WebVisions 2016, Chicago — Some Takeaways

First and foremost I have to say I am very fortunate to work for Spreedly, an awesome company, that makes it a part of their culture for employees to attend a professional conference once a year. In my many years as a designer I have never been afforded this opportunity and I can surely say I am grateful for this experience. With that being said lets look at a few things I took away from my time at WebVisions 2016, Chicago.

Using the Waveline: Mapping Premium Value to the User Journey — Nathan Shedroff

For me this was probably the single most valuable workshop or talk I attended while I was at the conference. The first half of the workshop was a talk about the ideas and theories behind the Waveline where I saw immediate value in this process and how it could apply to the work I was currently doing.

The basis of the workshop was around how meaningful experiences and qualitative data impact a business in a much bigger way. Often times businesses and executives tend to focus entirely on facts and figures, since it is hard concrete data. While this is a necessary evil, the landscape is changing and it’s being found that the information being uncovered via user research is showing that the customer’s experience is weighing heavily on the businesses overall success.

One of the examples given during the speech was the valuation of Instagram prior to its sale. On paper, and purely based on hard facts and figures, Instagram was worth around $86 million. However the companies valuation was in the billions at the time of selling. In that situation if the company was only assessed by its accounting sheets the sale would have been for much less.

The Waveline in essence is a customer journey map. However with the Waveline, unlike other journey mapping methods, we can visually expose areas of improvement. In a nutshell the Waveline works like this:

• The current customer experience is mapped on a graph of positive and negative emotion. This data is gathered through user research.
• The ideal customer experience is mapped on a graph of positive and negative emotion. This is the best possible experience we would like users to have.

Once the current and ideal customer journeys are outlined, and over-layed, areas of improvement in the journey are then exposed. The exposed areas will show large gaps as to what is really happening versus what the companies actual intentions are. By exposing these areas of improvement it allows the business to make decisions as to where they want to begin allocating resources to improve the customers experience. But it also gives a snapshot as to what is really happening when a user interacts with the company. The Waveline can be used for macro and micro experiences.

For more information on what was covered you can view Nathan’s slides http://www.slideshare.net/NathanShedroff/using-the-waveline-workshop.

Agile User Centric Innovation — Christian Titze

Agile methodologies are a big topic of conversation in regards to workflows and production. Many software companies and design agencies have adopted this type of a workflow or have put into practice some of the elements revolving around Agile. While I don’t work in an “Agile” environment I still thought this was a very beneficial experience and enjoyed the workshop overall.

The workshop emulated an Agile design process. We were split into four groups and each group was assigned a role. The task was to create a product or service that would best benefit the role our group was assigned. Once we collectively finished each team presented their ideas as if it were a real pitch. However the fun started when Christian flipped the script and made all of us switch teams and roles. Then he threw a real curveball and changed the direction of the project we were working on.

Behind the project and whacky banter, the moral of the workshop was to know how to deal with sudden and unexpected change when working on a project or team. Things come up that shift the direction and final outcome all the time. Knowing how to handle that is the idea. I thought this was really beneficial because if anything change is constant. While my environment is not “Agile”, we try to remain agile, per se.

Make Your Own Rules — Jessica Walsh

Jessica Walsh has made a big stand in the design community and is doing some really amazing things with her work and as partner of Sagmeister & Walsh. Her talk I felt was very impactful and had a lot of value in general. The topic of conversation was about constraints, being creative, being bold, and doing good work.

She explored the ideas of setting constraints within your work in order to evoke creativity. I felt that this was very true and solid advice. I know from past experiences some of my best work came out of tight constraints, wether they were self-inflicted or not. Constraints help to spark creativity because you are forced to start thinking about new and exciting ways to do something within your limits.

Creative Leadership: The Value Design Brings to Business — Nathan Shedroff

Nathan Shedroff really hit a home run with me while I was at WebVisions. Both his workshop and talk were powerful and insightful bits of information. His talk was on design and how much of an impact it has on a business. As designers we are in the business of creating experiences. Therefore he focused on the importance of qualitative data and how powerful the customer experience can be on a business.

Also how design and design thinking has shifted and that designers are playing a bigger role in the business side of things than they were before. As designers we have a keener understanding of the emotional impact an experience can have on a customer and it is our responsibility to improve that on every possible level we can. As well as share this insight and knowledge with our business peers.

Practical Creativity — Dan Saffer

Dan Saffer gave a really good speech on creativity from the eyes of a designer, engineer, craftsman, or problem solver. Creativity is a process that requires systems and approaches. The talk focused on finding time to be creative, setting creative schedules, and what to do when you get stuck. What I really enjoyed most about Dan’s talk was knowing when you are most creative and trying to focus on making that your time to be productive.

Sometimes as a designer we don’t always get to set our own schedules and have to abide by the rules of the land but if we can create systems that help us along with being creative — even when we may not want to — we can learn to adapt and improve our productivity. The ideas behind what he was saying is that we train ourselves to know when its creative time. We can do so by choosing specific times of the day, choosing certain musics, or even just creating a ritual like having a cup of tea and then getting into our work.

What I liked about this approach was the fact that I never thought of it that way before. I also never really paid a lot of attention as to when I was the most creative or productive since it seems to come in sporadic waves at odd hours. I think that this is something that I am going to be more self-aware of from now on and try to approach my creativity from a different angle.

Design Anthropology 101 — Amélie Lamont

I was not quite certain what this talk was going to be about when I went into it but I have to say it was rather impactful as well. Part of the talk was about Amélie and her journey into design anthropology. The rest of her talk was about user centered design combined with anthropologic studies. In order to innovate design we need to include people in the design process, observe how they live and use things, and get ideas on how to create more meaningful products/services.

This was a neat approach for me because I had never really considered the studies of anthropology being linked to design. However it makes a lot of sense especially with the surge of digital products being created today. What I took away from this speech was to really be more observant outside of the work that I am doing and start to pay attention more to how we interact with all sorts of things in the world and try to understand the impact that these products, services, and experiences have on ourselves and our cultures.

The Difference Between Being Cute & Being Creepy Is One Emoji: Making Work & Love on the Internet — Timothy Goodman

Timothy Goodman is a graphic designer and illustrator based out of New York. He’s mostly known for his large typographic illustrative work. His talk focused a lot on doing work you love. But also not being afraid to expose yourself and your feelings, emotions, etc. through your work.

His approach to the topic was really inspiring and often times I can agree as a designer we don’t always do work we love or want to do. I think what was most beneficial for me out of this talk was to not be afraid to explore and try things even if they don’t get used. There are always personal projects or things you can do on your own that feed the creative soul. However at the same time I feel like his approach could be applied to any project, by adding a little bit of you to everything you do.

Hello From the Other Side — Adapting the Agile Agency to Clients’ Realities — Christian Titze

Christian expanded a little bit more on Agile workflows with his talk. The main focus was on user centered design, the importance of user testing, and the benefits of working as an agile company and building cross-disciplinary teams that involve everyone in the project as well as stakeholders.

What I really liked about Christians talk was the emphasis on cross-disciplinary teams and getting everyone involved in the process. I think this is really important when it comes to product or service development. I’ve found in the past with other projects there will be certain ideas or thoughts about how to do something that sound great but when applied they prove to be problems which could have been avoided if other resources were available during initial meetings.

Tall Tales from a Large Man — Aaron Draplin

Aaron Draplin is the man. Such an awesome designer and totally radical dude. To sum up his speech, you can do what you want and design can take you there. Aaron shares his journey through design and some of his triumphs along the way. He pointed out some of the work that he did for friends that helped shape their business as well as some of the work he did for the Obama administration.

For me this was a really emotionally impactful speech as a designer because it gave me a lot of insight into the fact that we can do what we want as designers and it can be a rewarding experience. Draplin’s speech along with Goodman’s opened up my eyes to new and exciting possibilities.

What Does a Roll of Toilet Paper Have in Common with Product Design? — Noam Almosnino

Noam Almosnino is a designer who works for Adobe, his speech focused on low fidelity prototyping and building off of your ideas. The first portion of the talk was about using low fidelity prototypes to start generating ideas and seeing what is possible. The purpose of this portion of the talk was so you don’t get fixated on ideas and are willing to explore more options to find a winning design solution.

The second portion of the talk focused on the importance of user interviews using historical type questions and gathering qualitative data to create better products. Often times during product or service development we assume that we know what’s best for the user and tend to overlook them as a part of the design process. When we put the user at the center of our design process we can begin to look at what drives and motivates them. But also we can uncover things we didn’t think of before.

One of the biggest things that I took from this speech was the “yes-and” approach to design. Similar to that of improve comedy you apply “yes-and” to your design process to keep coming up with new ideas on how you can achieve something.

In Retrospect

My experience at WebVisions 2016, Chicago was amazing. I am very grateful I had the chance to go. The conference was just the right size, big enough to be interesting, and small enough to be personal and intimate. Each speaker had a lot of really wonderful things to say and gave great insight on a lot of different topics. It was a real pleasure meeting all the people I did and creating new relationships.

Looking back I would say the overall theme would be to do what you love, don’t be afraid to expose yourself through your work, stay focused on your goals, remember that we are designing for people, and as designers we can make a big impact on businesses and the world.

WebVisions was an amazing conference and I definitely will plan on attending another one either in Chicago or one of the other locations.