11:35am - 12:15am

Gretchen McNeely + Scott McCall

Accenture / IBM

There are many considerations when designing for voice interfaces, as well as tools that streamline and simplify the process. Among other things, designers must take into account:

• Vocal timbre

• Gender: what do we connote when we select a specific gender for voice?

• Ways that "uncanny valley" manifests in voices 

• Appropriate metaphors as we think about interface capabilities and limitations

• Accent and dialect

• Syntax: words matter

• Humor

• Cultural references

• Inclusion of non-binary pronouns for the singular third person

• Empathic elements

The technology that enables it -- how we access it, how it's supported over time, and how it interacts with other info environments

Scott and Gretchen will walk through the importance of sensitivity to these elements, as well as introducing the audience to tools that help designers "meet people where they are" as voice interfaces become more ubiquitous in our field.

11:35am - 12:15am

Mark Ferencik

Optum Technology

At a time when the US auto industry was resting on past successes, the new chief engineer for the Toyota Sienna drove 53,000 miles across North America across all sorts of roads and situations with all sorts of people in the car. One of the key insights: Great minivan success is more about the kids in the back than the people in the front.  Sienna minivan sales jumped a whopping 50% in just one year based on his team’s insights!

Are you frustrated when your great user research insights and designs get dismissed by your business customers? The issues are deeply rooted in the origins of the auto industry and the way Alfred Sloan managed General Motors. His ideas spread through major business programs and explains a tremendous amount of why so many leaders often ignore the insights UX researchers are telling them. This interactive session will take a quick stroll through history of how these business practices came to be. Then we’ll explore some effective ways to get our leaders to sink old stinkin’ thinkin' and pony up the support needed for awesome UX and even better products.

10:40am - 11:20am

Leah Kaufman

Lenovo

Most usability tests are conducted with a single individual; focus groups have, well, groups. There's a sweet spot right in between where testing pairs, trios or even a small group, can yield richer and deeper understanding of someone's reaction to a UI. My session will examine this approach to testing, including a live demo of two people participating in a usability test together.

10:40am - 11:20am

Michael Weslander

GroundLift.io

Do you sometimes feel like your best work gets lost in translation when handed off to the developers? This session will cover a few techniques for developing and using design systems to help your team communicate and build more consistent interfaces efficiently.

Key Points:

How we use component cut up sessions (essentially UI audits) to get the whole team to share ownership and speak the same language. How we separate the style from functionality when building scalable UIs and some tricks for understanding the development mindset. Why we build a style guide (especially in code) and a few tools we use to keep them up to date. We'll discuss some of the tradeoffs of design systems for UX (the users and the profession) and help deepen the audience understanding of the corresponding tradeoffs for developers. Lastly, we'll have a heart-to-heart about locus of control, intention, and how we try to foster empathy between our clients and partners.

9:45am - 10:25am

Matt Kubota

Willowtree

In the summer of 2018, my girlfriend was admitted to a hospital in New Orleans with a rare neurological disorder that left her temporarily paralyzed and unable to speak. The only way we could communicate with her was with a poster board with the alphabet written on it, saying letter by letter to her until she tilted her head for confirmation. I came back to Durham thinking that there must be a better way to allow those experiencing both paralysis and aphasia to communicate. Throughout the next few months, I collaborated with a couple talented developers at my company during dedicated innovation time to create a head and eye tracking proof-of-concept app. Without my company’s culture of experimentation and the willingness to help from others, this project would never have been realized. The technology has barely been explored by other developers and speech pathologists are excited about the potential impact it can have on their patients. We are currently still working on it and are excited to get it to those that need this affordable solution. Through this talk I want share its origin story, effective and ineffective methods I used to recruit collaborators, and share what’s to come. I also want to share how difficult it was to bring something so personal to my life into a work setting, but how glad I am now that I did. It can build empathy with others and offer a chance for real solutions to be explored with the expertise of others.

9:45am - 10:25am

Vince Conzola

Red Hat

Many organizations, including Red Hat, are embracing neurodiversity as part of a diversity and inclusion strategy. Learn about different aspects of neurodiversity and why it's important to consider neurodiverse individuals when collaborating with co-workers and designing for end users.

Opening Keynote

8:30am - 9:30am

Design for Cognitive Bias

Using Mental Shortcuts for Good Instead of Evil

David Dylan Thomas, creator and host of the Cognitive Bias Podcast, has developed digital strategies for major clients in entertainment, healthcare, publishing, finance, and retail. He serves as Principal, Content Strategy at Think Company, an experience design consultancy, and helps organize Content Strategy Philly. He previously consulted at the Corzo Center for the Creative Economy and is the creator, director, and co-producer of Developing Philly, a web series about the rise of the Philadelphia tech community. He has given standing-room-only presentations at TEDNYC, SXSW Interactive, UX Copenhagen, and the Wharton Web Conference on content strategy and emerging content trends.