From business to buttons

Interaction designers, business strategists and usability experts gathered last week in Malmö, Sweden for the third edition of the “From Business to Buttons” conference.

Videos (alternate link) of the presentations are now online. A selection:

The Zen of presentation design & delivery: Why it matters now more than ever
Garr Reynolds, Associate Professor of Management, Kansai Gaidai University , Japan
Over the years presentation software such as PowerPoint has gotten better, but presentations largely have not. The presentation tools have advanced, but we have not. Why? Part of the problem has been a focus only on how to use the tools themselves rather than on how to clarify and amplify our ideas and messages through through fundamental design and storytelling principles.

“What’s going on” to “We’re not gonna take it”
David Malouf, Professor, Savannah College of Art & Design, USA
The new differentiators are beyond quality and usability, but is directly related to holistic aesthetic design consideration.
Designers bring a new level of “fit” to this new class of products and services. They imbue stories that engage and delight. Surrounding all this is depth, connectedness, and individual expression, that adds up to the “soul” of a design.

Designing personal informatics
Matt Jones, Co-founder/Lead Designer, Dopplr.com, UK
Here’s an explosion in “personal informatics”: Services that surface information about you and your network to your advantage.
Reviewing visualisations like the Dopplr Personal Personal Annual Report, Matt Jones will examine how great UX design can maximize the services’ benefits and impact.

Designing humanity into your products
Bill DeRouchey, Director, Interaction Design, Ziba Design, USA
Relationships are formed in the smallest moments and intimate details within each and every interaction, even between people and products. In this session, we’ll see examples of how humanity has been designed into products and services through humor, personality, and emotion. We’ll discover how just a little extra design effort and thought beyond functional needs can enrich the experience, reveal the company behind the product, and forge enduring connections with customers.

Designing beyond the screen: the convergence of products, interactions and services
Niclas Andersson, Director of Marketing and Business Development, Ergonomidesign, Sweden
Lennart Andersson, Director of Interaction Design, Ergonomidesign, Sweden
During this session we will give you a look into what we believe is the future of convergent design, based on real-life case studies and by interpreting the signs of the future trends. We also share our knowledge and experience within physical, cognitive and emotional ergonomics to be able to give you insights and tools for developing people driven innovation.

“Every 3 Seconds, a User Dies Somewhere”. Making analytics matter in your design process
Gene Liebel, Partner, Director of User Experience, HUGE, USA
Nowadays almost every internet team looks at website usage statistics on a regular basis. But most of the discussion is still about broad measures like “monthly visitors”, “repeat visitors”, “sign-ups”, “conversion”, and so on. In reality the tools have evolved to the point where you can quickly learn things about users you would usually need to get from qualitative research techniques (such as user interviews or usability studies). We’ll discuss a few situations where the analytics are sending a clear message about what the user wants or the performance of the current design. Finally we’ll check out a few tricks for “humanizing” the numbers so they’re easier to present to product design teams.

Why designers fail and what to do about it
Scott Berkun, author, USA
All those who participate in design, from interaction designers, to usability engineers, to IA masters, fall victim to the same kinds of challenges when trying to bring good design into the world. From politics, to hubris, to downright incompetence, what can we learn by confessing to, and examining the causes of, our failures? Berkun thinks we can learn everything, much more than studying our successes. This fun, interactive talk, explores why designers fail and offers advice on how to learn from and triumph in the face of these situations.