The theme for 2013 was collaboration. Our goal was to talk about all the unique ways UX professionals collaborate to create better experiences, as well as to illustrate all the partnerships we can forge, all the connections we can make, and all the ways we can make those connections. We really wanted to demonstrate what we can learn from other professions and what other professions can learn from UX. Our goal was to showcase exciting new speakers, different and intriguing perspectives, and a wider variety of topics than before. Take a look at the <link>program</link> – it represents the culminations of all our goals.
Many thanks to the 301 volunteers it took to create the conference, and the 550 attendees who helped create an amazing conference experience.
Christina York and Danielle Cooley, Conference Co-Chairs
Keynotes
Wednesday, July 10, 2013 – 9:30am-10:30am
Collaboration for the greater good: how a new government agency changed the face of financial experiences
Noah Kunin, Dan Munz, John Yuda, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
After the 2008 financial crisis, the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was tasked with redesigning the disclosures that millions of consumers and lenders use to make smart decisions when shopping for a mortgage. Rather than conducting this process behind closed doors, Noah, Dan, and John led the Bureau to tackle it through collaboration – not only with other teams at the CFPB, but also other government agencies and the public. Redesigning mortgage disclosures…in public?! Yes.
The Know Before You Owe campaign marked the first time a federal agency embarked on an open, iterative, digital crowdsourcing initiative to improve consumer disclosures. Not only was this a huge step forward for how government agencies approach a user-centered problem, but the team learned about how to make crowdsourcing useful, what happens when mortgage disclosures get big on Twitter, and how working together was a much more effective way to convince lawyers and policy folks that collaborative and iterative design with the public is a good idea in the first place. In the end, Know Before You Owe built a stronger design that was more accepted by the mortgage industry, and a team that better understood how to work together.
Noah, Dan and John will discuss how they built a user-focused design process at a federal agency, and what UX leaders anywhere can do to build this kind of collaboration into their project or organization.
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Thursday, July 11, 2013 – 9am-10am
FRUGAL INNOVATION: Collaborating To Innovate Faster, Better, Cheaper
Navi Radjou, Leadership Expert & Innovator
To win in today’s fast-paced and hyper-competitive business environment, companies must learn to collaborate and partner extensively to innovate cost-effectively and sustainably under severe resource constraints. In this engaging presentation, Navi will unveil a groundbreaking business paradigm: Frugal Innovation. Frugal innovation is the ability to actively engage internal and external partners to do more with less: that is, to co-create significantly more business and social value for the entire ecosystem while minimizing use of increasingly limited resources. Thousands of inventive firms in resource-constrained emerging markets like India, China, Africa, and Brazil apply frugal innovation techniques to co-develop with partners affordable and sustainable solutions that deliver more value to customers at lower cost. These innovators extensively leverage public, private, and non-profit partnerships throughout the entire product development cycle. In this keynote, Navi will vividly describe how frugal innovation is practiced today by leading firms worldwide, and show how you can apply new collaborative tools, techniques and mindset to deeply engage partners to address the needs of cost-conscious and eco-aware consumers worldwide.
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Navi is the co-author of Jugaad Innovation: Think Frugal, Be Flexible, Generate Breakthrough Growth (Jossey-Bass, 2012), which The Economist calls “the most comprehensive book yet to appear on the subject” of frugal innovation. Navi is also coauthor of From Smart to Wise, a book on next-generation leadership (Jossey-Bass, 2013).
Friday, July 12, 2013, 4:30 – 6:00pm
Denise R. Jacobs, Speaker + Author + Creativity Evangelist
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