Concentric Conference

It’s important to ask yourself: Does your career path make you feel happy?

We’re extremely fortunate at IBM to have wonderful leadership that allows us to explore and try on different hats. But what if you don’t know what hats to try on?

We design our products with our end user in mind. The same way you can design your career for the personas YOU embody.

In this interactive workshop, we’ll be doing exercises on finding out your primary personas, where in your life you’re out of balance, and reflecting on how to make our dreams happen.

You’ll come out of this workshop with:
– a deeper understand of where your out of balance and, therefore, affecting their productivity
– language to describe your unique traits
– strategies to design their careers around your individual strengths and weaknesses
– a reference point to measure whether you’re in alignment with your values

In this workshop, Cindy Brummer — UX agency owner, instructor, and mentor — will walk through the items in your LinkedIn profile, resume and portfolio that are important for finding that first job. You’ll have an opportunity to have your existing portfolio and profile reviewed so you can make improvements right then and there. The updates you make will help you stand out from the crowd and increase your chances of landing that first job.

Takeaways
1) Why your portfolio and profile are holding you back
2) How to critically assess your portfolio and profile like a recruiter or hiring manager
3) Updates you can make to your portfolio and profile to improve your chances in the job market

Cindy has earned a Masters degree in UX Design from the Maryland Institute College of Art; she also completed a design fellowship program through the Johns Hopkins Technology Innovation Center.

In addition to guiding the team at Standard Beagle, Cindy mentors designers, runs the UX in ATX global community of designers, and teaches the UX/UI boot camp program through the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas. She is also a contributing author to the book “97 Things Every UX Practitioner Should Know,” published by O’Reilly.

Her kids and husband say the rumors are not true — Cindy does in fact sleep, and she spends time with them. Mostly watching Marvel TV shows and movies.

Follow Cindy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cindybrummer/
Visit her websites: https://standardbeagle.com/
https://cindybrummer.com/

* The definition of Information Architecture
* Why IA Research is important
* Recognizing and avoiding bias in IA Research
* Card Sorting – what, when, why, and how
* Tree Testing – what, when, why, and how
* Available IA research tools and why they’re important

The workshop is using Miro boards and sadly those are not accessible yet to screen readers by default. But please let us know if you have any accessibility needs and we will try to do our best to find a solution to accommodate those as best as we can.

She likes to share her passion for her UX work all around the world. She has taken this beyond her successful blog, conferences and workshops. She discusses a wide range of topics, including mobile UX, enterprise UX, cognitive biases, inclusive design, design process and designer – developer relationship. You can follow her on social media for qualitative curated UX design content.

@walterstephanie on Twitter and stephaniewalter.design

Larry presents a set of tips proven to double or triple average design metrics. These are not the typical UX tips offered by so many other designers, but specific techniques and insights that have stood the test of time and continue to create successful designs.

Key Observations to Watch For
When conducting user observations, there are some key indicators that identify opportunities to improve your design (website, software, or service). Identifying these things provides clear problems to focus on. Learn these and improve your design approach immediately.

Behavioral Engagement
Content is not engaging! Behavioral engagement performs so much better than just content. Larry shares a technique to create a behavior of engagement that reduces the hesitancy of your users to commit to a CTA. Learn how to easily engage your users.

The 4 A’s Continuum
Does your site have a Call-to Action on the home page? Then you’re designing it wrong. There’s a common flow that users go through before clicking a CTA. If you don’t support that flow, then the users are not likely to act. Learn how to design for the 4 A’s and see the difference for yourself.

Design for Common Shopping Behaviors
Users don’t buy on the first visit to the average website. There’s a simple process shoppers follow before buying something. Designing for that process dramatically increases the success of your site. Learn how to support these common behaviors to improve your bottom line.

Designing Knowledge
Users visit your site to solve a problem. Not only will they typically lack the knowledge to solve their own problem, they may not even define their problem accurately. You know more about the users’ problem and potential solutions that they do. Your knowledge is more valuable to the users than your product or service. Learn how to user that knowledge to improve your success metrics.

She’s interviewed and observed thousands of users, built hundreds of applications, IVR systems and services, and she is convinced that combining empathy with evidence is crucial for any product manager. She has a bachelor in interaction design from Switzerland and an MBA from Australia.

Collaging is a needs-elicitation technique where users randomly select images to represent how they feel about a specific topic. Users then explain the reason they chose each image to the moderator. The collage becomes an instrument for participants to express the needs that they might not otherwise have been able to articulate. This information allows us to better understand the user’s world and how to design for it.

In this workshop, Kyle will explain the history of collaging and other projective techniques, what you can learn from it, how to conduct it, and how to analyze the findings. Attendees will also have the opportunity to take part in facilitating their own collaging exercise!

If you’ve ever seen Kyle present, you know that teaching and sharing her knowledge is one of her passions. She has become a popular speaker and guest lecturer on all things related to UX research. Kyle is the Founder and Past President of the New Hampshire Chapter of the User Experience Professionals’ Association (NH UXPA), she has served as the Chair of PhillyCHI, the Philadelphia Chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (ACM SIGCHI), and she has served as the Mentoring Director for the IA Conference (formerly IA Summit). Kyle is very passionate about the continued growth of the UX community.

You can learn more about the research services Kyle offers and her work at: www.usableinterface.com.

Everybody is talking about customer-centricity and being more “user-obsessed,” but what does that really mean? How do we combine customer-centricity with wanting to be efficient, Agile, Lean, innovative, and experimental?

Sometimes we are sacrificing quality, collaboration, and the customer experience to “just ship it” and find out very late and reactively if our ideas, products, or services had any benefits for users. Customers don’t want minimally viable anything. They want their problems solved and their expectations met or exceeded.

Business goals don’t always overlap with customers’ needs. Agile and Lean claim customer satisfaction is our highest priority, but are we delivering high value to our trial and paying users? The customer decides what is “quality,” “done,” and “good enough,” and their standards might be higher than yours.

Customers notice when we get it wrong. Our competitors, investors, shareholders, the press, bloggers, and social media notice. Morale suffers, and we might have trouble retaining or hiring the best leaders and staff. Great customer experiences require the right team and strategies in place to predict and mitigate the risk of delivering wrong or flawed products, services, and experiences (PSE). Marketing and sales initiatives have uphill battles when we are offering PSE that are difficult to learn, frustrating to use, or not meeting customers’ real needs.

What needs to change and how can we start to create this shift on our teams and at our companies? It’s not always easy or straightforward. In this workshop, we’ll look at a models and approaches for a small or large business transformation back to high quality products and services that meet and exceed customers’ real needs.

Trainer Debbie Levitt will walk you through her process of investigating, diagnosing, planning, and creating change.

Clients have given her the nickname, “Mary Poppins,” because she flies in, improves everything she can, sings a few songs, and flies away to her next adventure.

Her “Delta CX” book and “Transforming Toward Customer-Centricity” training teach companies how to improve customer satisfaction, predict and mitigate business risk, and increase ROI by investing in great customer experiences. She has other training programs that teach non-CX roles about CX, why it’s done by specialists, and how to integrate it into teams and processes.

Outside of CX work, and sometimes during CX work, Debbie enjoys singing symphonic prog goth metal, opera, and New Wave. You can also catch her on the Delta CX YouTube channel.

In this workshop, you’ll learn how to identify your project’s study goals, how to choose the appropriate method(s) for your goals, and how to effectively carry these out. The goal of the workshop is to provide you with the knowledge and tools that will enable you to confidently carry out great user research.

In 2021, he started Watch City Research, a UX research consultancy outside of Boston. He served on the UXPA Boston Board of Directors for eight years and was the submission chairperson for their annual conference from 2012 to 2021. He recently edited and authored a chapter in the O’Reilly book “97 Things Every UX Practitioner Should Know,” and hosts a podcast as a companion to the book. Dan also teaches in the Bentley University UX
certificate program and is on the Board of Directors for the Waltham Land Trust.

Lessons learned from the path that led to getting the position, and, ones after almost a year of being a Head of UX.

Dimitris has worked as a consultant, freelancer, and employee, in startups, SMEs, and multinational organizations. Has worked on B2C and B2B platforms and apps. These experiences have led him to wear many hats, and to follow a systems design, evidence-based approach to UX and Product design.

(Hopefully coming soon)

(Zan’s hopefully coming soon)

Sarah is a visionary design + product leader with a proven ability to excel by working cross-functionally in product-focused organizations. She has a particular knack for relationship building and problem-solving challenging situations. Coaching and mentoring others are at her core, while she’s built teams and matured UX + Product practices within organizations. She’s passionate about working at the intersection of technology and design for disruption. Sarah is currently is the Associate Director of Product Design at Curology – making skincare accessible to all.

Sarah’s passion extends beyond her love for design – she enjoys discovering new restaurants, cooking, riding her Peloton bike and traveling the world. And making Google maps for favorite restaurants and travel destinations.

Prior to joining Capital One, she was a Principal Design Director at Microsoft, leading a transdisciplinary design, engineering and research team in developing cross-industry innovative solutions for Microsoft’s biggest enterprise customers. Her team’s work included building AR/VR, data and AI, IoT and software enterprise solutions for Fortune 500 companies in the retail, manufacturing, healthcare and financial services industries.

An IDEO alumna, Ovetta’s sweet spot is the intersection of humanity, business and technology. Working side by side with data scientists for most of her career at IDEO and beyond helped her to codify and operationalize responsible AI at the model level and develop processes to create Human-Centered AI. She also specializes in envisioning human-centered experiences for future technologies.

Combining her M.S. in Computer Science (HCI) with her BA in Communications, Ovetta spends most of her time helping people visualize humanity’s future and how to ethically and with compassion serve people through digital and intelligent products. When not working or teaching, Ovetta is swimming, biking and running, in exotic locales, and occasionally, doing these races called Ironmans.

Hadyn has a PhD in Communication, Theory, and Research, and Masters degrees in Social Psychology and Nursing Administration and Healthcare Systems Management. She has worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a tenure-track professor in Comparative Media Studies, focusing on research methodology and the effects of cross platform content consumption. She has worked with a variety of clients across multiple industries including consumer electronics, healthcare, genomics, and oil & gas. In each engagement, she looks for ways to improve the user experience while increasing system efficiencies, and making strategic contributions to overall company goals. Hadyn is currently the Head of Behavioral Science for ChaiOne.

Michelle Pakron has been designing and building digital products for over 23 years in multi-faceted roles within corporate, agency, small business, and consulting environments. With over a decade of senior and director-level roles in creative, UX, and technical strategy, she is and expert in aligning UX within Agile SCRUM teams. A mythical unicorn, Michelle has deep skills in user interface design, interaction design, front end development, and product management. She studied graphic design and psychology for her undergrad and has recently attained an MBA. Michelle is currently the Head UX Design at ChaiOne, a digital transformation agency that focuses on enterprise and industrial clients.