Workshops

You use smart people-centered methods to design great user experiences every day, but what about the content? In reality, content is at the heart of every user experience we design. When we overlook content considerations in the design process we can end up with design systems that break down when the real content is put into place, modules that don’t allow for the editorial flexibility our teams expect, and experiences that fall short of providing our users with what they need.

The good news is that we can use some of our most loved UX tools—like journey maps, user interviews, and stories— and add in a specific layer to make sure we’re giving our audience the content they need, when and how they need it most. In this workshop you'll learn how to expand on design tools we’re already familiar with to account for content-thinking in research, design, and build phases of your work.

What topics will be covered?

Introduction to content design

Understanding content needs in research

Modifying design tools for content considerations

Accounting for content in our workflow

Collaborating with content stakeholders

What exercises will be done?

Interviewing

Journey mapping

User stories

Content mapping

What will the audience take away from this workshop?

- How to get to the heart of your users content needs

- Approaches for building in a content-thinking layer into design tools you’re already familiar with

- A better understanding of when and where to account for content in the research, design, and build process

- Ideas on how to collaborate more effectively with content stakeholders

Any requirements for attending?

Nope!

 

When we start thinking not only about “accessibility” but also about inclusive design, we increase the diversity of perspectives in the design process. This leads to better products. In this hands-on workshop, we’ll look at how to incorporate people with disabilities into our design process and dig deep into practical techniques you can use to make your products more inclusive, and ultimately easier to use for everyone.

What topics will be covered?

- Inclusive design as a tool for innovation

- Techniques for implementing inclusive design

- Integrating people with disabilities into your process

What exercises will be done?

- collaborative design critiques

- rapid design iterations

What will the audience take away from this workshop?

The audience will leave with:

- a framework for thinking about inclusion for people with disabilities

- practical techniques they can use to examine and improve their own designs

- inclusion tools they can use to examine and improve their design process

Any requirements for attending?

No

Creating delightful experiences with mountains of data is difficult. Data is an abstraction of the world around us, and unlike computers, our brains are not wired to process and decode it in its raw form. This workshop will dig into how we can use our understanding of cognition and visual perception to make complex data understandable and present it in a human-centered way.  

We’ll review examples of successful and unsuccessful visualizations, discuss the issue of dishonesty in data visualization, and try our hand at creating our own visualizations. At the end of this workshop, participants will come away with an understanding of the foundational principles of data visualization, and some practical experience with navigating the process of encoding data visually and finding effective ways to communicate meaning through visualization.

Requirements:

No previous data visualization experience required. You are encouraged to bring a laptop, tablet, or other device – the only technical requirement is an internet connection. Supplies will be provided, but please feel free to bring your favorite pen and/or markers to use for the activities.

UX Week has you fired up. You have a vision for some big changes to your team, your department, your organization. You've got a notebook full of ideas. You've been excitedly slacking co-conspirators with sketches, links, and paragraphs of possibilities. It's going to work. It has to work. This is going to change everything.

Now what?

In this workshop, Sarah will help you design a path forward, to help you make real -- and sustainable -- change in your organization.

You'll learn to

 - build a network of champions

 - articulate a vision that others will want to support

 - outline a roadmap, then iterate on it

 - identify common forms of resistance

 - measure your progress

What topics will be covered?

Sustainable behavior change

Working with team and cultural dynamics

Any requirements for attending?

An idea or vision for something you'd like to change in your organization, team, or department — now matter how big or small.

 

ImprovUX is a series of fun and INTERACTIVE talks and workshops that apply the skills of Improvisation (listening, acceptance, support, collaboration, letting go of judgment, etc.) to the world of User Experience.

User Experience relies on gathering Qualitative data from our potential users through interviews, surveys and other methods. In order to connect with the users, we need to build trust and empathy as quickly and strongly as possible.

During the interview process we need to be hyper-aware off all the information being provided to us by the users. For us this means putting our own preconceptions and biases in the backseat and focusing on being in the present moment in order to collect all of the tiny bits of information, both verbal and nonverbal, which lead to a deeper understanding of the users and what they’re communicating

When we’re done gathering information we need to make some sense of all the data. The goal of the analysis phase is to look for ways to creatively connect seemingly disparate information together to discover opportunities for improving users’ experiences. There are many possible solutions and it’s the job of the team to converge on the ones they believe are the most important. The end result of all this work is a solution that helps users accomplish their tasks and goals in ways they never even thought possible. 

The skills needed to work through the above phases of connecting, collecting and converging call be found in Improvisation...

What topics will be covered?

- Introduction to Improv Fundamentals

- Connecting through listening, empathy and trust

- Learning about awareness and paying attention for patterns and themes

- Freeing yourself to be more creative to inspire better ideation

What exercises will be done?

Improv based exercises that get everyone involved, up and moving and experiencing the topics being covered.

The exercises focus on:

Listening/Focus

Non-Judgement

Acceptance

Empathy

Trust

Connection

Collaboration

Creativity

Agility

Risk

Change

What will the audience take away from this workshop?

This workshop is focusing more on soft skills. The attendees will get to go home with exercises that can be performed by them with their fellow employees.

The biggest takeaway is the introduction to improv and how many of its skills translate over into UX work. I hope to inspire the attendees to continue investigating improv when they get home, hopefully to the point where they will take classes to continue building on what they've done at the workshop.

Any requirements for attending?

An open mind and a willingness to get out of your comfort zone.

Design, like other creative and innovative work, requires us to re-think and re-imagine the world around us. But what assumptions and beliefs — what stories — are we holding onto without realizing it? What if we could unlock new ways of thinking, imagining and innovating, without limits?

That’s what storytelling can help us do.

We are all storytellers — whether we know it or not. And the most powerful stories are the ones we believe about ourselves, even without realizing it. These stories can help us make sense of the world and relate to each other. They can also hold us back.

When we are able to challenge and engage with our own “self stories” — essentially re-writing them — we open up new avenues of creative investigation. We discover new ways of thinking about ourselves, others, and the world we share. This in turn creates opportunities to imagine, explore, gather inspiration and see things from new perspectives.

In this workshop Camille will introduce us to the art of storytelling and narrative revision. She will explore how personal storytelling can be a superpower in our professional lives. And she’ll provide a practical storytelling framework for re-writing old stories with new meaning and possibility.

What topics will be covered?

- Why stories matter

- How to think like a storyteller

What exercises will be done?

- Speed stories (introduction stories)

- Write your story

- Genre

- Character

- Story arc

- Moral / meaning

- Everything is edit-able

What will the audience take away from this workshop?

Workshop participants will learn (and practice) a storytelling framework based on 5 core principles of storytelling. In addition to the fresh perspective and creative boost they’ll get in the workshop, they can use this framework in their design practice to approach projects, opportunities and challenges in new ways.

Any requirements for attending?

None

We all dream of working in organizations where design is respected and impactful. In this workshop, you'll learn how to create and deploy an action plan to bring your dreams to life.

Two years ago, the design team at PlanGrid was understaffed and hamstrung. Today, the team has tripled in size, is viewed as a strategic partner in the organization, and delivers amazing user experiences for the construction industry. In this workshop, Alissa Briggs (Head of Design) and Dave Hora (Research Leader) will provide practical tools for you to lead your own design revolution.

This workshop gives you the tools to diagnose your team's current state, set clear goals for team transformation, and choose the right moves to get you there. You'll hear practical tips and real-world stories. By the end of the session, you will:

* Diagnose where your team is at today

* Set a clear vision for where your team will go

* Understand the levers that will drive change

* Identify a specific set of moves to help you transform your team

This workshop is accompanied by worksheets and resources you can use with your team, which will also be made available online. You’ll leave with everything you need to chart your course to the design team of your dreams.

What exercises will be done?

Individual and group exercises in the form of brainstorm, workshop, and worksheet: we'll set goals, evaluate current state, and plan a specific and actionable path to a stronger and more productive design organization. 

What will the audience take away from this workshop?

* Framework for identifying design team health, effectiveness, influence

* An understanding of time and effort required for organizational change

* Strategies for change and specific "moves" to get there

* Common pitfalls and challenges in growing effective design teams

Any requirements for attending?

This workshop is best suited for design leaders and managers, though it may be of interest to anyone who wants to drive organizational change. Highly recommended for teams to attend together.

 

The Service Design Studio at the New York City Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity is the first-ever service design agency housed within a local government. Our tight team of creative strategists  equip city employees with methods to design public services with the people who use them.  As the Studio approaches our one year anniversary, we are following our own advice and improving our core offerings with input from our clients and peers. Studio leaders Mari Nakano and Caroline Bauer will present the Studio’s unique model and ask attendees to critique a new workshop curriculum we’ve created to build the capacity of hundreds of New York City public servants to continuously improve government services. This session will build a mini-community of practice around civic service design and crush the paper tiger assumptions that public sector constraints stifle design innovation. Participants will develop skills to teach design to beginners, build insights on how to work with government clients, and receive new tools for doing this work in their own contexts.  

What topics will be covered?

Design research and strategy in the context of government

Service Design Studio methodology and best practices

Civic Service Design Tools + Tactics

Civic Service Design overview

Building partnerships inside government

What exercises will be done?

Refining prototypes

Paper-based user interface design

Brainstorming how to measure the impact of design

Constructive critiquing and feedback

What will the audience take away from this workshop?

Learn the basics of Service Design in the public sector

Opportunities to share and understand new design approaches with your peers

Ways to bring what you learn back to your team and communities

Understanding and considering new ways to measure the impact of design in the public sector

Any requirements for attending?

No. 

“People don't know what they want until you show it to them.”

That is why at Think Crate we prototype user experiences with electronic prototypes. We offer enough fidelity so that users can live the experience, instead of just imagining it. You can do the same for your next brainstorm.

In this workshop, we will walk you through the entire prototyping cycle with sample IoT devices such as dash button, smart cups, fitness band, etc. You will learn/pick up essential software-hardware prototyping skills with us. After that, working in groups, you will brainstorm a solution to a challenge, build a working prototype of it, and test it out among groups. We end with a brief presentation and group critique.

No prior hardware or software programming experience required.

What topics will be covered?

The main topic is how to rapid prototype an IoT experience in the digital-physical world. It will cover:



What is IoT

How do most IoT products work.

Benefits for UX designer to fuse design thinking and prototyping skills when design IoT product and experience.

Ways to prototype IoT product and apply design thinking in the process.

Essential hardware and software prototyping skills.

Visual programming.

What exercises will be done?

Attendees will brainstorm, bodystorm, protostorm and build a working prototype of their own IoT project idea.

What will the audience take away from this workshop?

Each attendee will get an IoT prototyping package including hardware and a software programming platform.

By the end of the workshop, each group will build a tangible, working prototype of an IoT project, they can take it away.

Any requirements for attending?

A computer with Bluetooth capability is required.



Knowledge of HTML5, CSS, Javascript is helpful but not mandatory.

Like Alice Waters’ slow food movement, slow design in the user experience space can solve big problems in matters of nonprofit branding, public transportation, and emergency room care. Yet, UXers struggle with how to create digital design solutions in the physical space.

There are rich opportunities for improving the public transportation experience. But many UX designers overlook these opportunities or fail to understand how their design solutions may negatively affect a rider’s experience.

What topics will be covered?

The workshop will cover how ideation must consider perspectives from bus riders, bus drivers, public transportation coordinators, city budgeters, local officials, and many other members of public service.

What exercises will be done?

My co-facilitator, Mary Ann Badavi, and I will lead workshop attendees through a research-based field trip, where we will observe a bus station, ride a bus for a few stops, ride the bus back to the hotel, prototype ideas, present ideas for peer review, rapid prototype ideas, then determine a realistic plan of action, with service design in mind.

What will the audience take away from this workshop?

We want to create several big takeaways:

Design for public space and public consumption must be done in person, not on a computer or in a conference room;

Public officials and public employees must be a part of the iteration process;

Every solution may not be an app. It may simply be politics; and

Get used to plainly explaining what you do as a benefit to society.

Any requirements for attending?

Round-trip bus fare, something for note-taking

Design thinking begins with empathy, but empathy is not about solving problems. It's about listening, and learning about other people's reasoning. (Yes, this means all of us who offer solutions to friends who are grappling with a situation--we are not doing empathy.) This is why understanding the problem should be completely separated from the solution design/development cycle. And in this separate effort, you develop empathy to understand people's inner reasoning as they seek to accomplish a larger purpose or intent.

Empathy has many types. It also has two stages (developing & applying). Indi will teach you two types of empathy to use in understanding the problem space. And she will show you how a separate problem space research cycle can fit within your own work and within the fast pace of your own organization. You will get talking points to use if you want to incorporate a bit more understanding of the problem space in your organization, and you will get to practice the listening sessions that are at the root of creating this deeper understanding.

The whole point of understanding the problem space is to open up opportunities, to open your organization's eyes to new paths and new audiences. When you create a deeper understanding, you can make ethical, compassionate designs that support a diversity of thinking. You will be able to harness emergent technology, enabling your algorithms to listen and adjust to people. If you are at a startup, it gives you a strong focus to plan your product path. Or if you're at a large enterprise, this understanding gives you a way to bridge between divisions and work with your peers more successfully.

What topics will be covered?

- redefining problem space separate from ideas and solutions

- concrete definitions cognitive and emotional empathy in your work

- conducting listening sessions (as different from interviews)

- defining the purpose of a study

- mental model diagrams

- thinking-style segments (behavioral audience segments v. personas)

- using opportunity maps to kick off product discovery, dual-track agile

What exercises will be done?

We will conduct two listening session exercises, so you can measure the shift in your confidence level. We will work on study purpose statements, so you get a jump-start on your own work when you return from this conference.

What will the audience take away from this workshop?

This half-day workshop will give you the skills to recognize when assumptions are guiding your product and design decisions. You will learn the difference between "fuzzy bunny" empathy and types of empathy that can be applied in your work. You'll be introduced to listening session techniques, when to turn your attention to the problem space, and concrete artifacts you can use to guide your product and design decisions.

Any requirements for attending?

None for this audience. 

 

Designing for voice interaction can be an intimidating concept for a generation of designers trained primarily in visual principles and patterns. But there’s a greater need for voice designers than there are folks experienced in voice design. Join us and see how the skills you already have can translate to this evolving design specialty. In this workshop, you’ll learn the basics of voice design and a repeatable process you can apply to the design of your own voice feature or skill.

What topics will be covered?

- A brief history of voice technology

- An overview of key terms and concepts specific to voice design

- A walkthrough of the specific design constraints you'll need to apply to your work

- Seven guidelines and best practices for successful voice design

- Design deliverables for voice interfaces

What exercises will be done?

1. Brainstorming: ideas for VUI skills or features

2. Constraints: Applying VUI design constraints to our brainstorm to identify the strongest candidates

3. Intent generation: For a specific skill, developing 1-2 intents with slots and sample utterances

4. Sample dialogs: Fleshing out your interactions with scriptwriting

5. Flows: Begin a flow based on your sample dialog.

What will the audience take away from this workshop?

Participants will walk away with an understanding of the history of voice design, the technology behind today’s natural language systems, a framework of constraints and guidelines for successful voice designs, and experience with the key deliverables generated during the voice design process.

Any requirements for attending?

Prior experience as a designer in some capacity is helpful, as we do assume basic familiarity with traditional design process and deliverables. No tools are required; the exercises are all conducted with analog materials that you can later apply with your tool of choice.

Disabled people are the original lifehackers. We spend our lives cultivating an intuitive creativity that allows us to navigate a world that is not built for our bodies. It is this level of integration that designers strive for in the design thinking process.

Design for disability can lead to accessible solutions, but leaves disabled people feeling voiceless and without an identity. By bringing disabled people into the design process, designers will learn how to incorporate accessibility into a broader disability culture and identity.

Does disability design always need to present a solution? Does disability design always need to be inspiring? Or can disability design bend and twist and shift and finally allow disabled people to have a say in the worksings of the world. 

By applying design thinking to disability, Liz Jackson and Lawrence Carter Long will lead attendees to discover who disabled people are rather than what disabled people need.

You make the world better by designing great user experiences. You want to spend more time creating that world and less time explaining the basics, defending your choices, and selling the best approaches in meetings. But in meetings is where you find yourself, and it feels like they often introduce friction, ambiguity, and drag.

The good news is a meeting can be designed just like any experience. By integrating human centered design and outcomes based thinking into our meetings, we can start to recognize our own biases, become better facilitators, and run the better meeting experiences that we, and our organizations, deserve.

What topics will be covered?

Facilitation

Meeting Planning

Agenda Design

Measuring Meeting Outcomes

What exercises will be done?

Meeting Outcome Mapping

Facilitation Style Analysis

Facilitation Practice and Critique

What will the audience take away from this workshop?

How to build facilitation skills in themselves and in their teams that will lead to more meaningful, measurable meetings.

Any requirements for attending?

Nope. 

Our ability to critique speaks directly to the quality of the conversations and collaboration we have with our teammates, whether they be designers, developers, or stakeholders. The ideas and designs we have for the services, products and websites we’re creating depend on this feedback.

This workshop examines the language, rules and strategies for critique and provides participants with takeaways that can immediately be put to work to create a useful, collaborative environment for discussing design.

The contents of this presentation focus on:

• How to introduce critique to team members who may be unfamiliar with it.


• Ways to improve our ability to deliver, collect and receive critique.


• Facilitation techniques for improving the quality of feedback discussions.


• An understanding of where critique fits within the design process and how to incorporate it into projects.


• Identifying common challenges to critique in orgs and tools to overcome them.


• Methods for gathering useful feedback from clients and teammates.


• Filtering solid critiques from personal opinion.


• Critique and remote teams, how to make it work.


• Challenges to critique and the path to better conversations.

Diversity of thought in our teams is key for organisations looking to create inclusive products.

Bringing together talented professionals from around the world increases our ability to design and build things that solve problems for billions without discrimination.

Our international teammates bring unique perspectives, values, and ideas from their home cultures which can help us improve our products.

But could those same differences increase the opportunities for misunderstanding and conflict and make it difficult for us to work together effectively?

In this workshop Farai will explain key differences between cultures and how these differences show up in the workplace. Through practical exercises he'll show how we can build our cultural awareness and work together better in diverse, multicultural teams.

This workshop is for:

- People working outside the country they grew up in

- People working with teams in other countries (in-person or remote)

- Managers of multi-cultural teams

- HR and talent acquisition teams hiring across cultures

What topics will be covered?

- Understanding cultural relativism

- Gaining cultural self awareness

- Understanding how culture influences work practices

- Methods for avoiding and handling "cultural friction" at work

What exercises will be done?

- Learn the ways in which cultures differ from each other

- Role play to explore how cultural differences can lead to conflict

- Role play to experience techniques for mindful observation and establishing empathy

- Collaborate to create a code of conduct for multicultural teams

What will the audience take away from this workshop?

- How cultural differences show up and affect people in the workplace

- How to reduce the anxiety associated with cross-cultural interactions

- What to consider when presenting to multicultural teams

- Ways to improve communication in multicultural teams

- Ways to review designs and give feedback in multicultural teams

- How to effectively lead multicultural teams

- How to improve hiring practices to be more inclusive of diverse cultures

Any requirements for attending?

None

As creative professionals, we are called upon to produce and deliver original strategies and solutions to make our companies or clients stand out in the crowd, requiring a high level of creative thinking and generation of innovative ideas. But sometimes constantly having to be “on” creatively can be mentally taxing. Furthermore, standard working conditions often can extinguish our creative fire, making it tough to come up with fresh ideas precisely when we need them most. What is needed is a way to work better so that we can create more.

Through exploring various concepts and approaches, including the neuroscience of creativity, productivity techniques, and emerging practices that spur innovation, we’ll discover not only the ways in which our brains work best, but also what’s behind the times when we feel on fire with creativity and when we don’t. We’ll translate this information into processes and techniques for dramatically enhanced creative productivity.

Beware: this workshop challenges the standard norms around concentration, focus, productivity, and may change how you work…for the better.

What topics will be covered?

• The biggest blocks and inhibitors of creativity and how to eliminate them

• The importance of achieving flow states for optimum creative productivity

• How to manage time to make more time for creating

• The connection between the inner critic and creativity

• How to leverage different thinking styles for increased group creative output

What will the audience take away from this workshop?

• A process to unfold the brain in order to work better and create more

• Ways to get the brain into the state where one accesses creative ideas and ideates best

• Methods for generating creative ideas when most needed

• Techniques for kick-starting creative collaboration

• Exercises for accessing the creativity of the self and of others

Any requirements for attending?

None.

One of the most persistent factors limiting the impact of user research in business is that projects often stop with a cataloging findings and implications rather than generating opportunities that directly enable the findings. We’ve long heard the lament “Well, we got this report and it just sat there. We didn’t know what to do with it.” But design research (or ethnography, or user research, or whatever the term du jour may be) has also become standard practice, as opposed to something exceptional or innovative. That means that designers are increasingly involved in using contextual research to inform their design work.

Ongoing acceptance of user research has increased the ranks of designers and others who feel comfortable conducting research. But analysis and synthesis is a more slippery skill set, and we see how easy it is for teams to ignore (more out of frustration than anything malicious) data that doesn’t immediately seem actionable. This workshop gives people the tools to take control over synthesis and ideation themselves by breaking it down into a manageable framework and process.

What topics will be covered?

Framing a research problem

Observation methodology

Difference between analysis and synthesis

Methods for analysis and synthesis

Best practices for ideation

What exercises will be done?

Fieldwork observation

Analysis and synthesis activity

Ideation

Reflection

What will the audience take away from this workshop?

• Collaborate in teams to experience an effective framework for synthesizing raw field data

• Gain perspective on the difference between surface observations, and deeper, interpreted insights.

• Learn how to move from data to insights to opportunities

• Experience techniques for generating ideas and strategies across a broad scope of business and design concerns

• Focus on individual and group analysis to create a top line report

• Brainstorm on patterns, cluster analysis and diagrams to rethink the problem

• Prioritize findings and create new opportunities

Any requirements for attending?

No, but most relevant to people who have an interest in learning from customers in order to inform their product and service design decisions.

 

Steven Spielberg's 2018 film Ready Player One imagines a future where we all live in headsets and our lives are based around an online world called the Oasis. Come learn about the state of Virtual Reality (VR) today. Already, designers are working with technology that allows the physical world to disappears and imagining all new interactions, pattern libraries, and in-app physics. We will also cover augmented reality apps, such as Pokémon Go, which lets people see digital renderings in their physical reality. Apple, Facebook, and Snapchat are patenting techniques to insert digital images on top of real world objects.

Come to this workshop to get a grounding in the tech that’s available to today and how to create experiences for the future.

Part 1: Overview and demos of Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality (VR/AR/MR). Intro and Welcome. Grounding in the state of the technology today. Participants will demo VR/AR technology.

Part 2: Using the human body as the interface

Techniques for interaction design in AR/VR/MR. Input via controllers, glasses, and eventually neural laces. The potential to optimize communication between a user and an application when the human body is the interface.

What topics will be covered?

Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Mixed Reality and their potential to influence industries. Showing specific examples of how AR/VR are already transforming education, entertainment, travel and other industries. And how they are impacting range of experiences such as a restaurant meal, a music concert, a hotel room, or people's homes.

What exercies will be done?

Participants demo mobile VR, Microsoft Hololens, etc. They fill out reflection sheets on what they learn and where they see potential in their individual fields. Later on, small groups of participants will create custom interactions for a VR experience. IGroups will come up with interactions (such as in-air gestures) that the player can use to walk, teleport, navigate menus, etc. Everyone will debrief on the potential for custom interactions to impact an experience.

What will the audience take away from this workshop?

Grasp of the fundamental capabilities of augmented reality and virtual reality technologies. Secondly, experience doing interaction design for VR. Inspired to be more involved in immersive technologies!

Any requirements for attending?

None

If your design system doesn't address motion, it's leaving important design details to chance. Interface animations are most effective when they fit with the bigger design picture, but that's almost impossible to do well if they aren't represented in your design principles.

Planning how animation will be used in your design system allows teams to save time in the design process and set guidelines for consistent implementation. On top of that, defining a motion language for your brand can help your team to develop a shared vision from which to work.

In this workshop, Val will cover guidelines for designing animation that fits your brand, and documenting your animation decisions in your design system. All the things you need to make UI animation work more smoothly for you and your team.

What topics will be covered?

- Defining your brand in motion

- How to identify the foundational building blocks of motion for your brand or product

- How to make animation part of your design process

- Where and how to represent motion as part of your design system efforts

What exercises will be done?

- Brand/Product personality defining exercise

- Brand/Product motion matching exercise

- Motion storyboarding exercise

What will the audience take away from this workshop?

A clear idea of how to address motion in their design system and where to start to get that done.

Any requirements for attending?

A laptop with Chrome or Firefox installed will be needed to participate in the exercises.

In this workshop, you'll get hands-on with pen and paper to unleash the power of sketching. From design research to ideation to prioritization to communicating design directions, imagery and hand-created artifacts are effective ways to dramatically improve ideas and increase understanding and stakeholder buy-in.

We'll survey the low-fidelity sketching landscape, exploring practices like graphic recording, sketchnoting, visual journalism, urban sketching, whiteboard videos, lettering, scenario sketching and sketching screens & UI. And we'll get hands-on to develop and enhance your visual vocabulary and practice sketching to think vs. sketching to communicate. (Spoiler: they are not the same thing.)

In this workshop, you'll not only build your personal sketching skills, you'll also learn how to effectively bring visual practices into your team.

What topics will be covered?

* When and why to sketch

* How sketching amplifies and improves UX work

* A summary of practices and methods, including graphic recording, sketchnoting, observational sketching, symbolic sketching, scenarios, storyboards, interfaces and flows.

* The tools of the trade and when/how to use them

* Sketching basics and tricks to work fast and accurately

* Sketching to think vs. sketching to communicate

* How to match the right level of fidelity for the right level of feedback

* Collaborative sketching and group participation

What exercises will be done?

* Map different sketching practices to phases of product and UX work

* Learn to sketch people, places, things, concepts, scenarios and screens

* Basic lettering and linework

* Develop and practice a visual vocabulary

* Assess the visual-readiness of your team

What will the audience take away from this workshop?

* Know the core principles of visual communication for UX work

* Practice simple skills for making clear and communicative sketches

* Expand your visual vocabulary with concepts specific to your work

* Enhance your skills and level-up your visual practice

* Resources and referrals for ongoing practice and improvement

* Understand the barriers to collaborative sketching and how to bust through them

* Leave with an action plan for using sketching in your team

Any requirements for attending?

No prior experience needed. Just come ready to sketch, to be curious, to collaborate, and to get out of your comfort zone. And, come ready to make a lot of stuff and have some powerful fun!

 

We live in a global society constantly being shaped by a diversity of cultures, practices, values, and ways of knowing. Evidence of this “messy” world can be seen within industry, a classroom, a or in a household. The beauty of designing in this context is that the “mess” informs the design and brings about innovations for social good that could not have been imagined in a more homogeneous world. In this workshop, we will build a toolkit for designing for social good. In particular, we will explore how to expand our understanding of empathy to empower a broad range of users to be designers and producers, capable of collaborating on or birthing their own innovations. We will also think through the design lifecycle from a technical sense by ideating for technology that does not exist to empower users in becoming designers for social good. 

Most design thinking within any organization is centralized in User Experience (UX). However, when one person or team is in charge of the design thinking and the user experience within a product or organization, the values that are intrinsic to UX Engineers can conflict with the values of product development. Not only does this burn out UX Engineers with an us versus them mentality, but it creates a culture where user-focused innovation is lacking and so is the product design. To combat this trend we will address the concept of design thinking and where UX fits within a larger product development process. We want to flip the paradigm of UX being completed by UX engineers to one where the whole product development team approaches UX and creates a product with the same mindset.

What topics will be covered?

Design thinking & process

Identity differentiation and career specialization

Participatory design & stakeholder analysis

Best practices

Team development

What exercises will be done?

Group UX therapy

Designing a UX workbench

Process ideation & specialization

What will the audience take away from this workshop?

People who attend this workshop will walk away with an understanding of how to instantiate an individualized process to build design thinking into their product team.

Any requirements for attending?

A knowledge of the basics of User Experience would be beneficial. Anyone with an eye towards practicing UX within a product development team would benefit from attending this workshop.

 

The Inclusive Service Design Workshop will bring together three important areas of design to challenge practitioners to think big and broad when it comes to meeting human needs.  It will not be your average, run-of-the-mill diversity in design or service design workshop. We focus on three areas – Accessibility, Multiculturalism, and Innovation of Experiences – and use tools like experience mapping to create enriching experiences for all, even if it means pushing beyond our own limits of knowledge and understanding.

Outcome(s): Participants in this workshop will learn how to be more expansive in their thinking and creativity, and will walk away with materials that will support them and their teams in weaving empathy and inclusivity into their design and product development.

What topics will be covered?

Accessibility, Multiculturalism, and Innovation of Experiences

What will the audience take away from this workshop?

Attendees will walk away with a service design toolkit that will provide a fresh perspective for how we might create enriching experiences for all, even if it means pushing beyond our own limits of knowledge and understanding.

Any requirements for attending?

No.