Adaptive Path Blog

In many organizations, the people responsible for the user experience strive to show the value of their work. We may instinctively know the value of our work, but it’s so much more powerful when we can explain it terms that matter to others in our organizations.

This is why I’m really happy to be presenting Showing the Value of UX as a virtual seminar on August 6th. The seminar is geared towards people who are entering a point in their careers where they need to understand and communicate about both sides of the equation: UX and business value.

The seminar starts with a deep exploration on the connections between UX and business value, then progresses to a series of principles and tools that you can use to connect User Experience to real business impact.

‘Showing the Value of UX’ is similar to material that I’ve presented and honed at prior conferences on design, business, and management, and so it’s exciting to be able to share these approaches and methods with you directly at your place of work. This will be the second running of the seminar, based on the positive feedback we received from the first session, including comments like this from Sam Felder of the University of Southern California:

“Your presentation had our team discussing your ideas through lunch and gems that we’re going to try to use with clients.”

I look forward to taking this material online, and talking with many of you during the extended Q&A sessions both during and after the presentation. Use the promotional code BLOG and get a 10% discount! Here’s where you can register »

Since the day I started at Adaptive Path, I’ve loved talking to folks here about how our work in other creative fields influences the way Adaptive Path approaches a project. Over the years, we’ve had staff who’ve run arts organizations, restaurants, galleries, theaters, bands and publishing companies. We’ve had (and still have) musicians, writers, dancers, chefs, painters, sculptors, and a welder.

It is with this in mind that Sarah Nelson and I undertook a little project to articulate this learning in a way we can share with others. We looked to the experience of other creative professionals — working screenwriters, performers, chefs, directors, and musicians — to help better understand what we’re calling Ten Tips for Managing a Creative Environment.

Sarah Nelson and I have been talking about the ways in which these other creative disciplines can provide great tools for managing our creative process. As a classically trained musician (the violin), Sarah comes from a tradition where there’s a highly structured way to approach creative challenges. She can pull from centuries of experience and the tools that have been developed to support the process.

Similarly, I spent a number of years early in my career as a stage manager and a company manager in New York. The principles I learned in the theater about how to manage an environment where creative people do their best work — while working under inflexible deadlines, with limited budget and a ridiculous number of stakeholders — serve me well to this day.

On Wednesday, July 16 we’ll be presenting these Ten Tips in a virtual seminar. Please join us. Use the promotional code BLOG and get a 10% discount!