What is the User Experience profession anyway and why are we doing this work? I want to help people make products people love. Some of us in the field are making products people love - what are they doing differently? What is Agile and how do we fit in? How do we rethink our profession in this world where technology and implementation move so fast? Get back to the core of what we do: connect customers and companies; understand our users (not just the ones who use the product, but those who use our services) and focus on the value we offer. Not the value of the test or the report, but the value of the intelligence we provide. The landscape has changed: people have higher expectations about the products and service they use. Things should just work, they shouldn't be hard. How can we help companies and product teams get there? This talk would be my take on the subject, I would love to hear yours too.

1. Rethinking UX What is the User Experience profession anyway and why are we doing this work?

2. Sort of, but not really What's the core of what we do?Connect customers and companies to make stuff people love

3. A Story Rewrite the story of Product Development

4. Why? Our World Has Changed “Have to” Has Become “Want to” Ownership Ubiquity Choice …

5. Agile XP, Scrum, Lean…

6. Agile and UX Agile means thinking differently Agile means changing behavior and mindsets Agile + UX = BFF We just don’t know it It’s a UX dream come true: Iterative and incremental design and development

7. Time for a new way of thinking

8. Not a Prescription This is the rethinking part: How do we serve our customers? What’s their UX of working with us? How involved and engaged are they?

9. History

10. What’s the Core Connect customers and companies or customers and development teams

11. The Profession What is the UX Profession anyway? And why are we doing this work? Only measurements: Efficiency? Effectiveness? Satisfaction? Or more? Beyond the product? User Centered Design? Information architecture? Interaction Design? Human factors? Usability specialist? Users or Customers?

13. I think we know - really User Experience Research And Design

14. Usability/UCD or Design? Usability Maturity Model Stage 1: Hostility Toward Usability Stage 2: Developer-Centered Usability Stage 3: Skunkworks Usability Stage 4: Dedicated Usability Budget Stage 5: Managed Usability Stage 6: Systematic Usability Process Stage 7: Integrated User-Centered Design Stage 8: User-Driven Corporation

15. Design Is Never Done

16. Build to think "Design thinking is inherently a prototyping process. Once you spot a promising idea, you build it. In a sense, we build to think."

17. What about Agile?

18. Comrades While UX was convincing companies to design software for humans, software engineers were also trying to get companies to understand how to develop software

19. Agile and UX Agile means thinking differently Agile means changing behavior and mindsets Agile + UX = BFF We just don’t know it It’s a UX dream come true: Iterative and incremental design and development

20. Back to the Core

21. Our Value Outward focus

22. More on Value An understanding of how to capitalize on what we do know, find out about what we don’t Research, data Personas Prototypes A strong sense of collaboration Everyone has a piece of the puzzle, let’s put them together What tools do we have to help keep the focus on the customer?

23. What’s important? When designing take this approach Who before what What before how Ask “Why?” and “What’s the real problem?” liberally throughout Test out the how with real people, often

24. Stop Building the Wrong Thing!

25. What does it take?

26. Organizational Transformation Not about schedules and timelines Is about customers and colleagues, problems and solutions And delivering value

27. Out of the Echo Chamber

28. Leading Change How many does it take to make a change happen?

29. Use Your Skills What’s missing? Who needs to be on board? How can you help them? A little WIFM goes a long way  What experience can you create to facilitate understanding? What experiences create empathy with customers?

30. What’s different? Not about process Not about methods Not about metrics These are TOOLS

31. Defy limitations Keep it simple

32. What does it look like? No more Feature driven development Value driven, iterative, flexible, agile Design thinking organization Solve problems rather than create features Provide value and emotional connections Everyone has a piece of the puzzle – fit them together Collaborate User driven organization Take it a step farther – watch users work, don’t just talk to them Find problems they don’t even recognize and solve them Innovate based on customer value

33. Value Driven Development Iterative incremental development Prototypes and visibility - get something valuable and complete to play with ASAP Be willing to throw away code (or whatever) – “design” vs production code Build the simplest thing that will work Build value incrementally

34. Core Values

35. Our Values Co-creation Iterative design Reflective process Collaborative work Integrative thinking Common understandings Everything is an experiment Delivering on the promise of VALUE Connecting customers and companies

36. How do we get there? “Take the first step in faith…” Martin Luther King

37. Starts with Education How do we educate designers? How do we educate developers? How do we educate researchers? How ‘bout the rest of the organization? product managers? marketing? sales? executives? How do we educate ourselves?

38. Your take? Where are you and what makes sense?

39. Questions?