UXPA Boston Conference 2015

Great designs are only useful if they are actually implemented. How do you drive design and innovation in organizations that haven’t previously thought of design as a core value? How can we drive design and design culture so “UX” and “Product” are synonymous?

We present best-practices and pitfalls that we’ve learned based on our 30 years combined of UX experiences, to help to drive design strategy and deliver effective design communications.

1.  How to focus on value

Nothing will de-rail a design effort faster than lack of consensus between designers, stake-holders and developers as to what the business value of the design is. We’ll discuss techniques for driving consensus. 

2.  How to create a strong internal design language

Imagine your CEO talking about “slippy design” and understanding what a “primary action” is. We’ll discuss how to craft a company-wide language that drives great UX.

3.  Designing in an agile world

Stake-holders don’t understand the design process—it’s too slow they murmur. How do you get your stakeholders to appreciate time taken on a design is worth it?

Best practices for design presentations

We know that people don’t like to read, and the popularity of infographics and various other data visualizations prove that, so we need to think carefully of our deliverables, and how to make them more consumable.  Some best-practices that we’ve learned include:

1). Visualize, when possible

Visualize whatever deliverables you have would help people to understand your concept more clearly. As human beings, we understand visuals faster because they affect us both cognitively and emotionally. 

2). Use real content

No more lorem ipsum! Don’t fake your design! Real content make your design more realistic, and can also make people think more deeply.

3). Prototype, as fast as you can!

Prototyping is not only a good experience design tool, but also a very effective presentation tool.

4) Tell a story

Stories define our world and people love stories. Combining UX with storytelling will make you a better communicator. For instance, writing user scenarios is always a good way to show the design in context.

5. Best practices for explaining testing data

Great—now you’ve built consensus, a strong design language, you’re delivering results at blazing speed but how do you and your organization know you’ve succeeded? We’ll discuss how to best communicate test results to show your designs are valid.

More companies are now setting up UX teams without a full understanding of what it entails, and new UX managers are facing unanticipated challenges. This panel brings together a range of experienced team leaders to share their tactics and lessons learned.

It appears that companies have recognized the value of user experience. In 2013, Robert Fabricant wrote in the Harvard Business Review: “The value of UX as a corporate asset is no longer in question.” New UX teams are springing up with existing user experience teams rapidly expanding. However, the growing pains can be significant:

• What balance of skills should your team include?


• How do you scale a team without hiring new people?


• How do you expand and maintain coherent outputs?


• How do you measure the UX value to get the headcount you need? 

You’ll hear from experienced UX leaders from several companies grappling with varying situations. We will cover starting an internal team who are located together as well as growing a globally distributed professional services group who all work at different client sites. We expect to address the challenges of delivering to a common set of standards to figuring out which skills to hire first or how to expand a mature team. We'll get beyond the burning issue of not enough skills in the market place, and explore creative ways to grow a team from within.

The audience will gain insights into the thinking behind each growth strategy, what worked and didn’t work from experienced UX managers. We’re present the reality, together with ways to approach and address the challenges of building a new team or expanding an existing team.