations when creating responsive websites.
- Discover why a content-focused, mobile-first approach is the most effective way to create a responsive website.
Mike Arauz | Partner, Undercurrent
Workflow
Join Mike Arauz from Undercurrent, for a in-depth look at how to use an agile method with clients to gain the best possible results. He will reveal how to use interactive designers and UX experts in small teams in collaboration with developers and product strategists. Explore how the role of designers has changed and how you can apply this workflow to your team and future projects.
Alexa Curtis | Director, Moment
Design Research with a Mission
Learn how to keep users at the center of your design process in this session with Alexa Curtis.
As designers, we are driven to make the things around us better. We spend years honing our design instincts and finding fresh solutions to archaic paradigms. We’re good at our jobs and our opinions matter.
Right?
…Right?
Yes and no. The combined opinions of even the best designers, product managers and technologists will only get your product so far. We need to talk to real people. It’s important to identify points in the process to get some outside perspective; to seek feedback from the people that you’re trying to serve with the product you’re designing.
In this session, Alexa will introduce a practical framework for matching research methods with feedback goals for various points in the product design lifecycle. This talk will provide you with some rationale to shape research activities that are scalable to different timelines and budgets, and keeping users at the center of your design process.
3 Main Takeaways:
- Get a detailed overview of design research methods (beyond personas).
- Learn how different design research methods map to a digital product’s lifecycle.
- Take home practical resources for conducting your own qualitative research.
Jenn Lukas | Front-end Consultant and Freelance Developer
The Developer’s Ampersandwich
Ever spent countless hours crafting a totally awesome type system for your beautiful design, only to have it lost in translation when it goes to development? Examine type and icon fonts through a developer lens, and learn how designers and front-end developers can work together to get everyone on the same (elegantly designed) page!
3 Main Takeaways:
- How to utilize web fonts within your projects
- How icon fonts can help your site performance
- Tools for crafting an efficient type system on the web
Karen McGrane | Managing Partner, Bond Art + Science
Content in a Zombie Apocalypse
Surviving the zombie apocalypse is possible. In this talk Karen McGrane will explain how: by developing a content strategy that treats all our platforms as if they're equally important.
Friends, a zombie apocalypse is upon us: an onslaught of new mobile devices, platforms, and screen sizes, hordes of them descending every day. We're outmatched. There aren't enough designers and developers to battle every platform. There aren't enough editors and writers to populate every screen size.
Defeating the zombies will require flexibility and stamina—in our content. We'll have to separate our content from its form, so it can adapt appropriately to different contexts and constraints.
We'll have to change our production workflow so we're not just shoveling content from one output to another.
And we'll have to enhance our content management tools and interfaces so they're ready for the future.
3 Main Takeaways:
- New devices will continue to proliferate. It doesn't matter which ones you think will succeed—there will always be another device, another screen size, another platform.
- Getting our content onto different devices requires true separation of content from form. This is a turning point for how design and content work together.
- Examples of what it means to separate content from presentation will help explain how this works.
Eric Karjaluoto | Creative Director and Founding Partner, smashLAB
The Design Method: Using Process to Hack Design
Find out why the idea of being “creative” may be getting in the way of producing good design, and how you can start designing better, more effective work by moving the focus away from the studio/designer—and back to the client.
Eric Karjaluoto says biases about creativity are leading designers to bank on inspiration, worship “big ideas,” and treat design as a means of personal expression. Unlike art, he believes design is about discipline and producing sensible, functional, and appropriate work.
In this session, Eric will debunk some creative myths, present a better way to produce design, and provide tips on how to make the design process clearer, faster, more valuable, and profitable.
3 Main Takeaways:
- Learn how to develop a process for establishing strategies and plans for your design projects.
- Find out how to develop a cohesive concept and visual direction for each client/job.
- Discover an iterative approach to prototype, test, refine, and produce effective design.
David Sherwin | Interaction Design Director, frog
Designing for Positive Behaviors and Habits
Explore a growing trend in the interactive space— apps and services that responsibly encourage behavior change in users—and discover the tools and techniques you can use to create them.
We live in a world where we expect the applications and services we use every day to not only help us do what we want to do, but encourage us to change our behavior in ways that will make us healthier, wealthier, and happier. David Sherwin, an Interaction Design Director at frog, will explore this growing trend in the interactive space, where designers are using techniques drawn from the social sciences to support (or nudge) the choices their users make. You’ll walk away from this session with a new vocabulary and tools you can use to plan, construct, and test design solutions intended to change user behavior in a responsible manner.
3 Main Takeaways:
- Find out what people mean when they say they are designing for behavior change.
- Explore the tools and techniques designers are using to design for behavior change.
- Learn how an interactive designer can responsibly encourage behavior change.
Andy Fitzgerald | Associate Design Director and UX Lead, Deloitte Digital
Information Design
In this session, Andy Fitzgerald will share approaches that will help you craft cohesive information systems and articulate those systems smoothly across touchpoints in order to effectively design for the ease and consistency your users expect.
Users increasingly expect multi-device and multi-session consistency when they engage with digital products. At the same time, delivering a consistent experience grows increasingly complex as services and touchpoints diversify and add capabilities.
The information design techniques we’ve learned from the web have provided a good starting point, but the holistic information environments of the multi-device and cross-channel present demand a greater degree of understanding, flexibility, and precision than has ever been needed on the desktop web.
This talk will examine the rich potential of embodied and multi-modal perception—two methods for processing information through the body and senses—and offer solutions for how to design information systems that leverage these perceptual opportunities in effective, contextually appropriate ways.
3 Main Takeaways:
- Understand the importance of symbolic modalities and embodied perception in interaction design.
- Learn how to use taxonomies to create cohesive information systems across contexts.
- Find out how to leverage embodied perception in meaning making and information design.
Maciej Ceglowski | Founder, Pinboard
Inspiration/Visual Thinking/Design Thinking
More information coming soon.
Friday, September 5
Christopher Butler | COO, Newfangled
The Future of Web Design
This session with Chris Butler will put you ahead of the trends in web design so that you can position yourself for success.
It's time we reframed our entire concept of web development. First, in terms of widening the scope of what websites do today and second, in terms of understanding what web development as a discipline is becoming. Sophisticated web development is no longer about creating discreet applications, but doing information logistics.
In this session, Chris will explore the history and trajectory of web design and development and offer a glimpse of things to come.
3 Main Takeaways:
- Front-end design techniques are stabilizing and are headed toward commoditization.
- As web platforms become more complex, the use of APIs is becoming more central to web development. This is where information logistics comes in...
- Designers can position themselves around the change. This session will cover how...
Chris Cashdollar | Multidisciplinary-trained Graphic Designer
Reevaluating the Role of Your Client in the Design Process
Web design projects can be excruciatingly complex, often fraught with hidden stakeholders, nebulous business goals, and indiscriminate design approvals—and with the explosion of Responsive Web Design, the equation has only gotten more complex. In this session, you’ll learn how to build a design process and deliverables strategy to ensure a successful engagement with your clients that keeps the communication with them open, fluid and productive.
How are we able to better predict the common hurdles that can keep our projects from becoming a success? Instead of being caught off guard when new issues arise, staying ahead of these frequent pain points can keep you focused on crafting beautiful, results-driven solutions for your clients.
In this session, Chris Cashdollar will break down the design process for Responsive Web Design to better diagnose what design artifacts work best when it comes to communicating design-thinking in the new multi-device customer landscape.
You’ll gain confidence, learn how to break down traditional client-versus-vendor roles and, ultimately, shape a course of action that equates to a successful, productive, and collaborative relationship with your clients.
3 Main Takeaways:
- Learn to better diagnose what type of design deliverable works best for different problems and different clients.
- Understand the common pitfalls that befall a Responsive Web Design project to better predict and get ahead of these issues.
- Reevaluate how you communicate with your clients since traditional client-vendor working relationships are no longer enough.
Geoff Teehan
The True Adventures of a Dot-Com Bust Survivor
Amass the wisdom of an interactive designer who has weathered the highs and lows of the internet—without the pain!
Over Teehan+Lax’s 12-year history, cofounder Geoff Teehan has learned a lot about what makes for successful—and unsuccessful—people, projects and companies. Founded during the darkest days of the dot-com bust, his firm was one of the first to specialize in UX, with a focus on solving real problems for users.
In this session you’ll learn the secrets of Teehan+Lax’s success, as well as the importance of nurturing a spirit of adaptability and helping others in our industry.
3 Main Takeaways:
- Hear the do’s and don’ts of developing a successful career in interactive design.
- Find out why staying nimble and flexible is a core skill for web designers.
- Get an insider’s perspective on the fascinating history of web design.
