Breaking unintended barriers in your workplace for more inclusive teams

As UX designers, we advocate for accessibility in our products, services, and experiences every day. But we often overlook our own workplaces. To make our teams and workplaces more inclusive for everyone, we need to be aware of the unintended barriers that we create for our current and potential employees who have physical or mental disabilities — which have surprising parallels to familiar concepts in UX. As a UX designer with hearing loss, Quinn will explore some of these barriers in connection to his own experiences, and share how we're uniquely positioned to take an active role in removing barriers in our workplaces to build stronger teams.

Diverse representations in design and awkward conversations with colleagues

Even if inclusion is at the front of your mind, it's difficult to feed that into creative work, especially if you're the only one and doubly so if you have to convince your users as well as your colleagues.

When working in design and user experience, people that need accessible and inclusive products of experiences often get referred to as 'edge cases' and subsequently pushed out of scope. It's never easy to convince bosses or colleagues that aren't themselves 'edge cases' to take the time and spend the resource caring for those that need more diverse design and representation in our visuals. Covering real-life past examples of frustrations from projects that didn't go so well, ones that did go well and how I work as much diversity and inclusivity into my work as I can possibly get away with now with the hope to not only make it the standard approach from the companies and people that I work with, but also for the customers and end-users that are not the edge cases, to consider that products, services and marketing should be representative for and of everyone, not just them.

Shaping Design, Designers and Teams

Jason will share the latest of his work over the past decade developing visual frameworks for design teams, leaders and designers to map their skills and define their future professional development.

Through his role as a team leader, and with workshops he runs with the community and his clients, he has seen how valuable it is for designers to self-reflect on who they are, and project the areas in which they feel like they should develop. Whether that’s within, or beyond the context of the organisation they work.

He believes using these visual frameworks can help:

• Hire the right people and build the right teams for your organisation
• Reflect on your own abilities as designers, leaders and managers
• Direct your own and your team’s development
• Teams feel better about who they are within their organization and recognize the opportunities of staying rather than leaving to grow themselves.

Diagnosis: UX Charlatans

User Experience (UX) is probably one of the fastest evolving and most exciting disciplines to be a part of these days. As the practical value of UX-work has become more and more obvious in the past few years, the demand for UX Designers and experts has grown exponentially.

Unfortunately, there are hardly any official educational paths or certifications yet and the confusion around UX is very broad – UX is becoming a buzzword. As a result, the market is not only confused or has at best a very narrow understanding of the term, but this also offers a soil for many amateurs and fake representatives of the discipline to evolve.

Over the past few years, Martina has had the (dis)pleasure to meet and work with some highly promoted UX Charlatans, so that over time she started spotting the patterns – some of their similarities and tactics. Martinas aim is to share her observations in this presentation, in the hope to save you some time, money, and frustration – no matter if you are an evolving UX Designer or a Business/Project owner in need of UX expertise.

EthUX – seven deadly sins that keep us from building a better world

(In Eric's own words) I started working with interaction design long before the term was even known. Over the past 35 years, I've encountered many issues that have disturbed me – from creating purposely addictive programs, sites, and apps, to the current zeitgeist for responsive design at the expense of basic usability. I have seen research that is forged, ignored, or twisted by internal company politics and by the cognitive bias of the design team. And I have seen countless dark patterns that serve to suppress accessibility and diversity, and encourage false beliefs and false security.

I hope you will share an hour of your time with me so I can review some of the issues you should be thinking about. And to show you how your work can truly create value – not just for your client or company, but for everyone.

Establishing the UX research practice in a digital product company

Having an impact on the product and breaking down organizational walls isn't a quick job. We'll discuss the evolution of user research within a company, and why becoming user-centric starts from inside. Tamara has been working at GetYourGuide for just over a year. She will share insights into her role, lessons learned and the constant drive within the company to put a human face on the people who use their products. She will talk about research artifacts and how to collect quality data, as well as the benefits of communication to provide value to different internal audiences. According to the UX maturity level of your company, different changes and levels of expertise are required (that’s why this can last for years.) Addressing company culture is fundamental to success.

Getting away from success to get more out of user research

Using prototypes for research offers rich possibilities to learn about the ways users think, understand tools, and approach problems. However, we often focus too narrowly on user success with our proposed solutions and getting the user through the session with tools like detailed task lists. This costs us opportunities to observe users struggle and learn how they solve problems, as well as the chance to understand whether we're solving the right problem for them. The Adobe Design Research and Strategy team has ditched task lists during prototype sessions in favor of less directional approaches that allow space for frustration and failure. This talk will discuss Adobe's approach and techniques for transforming prototype sessions from validation exercises to opportunities for deep learning about your users and how they think.

Children’s Rights and Ethics in Design

In this talk Leyla and Jonna introduce the principles of incorporating children’s rights in to everyday design work. Along with a bunch of real world examples the two Helsinki-based designers give insights from their work with UNICEF and an outstanding number of volunteering design-driven that helped shaping this program. The two will discuss how society can build better products that target children in context, taking everything from from social media to household appliances into consideration.

Space as a medium for interaction design

In the past 50 years computers have infiltrated the work environment to the point where there’s hardly a job left where they are not used. In the process, however, a rich continuum of understanding the world through sound, touch, spatial interactions has been flattened to pictures behind glass that are either manipulated through mice or touch interactions.

New technical developments such as augmented reality and spatial computing offer the opportunity to rethink how we can incorporate our body in knowledge work. To do this successfully we have to let go of design concepts that have been developed for a world of flat screens and start over with designing for digital spatial interactions.

Building on the work of Paul Dourish on embodied interaction design and David Kirsh on the use of space for cognitively demanding tasks Sjors will discuss a framework for thinking about and designing for spatial interactions.

Thinking critically about design and criticism

Thoughtful criticism of the work that designers do is limiting us on many levels.

As design continues to gain traction in business and culture, its utter lack of critical discourse becomes more and more glaring. We are adept at discussing the “how” of design, but our inability to discuss the “why” continues to hobble the profession’s further evolution.

In this lively, down-to-earth talk, Adobe Principal Designer Khoi Vinh, a veteran of design’s transformation into a key element of modern business over the past two decades, looks at the gaps in how we discuss and think about design, explains why criticism is so important to the future of our craft, and proposes ways forward to correct the situation.

Scaling Lean: Principles over Process

The term Lean has become widely popular, particularly with the word “startup” attached to it. This has led many people to believe this is an approach to work relevant only to new companies or initiatives. Lean-curious companies who have tried to implement these ideals often stall at one or two teams citing organizational complexities, politics and dependencies as insurmountable obstacles to Lean Startup at scale.

Can Lean Startup practices be scaled — not just as culture and philosophy but as tactical process? In this practical presentation, Jeff will share several methods for scaling Lean Startup techniques in large organizations exemplified in detailed case studies and professional experience. Jeff will cover knowledge management, intra-team dependencies, infrastructure requirements and several other elements of ensuring successful Lean Startup practices in companies of any size.

Design is ethical or it is decoration.

I am a business that makes money by tracking every move you, your family, and your loved ones make, both online and offline. I aggregate and store that information forever. I continuously analyse every piece of it to profile you and understand you better. I do all this to exploit my intimate insight into your life to manipulate your behaviour for profit and to satisfy my political needs.

Sounds terrible, doesn’t it?
Hi, my name is Google.
And Facebook.
And Snapchat... (should I go on?)

The business model of mainstream technology (the Silicon Valley model) is based on farming people. The goal is to create a digital copy of you, own that copy, and exploit it as an invaluable proxy to manipulate your behaviour. (Oh, and by the way, sometimes we’ll also share our insight with repressive governments and spy agencies too.) This business model is a core pillar of the socio-techno-economic system we call surveillance capitalism. It is inherently exploitative, unethical, and incompatible with human rights or democracy.

If the core of our business – the way we make money – is unethical, how can we expect our products to be ethical? The answer is, we can’t. Design without ethics is decoration.

Thankfully, the Silicon Valley model is just one possible way to build technology. There are alternative – ethical – ways to design and build technologies that are decentralised, free and open, and interoperable.

The nature of the technologies we build and adopt determine no less than the type of society we live in today and in the future. Is that an authoritarian, feudal society ruled by monolithic all-knowing corporations or a democracy? If you want to help build and live in the latter future, this talk show you how to get started on the right path. Come with an open mind, prepare to question everything you know, and to learn an eye- opening and ethical new way to design and build technology.

UX in Motion: Principles for creating meaningful animation in interfaces

Animation is a powerful design tool that we too often ignore. When used well motion can engage, communicate and improve interactions. That’s the kind of animation we want in our work: animation that has both purpose and style. Carefully crafting these moments makes our work more memorable and enjoyable to use. In this session we’ll discuss where animation can best inform UX and how to build more sophisticated animated interactions on the web.

UXXL - user experience, supersized

Seb is a digital artist who likes to create large scale interactive installations, using high power projectors, lasers, and sound systems to make truly memorable and enormous work. In this fun and interactive talk, Seb will show how he scales up his digital works from his computer monitor to a 20m wide screen, and brings computing from a cosy office space into the great outdoors.

Developing for the future of Healthcare

John Buckley will be flying in from Dublin to share his insights on designing for the constrained world of healthcare. He is a UX Designer at Frontend.com, a user experience consultancy which has worked extensively in the field of healthcare.

During this talk, John will share the story of a design collaboration he led between Frontend.com, the United Nations' migration body (IOM) and four design colleges seeking to conceptualise a 'Future Vision for Migrant Healthcare'. This project was named as a finalist in two categories and received the People's Choice Award at IxDA Interaction 17 earlier this year.

Digital Health: Roll-your-sleeves-up

The digitalization is radically transforming the healthcare sector. Big data, interconnectivity, automation and customer expectations are changing today's healthcare landscape. While there are plenty of opportunities for improving healthcare services, the actual challenge is to design and ship digital solutions that not only change people's lives for the better, but also create a sustainable business model for different stakeholders.

While several mobile applications exist to document the intake of medication or to track the vital data and via mobile phones, we face the challenge to systematically integrate this data into treatment process of physician and general practitioner in order to improve patient outcome. How can we build digital services that consider the whole healthcare ecosystem?

In their talk Marion and Frederike will share their personal insights won at SAP Health Innovation Hub, where they discover and craft new products and services in the area of personalized medicine and life sciences. From creating seamless experiences to privacy restrictions to cultural shifts, they will address today's challenges of healthcare designers.

Closure Experiences (Interactive Workshop)

At a time when it seems everyone is starting up a new business, getting new users to start a new account, buying new hardware to achieve access to new services, Joe will tell you why we need to start considering endings.

There is compelling evidence to suggest that we have lost a vocabulary around how to end our consumer relationships. What is common amongst some of society’s biggest problems is trying to stop what we have started. End what we have begun. It isn’t enough to be a new starter in this world that is aching under problems that we have created, it will be important to end things appropriately, without negative consequences.

In this session Joe will share the background and long history of endings. He will show how these have impacted our consumer experiences, and how, in some cases, this has critically impacted the consumer behaviour. Together, we will look at models and techniques, and spend some time developing and designing closure experiences in workshops.

The Rise of "Screenless" Interfaces

Today consumers use their smartphone 5 hours a day on an average. It nearly seems like an artificial appendage. No wonder, that we – as UX designers – are trained, to find an app / mobile service to almost every problem our users are facing. But do we really solve our user’s problems or do we just force them to constantly stare at their phones? – A fast growing number of people feel that the latter is the case.

For the development of digital services, that facilitate more natural and less distracting forms of interaction with technology we created the "breakingtheglass" canvas as part of a comprehensive method for the ideation and development of screenless services and (digital) products. In our session we want to give you brief insight into the topic and our canvas.

Job Titles: The Survey Says...

Job titles are a challenge for the digital product design crowd. How can UXers describe clearly what we do in as few words as possible? And how can companies improve their job ads to make the target group feel understood and attract UX talent?

It turns out, our field -- and our roles -- are difficult to pin labels onto. Whether it’s cause or effect, we inhabit a confusing and shifting terminology landscape.

Researchers, it turns out, struggle less to be understood. But designers seem to need to turn to storytelling: “Even your tea pot should be sexy. That's my job.”

We share the quotes, stories and results from the UX job title survey that we conducted last fall. Our goal was to see which word combinations bring the best clarity in our field, with its heterogenous nomenclature.

See how well Interaction Design emerges after going to head-to-head with UX, UI and Product Design. Hear the story of our own failure with job titles. Bring your own funny quotes.

Burning Down The House with Mike Monteiro

An Elevator Ride with Lou Rosenfeld

This is an all-night Q&A session. Questions that have been submitted upfront will be curated and presented to Lou at the event. Be present, to ask your (additional) question to Lou on stage, in person!

Being a Digital Do-Gooder

As digital designers we are constantly being told that we have the power to change the world.

But other than repeating this over and over again in our comfortable bubble of tech meetups, conferences or self centred documentaries how many of us actually use our perceived super powers for something more than making rich companies richer, selling more shoes online or creating something like "Uber for coat hangers"?

In my talk I will look at examples of applied digital do-goodism and discuss some strategies for how we can use our skills for social good. Slides may contain traces of half baked philosophy, social romanticism, self guilt and hopefully inspiration.

Clives Slidedeck is up on Slideshare

How to develop meaningful digital products?

With more than 7 billion people on the planet we are living in a time of rapid change that bears tremendous opportunities, but also increasing risks. More than 3.5 billion people have access to the internet and rapidly advancing technologies fundamentally change the way we interact and connect with each other.

Nevertheless, we have mostly failed to use the full potential of these innovative technologies to solve society’s most pressing needs.

In my talk we learn how breakthrough technologies can tackle and solve exceptionally fast growing social problems globally. I will take a closer look at Ipso, the International Psychosocial Organisation that provide counseling to people from war affected countries to showcase and analyze success factors to create digital products that matter.

Cultural Differences

As we dig into the past, we can see that the foundations of art, history and language have played a large role in cultural differences within societies around the world.

As we move around the world from east to west, these cultural differences become a pillar of which each society bases much of their culture on. Gender, culture and time are all factors that play into how social differences are percieved and played out in design today, so how can we all work and design together?

Hacking China: Making as Entrepreneurial Life

In this talk, drawing from ethnographic research spanning more than six years, Lindtner traces how a grassroots movement morphed within only five years into a high-stake sociopolitical project aimed at “hacking China”, i.e. opening up supply chains, revamping modes of industrial production for entrepreneurial intervention, and training workforces as creative and flexible knowledge workers.

She examines how the project of hacking China was propelled forward through a transnational imaginary that depicts making as ideally situated to address the pitfalls of the knowledge economy.

Contributing to a line of research invested in the cultural politics of design, global innovation discourse and technology production, Lindtner unpacks how making came to be seen as an intervention into the pitfalls of neoliberal governance by simultaneously critiquing and extending its very logic of self-reliance to include ever more diverse populations.