What does it take to create great design experiences? User-Centered Design is built on the principle that focusing on people will lead to better design. Offering two great commandments of UCD ("Thou shalt understand people," and "Thou shalt get that understanding into your design"), Todd Wilkens advocates the use of empathy and insight to usher in a research and design revival.
Whirlpool Corporation is a global manufacturer and marketer of major home appliances. Sara Ulius-Sabel, Metrics Manager for the company, presents a glimpse into Whirlpool's product development process through the lens of designing "Useful, Usable, and Desirable" products. She presents examples of how the company creates their appliances and describes design metrics as one of the tools that Whirlpool uses to drive their multi-brand portfolio.
Where is design thinking taking us? The role of design is evolving within organizations, from simply optimizing what exists to being a source of new growth. Tim Brown, CEO of Ideo, reviews how new contexts require designers to apply traditional skills in new ways, or find completely new methods of problem-solving. He talks about how thinking beyond the familiar borders of design and the web can yield a new breed of innovation.
Irene Au discusses her previous experience at fast moving companies Netscape and Yahoo!, and how that experience will influence her latest challenge. As the new Director of User Experience at Google, she will be confronted with an organization that is clearly defined as engineering driven--practical people focused on achieving practical ends through the use of strict scientific and mathematical principles. How will her user experience team find a strategic foothold in this highly centralized engineering culture?
Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr, tells the story of how "fortuitous ignorance" and great timing helped give birth to the seminal Web 2.0 app, Flickr. As Fake's company Ludicorp was in the throes of watching the failure of its only product, the tiny development team took a stab at creating one last feature for the game: a social photosharing component. Fake tells all, including how integral user input was to Flickr's development, and why social interaction was always Flickr's central goal.
There is an increasing need for companies to deal with challenges in creating compelling and profitable user experiences: a long-term vision and roadmap must be developed in parallel with defining near term offerings and tactical development decisions. This leads to tensions and obstacles that need to be managed effectively. Adam Richardson of frog design uses the example of the Alltel Celltop product to look at dealing with the complex challenges that schizophrenic projects create.
Lou Carbone, author and CEO of Experience Engineering will change the way you think about customer experience forever. His message to business leaders and professionals is simple: Create customers that come back and customers that tell others, by connecting emotionally with them through the experiences you deliver. Through illustrations from Fortune 100 clients, Carbone will share how the systematic design and delivery of experience clues can have immense impact on customer value, loyalty, and the bottom line.
Jesse James Garrett, co-founder of both Adaptive Path and the Information Architecture Institute, thoughtfully examines what is behind the long-term success of truly transformative consumer technology products like TiVo, Flickr, and the iPod. It's about understanding the psychology underlying the user experience, and developing the product from the consumer experience perspective. Garrett gets to the heart of how products developed using the experience strategy quickly make us wonder how we ever lived without them.
What makes the winning product stand out from its competition? Probably countless hours of forethought, weaving a personal experience into the product, while on a quest for that magical, aha moment that thrills and surprises the user. Charles Warren of IDEO leads his audience through a thought excursion to demystify the process of delivering uncompromised quality products that are a delight to customers.
While many software evangelists preach that it matters to establish a culture where we talk about and accept mistakes, few go ahead and talk about their own. Leading heads of Adaptive Path reveal what they did wrong and what they learned from it. Mistakes in project management and especially in communication may lead to months of work wasted.
