Early Bird Pricing Ends 3/31 for MX, UX Week & UX Intensive Minneapolis
Early bird registration ends for MX San Francisco, UX Week, and UX Intensive Minneapolis on March 31. Register now to catch the discounted rate.
We’re thrilled to announce Jane McGonigal — ARG game design guru — will keynote Day 3 at UX Week. Got lots of friends? Contact pam[at]adaptivepath[dot]com for a group discount to any of our events.
Kate Discusses the Role of Design in Business with Nathan Shedroff
Kate Rutter recently had an email conversation with Nathan Shedroff, experience strategist, author, and the Program Chair and founder of the brand new MBA in Design Strategy at California College of the Arts. Nathan will be speaking on Future Topics in Managing User Experience at our upcoming MX San Francisco conference on April 20-22. If you register between today and March 31, you’ll get a free iPod shuffle.
Below is an excerpt, or you can read the full interview.
Kate Rutter [KR]: So Nathan, let’s start with the basics…what’s the short and sweet description of the new CCA MBA program in Design Strategy?
Nathan Shedroff [NS]: The Design MBA (for short) is intended to prepare a new generation of business leaders knowledgeable of and comfortable with design-led innovation processes that create truly successful, sustainable, and meaningfully innovative products, services, and experiences. We are equipping change agents from the for-profit and non-profit worlds, whether they have a design background or not, to make change in the future.
[KR]: That’s heady stuff. Can you give me an example of some of these things? For example, what does a design-led innovation process look like?
[NS]: Most attempts at innovation in companies haven’t been terribly successful for a variety of reasons. They may not involve the right people in the organization, have a culture of creating new things from scratch, or they may not value ideas when they are presented. Sometimes, it’s all about courage to do something different. Design processes, specifically, approach the challenge to imagine and devise new solutions, in any context, by looking at customers in meaningful ways, integrating data from a variety of sources, and using it as a starting point instead of an ending point. Design respects different kinds of prototyping and iteration, which is an important part of the process. Expectations in design processes are different from how most organizations expect every idea to be incredible, try to control the process from the top down, or inject corporate assumptions that are often not validated or reflect the market.
Different organizations have different innovation cultures but, no matter the approach taken, it is organic and dynamic and most forms of management tend to kill the process rather than nurture it. This is why organizations often have to rely on acquisitions or consultants from the outside to innovate or find the need to comfortably insulate their designers in a different area, under different management and expectations, just like they often do with R&D. This isn’t always the best approach, however, since it tends to isolate as much as insulate…
Read the rest of Kate’s interview of Nathan Shedroff and register for MX San Francisco.
See You at the IA Summit
If you’re headed to the IA Summit, be sure to catch Leah Buley’s, Brandon Schauer’s, and Henning Fischer’s presentations. Peter Merholz, Jesse James Garrett, and Chiara Fox will also be in attendance. Hope to see you at the IA Summit.
Watch Brandon’s Strategic Experience Design Presentation
Brandon Schauer recently keynoted at From Business to Buttons in Malmo, Sweden: Watch as Brandon explains how experience design can aid your organization in making smart decisions.
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