In case you missed Idea Theorem’s event “UX for Entrepreneurs” at MaRS last Monday. Here is a quick summary to catch you up.
1) With every technology or management consulting company talking about
design in last few years and with statements such as “Good design is Good Business” echoing in every company’s hallways, here’s what has happened – Design leaders now have a seat at the table 🙂
2) Don’t always search for a complex digital solution – When a fridge magnet can help reduce your support calls – do that, instead of trying to come up with a complex digital solution for your customers. Don’t over think solutions focus on understanding the true problem because it might be hidden underneath along with so much extra noise that you have been hearing.
3) Data – You have it, why not use it. Data is a tool for designers. We heard some amazing real-world examples that how designers used data to make significant feature changes to the product. As a result, impacting the top line of the product. So befriend the data in your company, it doesn’t stifle your creativity instead makes you stronger.
4) ROI of UX – It is still challenging to convince executives or startup founders the importance of UX. The best way to go about for a design leader is to first understand the business goals and key metrics. Then share with the executives and founders, that investing in UX would then move their key business metric. This way you will be speaking in their language.
5) One of the main reasons startups fail is due to no market need for it – Don’t aim for perfectionism, be scrappy. A lot of founders and even executives try to get it right for the first time, its hard. Lean UX can help.
6) AI’s Impact on Design Jobs – Design Jobs are not going away, UI Designers might see an impact as automation picks up but UX jobs are here to stay and growing in importance. The understanding human emotional state is challenging even for machines, the human-centered design is gaining importance by each passing day. What people say is not what people do… people are not easy to understand. 🙂
7) Designing for new technologies – Designers will need to spend time understanding new technologies. Although, it should not be very different than designing for screens because even in new technologies focus would still continue to be on understanding human behavior.
To conclude – Be closer to the customer and take your leadership team/stakeholders on a journey with you as you explore to understand your customer better.
More topics were discussed such as Trends of digital design 2018, Persona Development, Lean UX, Empathy Mapping, Customer Journey maps, How Big Companies vs Startups leverage UX and much more…
Event Feedback Survey
With overwhelmingly positive feedback received directly and even from the surveys that were sent out – “Good answers, relatable” “Was really good, will go to more”. Also, we did get feedback about what we can improve for the next event. We are excited to say we will be hosting another event.
Some of the suggestions received in the survey for next event topic is “Design Thinking”, “Design Thinking + Strategy”, ” Design Thinking – How to build new products”, ” Why are UX Designers expensive” “Best way to build an internal UX team” “Strategy + Design”
