Smart Design's Heather Martin, Director of Interaction Design, and Blake McEldowney, Director of Industrial Design, will take the stage for a joint presentation on "Design Strategies for Creating Mobile User Experiences Across Multiple Touchpoints."
The talk is part of the latest MEX (Mobile User Experience) Conference taking place next week at WallaceSpace, London, UK. MEX is a two-day strategy forum exploring the techniques and strategies for creating great mobile user experience in a multi-platform digital environment.
Heather Martin and Blake McEldowney's session will address the challenges the mobile industry faces as it evolves from designing product experiences limited to a single device into complex webs of interaction across numerous customer touchpoints. They will provide tools and techniques for how to combine disciplines and ensure user experience doesn't break in the gaps between company's products.
"Technology needs to fit people - not the other way around," said Heather Martin. "Our focus at Smart Design is on keeping it simple, relevant and meaningful even when the whole system is complex. We have a very human approach. And, this is especially important when you are designing great user experiences across multiple touchpoints."
A few points from their talk outline this approach:
- Connecting the dots: expanding methodologies to orchestrate new digital experiences.
- Products that were once seen as dedicated standalone devices now have the potential to connect to a much larger network of devices. Ensuring that the experience is coherent and consistent to people is critical-and also a challenge.
- The role of designers is shifting. They still need to design the individual devices well, but to be successful they also need to understand all of the inter-relationships between each device. Now it is more about orchestrating an enlivened overall experience.
- Because of this, design processes have also shifted slightly. Depth and expertise in the core domains are still important but leaders now need to have more of a hybrid approach. To help keep the focus on the overall consistency of the experience, it is also valuable to have a broad understanding of the technical landscape and a familiarity with the terminology.
- Although this sounds complicated, it doesn't have to be. Essentially it is still about problem solving. Just on a larger scale, done simultaneously, and in parallel.