Cennydd Bowles
Product Designer at Twitter
Cennydd Bowles is a product designer at Twitter. Over the past decade – including a stint at acclaimed consultancy Clearleft – he has advised dozens of companies on the benefits of customer-focused design.
Cennydd is an invited speaker at digital events across the globe, and a regular mentor for new design talent. He writes for his popular blog and influential design publications, and is the author of the book Undercover User Experience Design. His second book, Designing the Future Web, will be published in 2013 by Five Simple Steps.
Follow Cennydd: @cennydd
Presentation: What Comes After UX?
As the UX design movement matured, it stagnated.
Its current horizons lie far short of the aspirations of early pioneers; instead, service designers and customer experience practitioners have outflanked the industry to seize the strategic initiative. Meanwhile, every digital designer now claims UX expertise. Squeezed from both sides, UXers face a challenge to retain market advantage and to reach positions of genuine influence.
Although there are still plenty of roles for the twenty-somethings, the discipline isn’t offering career paths that match the ambitions of experienced practitioners. Going freelance can’t be the height of our aspirations – but after ‘Head Of…’, where else is there to go? (No, the world doesn’t need another bloody design consultancy.)
Let’s talk about how to break free from the chains of our old labels; about what’s holding us back from being more successful. Let’s talk about work that truly matters, and what comes after UX.
Mel McVeigh
Interim Head of Product Design and UX at Which?
Mel is the current interim Head of Product Design and UX at Which? working with an internal team to transform their digital product offering across all platforms. Her background has been diverse; a blend of client and publishing experience at Lonely Planet in Australia to leading digital teams with various agencies in London across strategic and tactical projects.
Clients have included TimeOut, HSBC, RBS, Deutsche Telekom. She now provides consulting services; embedding into organisations and helping them change the culture whilst leaving them with the people and processes to build and grow over the long term.
By night Mel is also one of the Directors of SheSaysUK the leading global network for women in creative and media industries. SheSays run free monthly events where top women share their insight, developing new talent and mentoring. She is the curator of the yearly SCAMP conference where actions and ideas collide!
Follow Mel: @melmcveigh
Presentation: Seeding UX into the DNA of an organisation
UX is a woolly term; as we all know it means many things to different people. Is it strategic? Is it a set of wireframes? How does it align with product management and business objectives? Do we just keep it lean, make it in code and be done with it?
Success comes when users use it. But before a user sees it, you have to work inside an organisation, there are hoops to jump through and stakeholders to convince. Some organisations are more agile than others, some where UX is an after thought or non-existent. We all believe in the value of user experience so how do we show others even before the users even see the final product?
So this is story of how we approached changing the product DNA at Which? This is about the journey of building the right team, integrating marketing, UX and technology in a product/user-centric focus. It is about creating in an agile and lean way, in a big and a traditional organisation and it is about showing senior management that it works. We have had some solid successes on the road to change, with our fair share of bumps along the way.
This will be an open and honest presentation of what worked and what didn’t, with case studies and examples you can apply in your organisation to make UX work.
Jonty Sharples
User Experience Design Director at Albion London
Jonty is the UX Design Director at Albion London, a creative agency for clients who want to develop businesses, brands and communications. Albion’s aim is to banish annoyance from advertising and generate communications that people actually enjoy and want to talk about.
In almost 14 years as a designer Jonty has been involved in the production of interfaces, products and services, across a wide range of outputs – for museums, console and mobile device manufacturers, financial institutions, emergency services, transport networks, charities, educational establishments, and government departments.
When not engaged in arm-crossing and beard stroking, Jonty enjoys showing his clients what happens when they really listen to their users. He often runs workshops and talks publicly about it, too.
Follow Jonty: @gringomoses
Presentation: Test or be damned
Our daily lives are peppered with annoyance; someone, somewhere was responsible for designing that annoyance and sending it off into the world to thrive and vex.
It seems preposterous that so many products and services should exist that clearly fail to accomplish their core function. This might be attributed to a surplus of arrogance on the part of the designer (or product owner), under the misapprehension that the design was faultless, or perhaps the product just wasn’t validated.
As designers, we have a responsibility to our clients and their users to be diligent and accurate in our work. We’re all guilty of delivering less than perfect output now and again – whether that’s due to time or budgetary constraints.
In order to save ourselves, and our users, from further exasperation what can be done to best curb the prevalence of failure in the products and services we design – and why does it matter?
Christopher Lee Ball
UX Director & UK Joint Head at LBI
Christopher Lee Ball cut his design teeth creating new digital products for Thompson Reuters in New York City. After earning a masters in film theory in London in 2006, he was one of the lead designers of the YouView (nee Canvas) IPTV platform for the BBC and its partner broadcasters. In 2009 he joined LBi, where clients have included Virgin Atlantic, BT, and Cunard. He is currently one of the acting heads of the LBi UK user experience team.
In his spare time Christopher writes fiction and dabbles in film production, some of his short documentaries commissioned directly by the BBC. His passion is storytelling and crafting meaningful journeys for his clients and customers.
Christopher holds degrees from Columbia University and University College London.
Presentation: Experience Principles: Decoding and Harnessing Brand DNA
We’ve honed the craft of experience design to always focus on the needs of the user, and, truly, we wouldn’t have it any other way. But what of the brands for which we design? How do we create experiences that ensure the unique style and voice of the brand is coming through at every stage of the journey?
Using the recent redesign of Virgin Atlantic as a case study, we will see how experience principles are an essential design tool for decoding and harnessing a brand’s unique DNA. What started at Virgin Atlantic as a refreshing of their fleet livery, has grown into a full-scale translation of their brand values across all their digital touchpoints – and is now leading to widespread organisational change.
We use experience principles to inform and judge every design decision, guaranteeing that we’re creating an ownable experience that could only come from the brands we’re helping to build. Learn about the trials and tribulations of our process, and about the possible rewards when done well.