Jared's KeyNote

Started with Celebrity Deathmatch between 37 signals and Don Norman.
37 signals said they were designing for themselves. Don Norman, naturally, took umbrage. Jared now mentions that Apple and 37 signals are designing great products without focusing on the user.

So where does User centered design come from?
1960's IBM System 360 - designed for engineers by engineers - highly trained and skilled in using the tool.
1980's IBM DisplayWrite - for office workers, completely different system.
Techniques used for designing for engineers don't work for designing for others.This means a whole new process has to be developed.
Based on human factors and cognitive psychology. Promised that designing with users at the center would have better market acceptance.
The elephant in the room is that user centered design has never worked. UIE has been researching what it takes to create great designs. What differentiates great teams from teams that struggle. Process is the series of steps, a recipe for how to create a product. Can be a one time instance, can be followed every time. This is often confused for methodology. Then there is dogma at the far end of the scale. Example of dogma, is the TSA. Jared then gives examples of the TSA dogma, like 311. Uses these as humorous examples of where dogma goes wrong.

"Dogma is the unquestioned faith independent of any supporting evidence."

Expectation, when assessing the process and methodology of teams, was that great organizations would have a methodology or dogma that worked for them and could be recreated. In fact, on the other side of process, are the techniques. Example is the Rue in chicken paprikas. It takes practice to get it right. Once you have the technique, you can use it independent of the methodology. Further to the right are tricks. Techniques you use in a way not intended. Humorous example of a plumber in his house using the wrong tool to fix the pipe. The best teams did not have a methodology or dogma they followed. If one exists, they ignore it. The struggling organizations had a methodology that they slavishly followed. The best teams focused on increasing the techniques and tricks for each team member. They were constantly exploring new tricks and techniques for their toolbox. Struggling teams had limited tricks and techniques.
Maybe it is time to get rid of the user centered design dogma.

The story of stone soup.

Important point, the traveler does not believe that the stone makes soup.

The stone is a catalyst for getting people to work together. You can create incredibly crappy designs with usability tests and card sorts. It is a catalyst for getting people to focus on the end users.

The goal of user research is to inform the design process.

Example of a big box retailer.
Showed a physical example of a 1.8% conversion rate.
Have to design for the very small group who represent most of the income.

What gets measured, gets done.
What gets rewarded gets done well.

We don't reward on doing great design. We need better measures for getting things done well.
UIE has been measuring brand engagement. Traditional way of doing this is via loyalty. Other ways of measuring brand engagement: Confidence, Integrity, Pride, Passion. Jared does a live demonstration of brand loyalty using Starbucks, McDonald's, Apple and Microsoft.
The three core UX attributes for great UX design
Solid Vision.
Strong Research feedback capability.
Right Culture for doing this kind of work.
Vision - "Can everyone on the team describe the experience of using your design five years now? The importance of the vision is to give a flag that lets you see if you are moving towards that vision."
Feedback - "In the last 6 weeks has anyone on your team spent more than 2 hours watching someone use yours or a competitors design?"
Culture - "In the last 6 weeks have you rewarded a team member for creating a major design failure?" Celebrate because this is an important lesson to learn about your customers. Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
Let's move away from the dogma and move towards informed design. Build a reward system based on informed measures. Focus on 3 core UX attributes. Vision, Feedback, and Culture.
Copy of slides will be available on SlideShare - so once available I will send out.