Fuelled by a fabulous Brick Lane beigel (cream cheese and bacon - amazing!) myself and Holly Kennedy attended What's Next… in Experience Design, organised and hosted by LBi last Wednesday, 29 February 2012.
The event was focused on looking ahead and trying to identify future trends in user experience design based around five themes: Businesstrategy, Creativitech, Gamentertainment, Mobilemergent and Politicsociety.
Mobilemergent The first Mobilemergent talk was 'Mobile needs in emerging and submerging economies' by Priya Prakash, Head of Mobile Phone User Experience at Nokia. Priya said that services and tools designed for a global market should be useable regardless of gender, income and location as although people in people use different tools in different locations their needs are universal.
Priya debunked some of the myths about designing for people in emerging economies:
- Its not about the culture or the device. It's about the context.
- Its not about the data. It's the need for entertainment and meeting new people across the globe.
- It's not about being a smartphone alone. It's what it enables you to do faster and easier with longer battery life.
- It's not about spending money for always being on. It's the value you get when you can connect as needed.
Next up I attended 'Mobile Health: Will your design help or harm?' by Sam James, Consultant Psychologist at Harku. Sam said that although self tracker health apps can bring real and meaningful change into the lives of consumers in these situations poor UX can not only be frustrating but potentially harmful.
We need to be aware of who we are designing for and the situation they could be in. Other guidelines included design for feelings of control and reducing fear, design for coping, allow for automated and manual data collection and design for simple ideas of cause and effect - the app may simply allow people to identify a positive trend in exercise and mood.
Businesstrategy In his talk 'Disruptive digital business models. Darwinism goes digital' Alexander Grünsteidl, Director User Experience at Method, talked about the demise of products that we own and the explosion of services that we use. This trend has shifted our perceptions of value and ownership and access is everywhere at anytime, consequently what has more value - access or ownership?
With the evolution of the web we have seen the extinction of businesses that failed to evolve and meet the changing needs of the current market (this reminded me of Peter Drucker’s ‘Theory of the Business’ in which he states that business assumptions must be frequently reviewed and tested due to the dynamic nature of markets, consumers and technology and that business models, however sound they once were, can become obselete).
Along the way niche opportunities can be uncovered such as The Million Dollar Homepage (a website that sold 1 million pixels of internet advertising space for $1 each) and the One Red Paperclip (whereby one red paperclip was traded up 14 times for a house over a year). There are also game changers like Square (a service that allows you to accept credit card payments with a mobile phone and card reader) and Khan Academy (a service offering free educational videos to anyone anywhere).
Food for thought My main takeaway is that our role as UX designers is becoming much more strategic and to understand design we must understand business.
We should not be afraid to ask awkward questions to get right to the heart of design challenges. Successful UX designers are curious and have an innate desire to solve problems. The pace of change is relentless and we must adapt and evolve along with new trends and technology.
We need to break down silos and and speak the languages of people around us: the language of design, the language of technology and the language of business.
This is an exciting time to be doing what we're doing and Marcus Mustafa summed it up nicely when he said: 'We should have fun, be engaging and encourage emotions'.
Image: Alexander Grünsteidl talks about disruptive digital business models under the watchful eyes of one of the LBi UX Badgers!