Malini
Rao
Kronos Inc, United States
The chief tenet that I advocate is ‘creative adaptation’. It is my proposal that out-of-the-box creativity should not be limited to the design of efficient and delightful user experiences alone but also to the methods of doing design itself. This has been an underlying thread in the talks I have given at various conferences and events. I also hold a UX patent for my work at Red Hat. My current focus is to guide organizations to be able to leverage the true impact of design and when ready to move to a more design centered model. My dual approach in this regard is to grow talented UX teams in these environments but also expand the scope and impact of design and strategic thinking beyond product experience into customer experience and organizational process.
I am also a proud alumni of the Industrial Design Center, IIT Powai, Mumbai.
30min Talk
Targeted to Standard – Foundation
Track 2: Design Leadership & Influence
Enough with the evangelism, let’s make a deal!
Despite the tremendous demand and growth of User experience as a field and its contributions to organizations, UX isn’t often taken as seriously as other business functions. Practitioners have been evangelizing design at every level now and it has barely moved the needle.
As user advocates, UX practitioners tend to evangelize user goals that call for an altruistic response from teams even in the light of delivery challenges. This causes conflict in engagement or disengagement. UXers should switch gears from evangelism to finding common ground and tap shared core values across the organization.
This is easier said than done. So, this talk will first explain our lack of success with the help of the Trust equation. It will also outline 5 things UX teams can do to address these issues immediately irrespective of org structure, level of UX leadership and maturity of the organization towards design. UXers are experts in tapping human cognition and behavioral patterns to influence how users interact with designed systems to obtain desired results. This talk will show how we can be inspired by these very principles to extend that influence into our practice and collaborations.
Track 2: Design Leadership & Influence
Three key takeaways
- UX teams can influence their organizations irrespective of the org/powerstructure because in today’s matrixedorganizations, people with influence have power. The trust equation provides a tangible frameworkof variables tobreakdown organizational influence and why UX meets with limited success
- The creative design process is missing pragmatic pieces of organization context to deliver design for maximum influence.
- Influence has a domino effect – Designers should identify the first piece to influence and build on that rather than taking an All-or-Nothing approach.
