After a quick lunch and walk we went on to listen to the rest of the speakers…
Richard Adams
Creative Strategy
From Art to Engineering to art; the long way round
We still need processes. Artificial Intelligence cannot make tea. Robots can win at chess or “go” but put it into an unfamiliar room and it will not be able to do anything. At every stage things have to be tested/checked/approved.
The future of intelligence is in making our patterns better, our heuristics stronger. [In a Medium article] Kevin Ashton refers to this as “selective attention” … focusing on what really matters so that poor selections are removed before they ever hit the conscious brain.”
-> companies started doing agile tech not being ready for it in their business. For Example KODAK: it was flexible but they couldn’t keep up with change. 40 years of process in place slowed them down.
“System Thinking” = Design Thinking (just a business version)
Roam free of Rothko Painting. Everything we do is not a bunch of finished paintings but unfinished questions and unfinished answers. We are all artists and project managers. We are all linked up and have a responsibility. Processes, Thinking…. that hasn’t changed – only the toolset has. We just spend too much time on the tools.
Change “Design Thinking” into “Art Thinking”:
- Use Hard Live Data to get change. Changing the culture in your business by starting from the basics.
- Remember that data supports what we do.
- Management has to see that they must change – must be forward thinking
- Lots of content can sit on different servers like Facebook / LinkedIn. So we don’t need to keep all the content on the main site.
Kati Price (Head of Digital Media Department V&A)
Delicious Ambiguity
Creativity = Novelty + Practicality
V&A wants the client to enter the site and be inspired, like when walking into the museum. Revamping the website was a must.
What they did:
- Cost is visible up front
- Ticketing link opened in a new window
- improved button look and feel
- More info about concessions and link to membership
Result:
- 48.3% clickthrough to 3rd party ticket website
What they did:
- Site wide performance improvements
Result:
- Page weight decreased by over 1MB
- GPSI raised to 86% (now higher than most competitors)
- Site loads 3 seconds faster (reduction by half)
Remember to:
- Give people something tangible / something concrete to look at
- Start small -> Everyone starts somewhere (New website designed on a napkin)
- Let the Data do the talking
- Work the process
Build out from a minimum viable product
-> In product development, the minimum viable product (MVP) is a product which has just enough features to gather validated learning about the product and its continued development. Gathering insights from an MVP is often less expensive than using a product with more features which increase costs and risk in the case where the product fails, for example due to incorrect assumptions.
What they did:
- A/B test with 46K unique visitors
- Removed the carousel
Result:
- Over 11% more page views
- 15% increase in overall conversion rate
(Obligatory uplifting quote to end with)
‘Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity’ – Gilda Radner
Jack Shepard
The Altruist and the Egoist: A Tale of Technology, People and Giving a Damn
Empathy – understanding how we communicate with each other – not just to earn money.
“How are you?” -> ask about someone’s well‐being – a common thread throughout countries.
5 Stages of Greeting
- Recognition
- Distance
- Approach
- Contact
- Resolution
The reptilian brain, the oldest of the three, controls the body’s vital functions such as heart rate, breathing, body temperature and balance. Our reptilian brain includes the main structures found in a reptile’s brain: the brainstem and the cerebellum. The reptilian brain is reliable but tends to be somewhat rigid and compulsive.
The limbic brain emerged in the first mammals. It can record memories of behaviours that produced agreeable and disagreeable experiences, so it is responsible for what are called emotions in human beings. The main structures of the limbic brain are the hippocampus, the amygdala, and the hypothalamus. The limbic brain is the seat of the value judgments that we make, often unconsciously, that exert such a strong influence on our behaviour. We learn through our experiences – thanks to this – our brain changes.
The neocortex first assumed importance in primates and culminated in the human brain with its two large cerebral hemispheres that play such a dominant role. These hemispheres have been responsible for the development of human language, abstract thought, imagination, and consciousness. The neocortex is flexible and has almost infinite learning abilities. The neocortex is also what has enabled human cultures to develop.
These three parts of the brain do not operate independently of one another. They have established numerous interconnections through which they influence one another. The neural pathways from the limbic system to the cortex, for example, are especially well developed.
According to John Rawles, people are just savages until exposed to society. What would we do if we were the ones that started a society, taking into account that each individual, deliberates behind a “veil of ignorance”: each lacks knowledge, for example, of his or her gender, race, age, intelligence, wealth, skills, education and religion. The only thing that a given member knows about themselves is that they are in possession of the basic capacities necessary to fully and willfully participate in an enduring system of mutual cooperation; each knows they can be a member of the society.
-> equal society -> original possession -> social benefits.
3 components of social empathy
- Individual empathy (chimpanzees share nuts, babies cry together in hospital, people look at baby and cry “ooooh”)
- Contextual understanding (Delve deeper into context)
- Social Responsibility (What do we do with the information) -> if we use this information we can make a better community / Better Design.
Approach & Industry
Don’t Design on Assumptions
Industry
Social Solidarity
Diversity is a Benefit -> But we should not change 400 people from the audience – 350men and 50women to 200/200, but 350/350. We are equal. We are also equally unique.
Remember:
We work in the PEOPLE industry – not the TECH industry
Next time you want to design/build something ask yourself these questions:
Who is this for?
What does this mean to them?
How are they?
Discovery -> doing as much research as possible.
example: One Direction App -> They did so many UX talks with consumers that the reviews sky rocketed.
KEYNOTE
Nick Finck, Product Design Manager, Facebook
UX for Change
Overview
- Technology
- Age of Understanding
- Innovation
- Disruption
- Failure
- Our Duty
- Impact
Technology
-> storing content before the digital age -> Hulton Archive, which is a library bought by Getty Images in 1996. Getty now owns the rights to some 15 million photographs from the British press archives dating back to the 19th century.
In 2000, Getty embarked on a large project to digitise the photo archive and launched a dedicated website in 2001. A data migration programme began in 2003 and the Hulton Archive was transferred to the main Getty Images website; the Hulton Archive is still available today as a featured resource within the vast Getty holdings.
Moore’s Law
Over the history of computing hardware, the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit has doubled approximately every two years. – Gordon Moore
Processing power doubles every two years – will soon exceed the brain capacity of a mouse.
We store stuff online so we don’t have to worry about storing it on our laptop. But there is a cost. All devices take your attention – they’re becoming overwhelming. We have to adapt to this technology.
We are not surviving, we are barely existing.
We’re in a technology tsunami. Whether you love it or hate it, ultimately we have to figure out how to survive it and make it work for us. – Peggy Klaus
Work and personal life used to be seperate. Now we seek a work/life/technology balance.
We’re in a technology tsunami. Whether you love it or hate it, ultimately we have to figure out how to survive it and make it work for us. – Peggy Klaus
The Age of Understanding
The naked transparency movement marries the power of network technology to the radical decline in the cost of collecting, storing and distributing data. – Lawrence Lessig
We are not smarter individually, but collectively.
There can be no faith in the government if our highest offices are excused from scrutiny – they should be setting the example of transparency – Edward Snowden
The Death of lies -> is this the cost?
Innovation
The Innovators Dilemma:
Businesses tend to reject innovations based on the fact that customers cannot currently use them, thus allowing these ideas with great potential to go to waste – Clayton Christensen
Disruption
A few Disruptors:
Disruptive Innovation
An innovation that creates a new market and value network and eventually disrupts an existing market and value network, displacing established market leaders – Clayton Christensen
-> changes the way we think – changes processes.
A new idea is never a bad idea – it might just not be the right moment – customers might not understand. The industry didn’t want the first electric car – now Tesla is coming out with their new model.
Electric vehicles first appeared in the mid-19th century. The high cost, low top speed, and short range of battery electric vehicles, compared to later internal combustion engine vehicles, led to a worldwide decline in their use; although electric vehicles have continued to be used in the form of electric trains and other niche uses.
At the beginning of the 21st century, interest in electric and other alternative fuel vehicles has increased due to growing concern over the problems associated with hydrocarbon-fueled vehicles, including damage to the environment caused by their emissions, and the sustainability of the current hydrocarbon-based transportation infrastructure as well as improvements in electric vehicle technology.
Failure
We need to fail more. We learn from failing. Companies should learn from failure.
Michael Jordan failed to make his varsity basketball team
Albert Einstein’s teacher described him as “mentally slow”
Walt Disney went bankrupt several times
Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough – Elon Musk
It’s Our Duty
It’s not enough that we build products that function, that are understandable and usable, we also need to build products that bring joy and excitement, pleasure and fun, and yes, beauty to people’s lives. – Don Norman
UX is not just what’s on screen. It’s everything that the customer has access to. We must think of designing for the good of humanity, not for an individual. Our work is so much more than just evoking emotion, it is about life. Manage technology, information and craft experiences that create a better future.
Design works in the service of a better world. Always has, always should – Mike Monteiro
We as designers can change the world.
We cannot solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them. – Albert Einstein
Impact
Online magazine where we could learn about the web.
Most students didn’t have mentors.
Introducing:
UXforChange.org
a website to help student get mentors and work experience (portfolios)
Designers have to do more – we can create change
