UX Crunch at Home: Future Technology and Design

"The best way to predict the future is to create it." - Abraham Lincoln

Technology often moves faster than society can keep up with. We are in a period of immense innovation that require us to both be aware of where we are, and have foresight of the future.

Designers have always worked at the intersection of cultural and technological trends, whether in digital or physical products. But today these trends are being accelerated by advances in technology, some of which are so rapid that it is hard to integrate them into strategy, design and development before they are superseded. How do we navigate in new, fast-moving surroundings? How can we plan and design for something in the future?

Join us as we sit down for a fantastic evening of talks, case studies, networking and more!

Featuring;

David Attwater - Senior Scientist - EIG

Dr Rebecca Grier - Principal Human Factors Engineer - Farm, a Flex Company

Timo Mashiyi-Veikkola - Futurist, Innovation Lead and Strategist


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Tickets are NON-REFUNDABLE however you can watch the recorded event if you miss the live stream.

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TALKS AND DISCUSSIONS

David Attwater - Senior Scientist - EIG

David is a conversational designer and speech scientist with over 20 years experience in his field. He started his career as a researcher at BT laboratories and is now Senior Scientist at EIG – a conversational design company.

Conversational User Interfaces

In this talk David will explore recent developments in conversational user interfaces and share some insights about the key design challenges. He will explain how conversational design differs from visual design and talk about the emerging use cases for speech opened up by recent improvements in technology.

Dr. Rebecca Grier - Principal Human Factors Engineer - Farm, a Flex Company

Dr. Rebecca Grier has 20 years of experience in user experience research across a variety of sectors. Currently she is a principal human factors engineer at Farm Design and serves on the executive council of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. Prior to joining Farm, she led a taskforce for SAE to write an information report on autonomous vehicle design issues for people with disabilities and assisted in the writing of the US Department of Defense human factors design standard.

She has published numerous journal articles, conference papers, and book chapters. Rebecca earned her PhD in Human Factors/Experimental Psychology from University of Cincinnati and a BS Honors in psychology from Loyola University Chicago.

Making Self-Driving Cars Accessible

Self-Driving Vehicles have the potential of making lives easier for people who cannot obtain a driver’s license. However, this requires that these vehicles be designed to be accessible. Dr. Grier will discuss the benefits of considering people with disabilities in the design of all technology as well as the specific considerations associated with self-driving vehicles.

Timo Mashiyi-Veikkola - Futurist, Innovation Lead and Strategist

Over the past 20 years, Timo has developed and practiced many methodologies in design research, agile coaching and futures strategies to guide companies’ evolution in a continuously changing and challenging context. His work has been focused on product and service design as well as brand and work culture design, bringing powerful human insights in technology and product creation.

His work begins from understanding the socio-cultural shifts impacting human behavior and is brought to life through innovations and concepts viable in the future. Trend management, design research, ethnographic fieldwork, scenario planning as well as brand and work culture strategy are just a few of the fields that have successfully employed his skills.

Timo is presently working with the design agency Nordkapp, based in Amsterdam after starting his career as a Senior Futures Specialist at Nokia in 1999 and afterwards as futurist and senior strategic positions at Dell. Some of his work has impacted companies like ING, M&S, Mars, Bang & Olufsen, Panasonic, Absolut, LG, Herman Miller, Microsoft, Samsung and Royal Caribbean International. He has been a guest lecturer, facilitator and keynote speaker.

Society, Technology and Design: The Influences That Impact Our Future.

We are all surrounded by design. The best kind of design we have the tendency to take for granted, as it fits our lives perfectly. We miss to acknowledge well thought design and the way it brings together past, present and future into products, features, technology that we automatically include into our lives.

Social, economic, political context, all impact the way we respond to technological design, as they also impact the way we make use of technology to design products, services, brands and experiences. We are living in interesting times. Times when uncertainty and change are the most stable variables we can factor in our designing for the future.

How did technology become from a nice to have to a must have? How can we design for anxiety and unbalance? How do we design for the unknown? How will the current situation change the way we look at design? Timo will touch upon the interconnections between society, technology and design, the way they have changed in the current context and how to better approach them to design for the unexpected.