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Design Mind/Engineering Mind
October 7, 1pm EDT
Surya Vanka, Principal Manager, User Experience, Microsoft Corporation
Great products are born of the synergy of the design mind and the engineering mind. The design mind’s ability to break through established patterns and paradigms, and the engineering mind’s ability to optimize and actualize, have been the foundation of great individual and team processes. Through cycles of sketching and prototyping, great designer-engineer collaborations have created successful products for more than a century.
Today, the nature of products is changing fast. Most products from phones to appliances to automobiles are becoming software and services encased in hardware. The experience with these products is novel, dynamic, and content-laden. The interaction often spans multiple platforms (hardware, application, web), multiple form factors (desktop, mobile) and multiple interfaces (keyboard, pointer, voice, touch, gesture). It is challenging to not let the multitude of complex technologies drive the experience. It is also challenging to maintain a healthy and balanced designer-developer collaboration.
In this talk, Surya Vanka will describe the new synergistic designer-developer collaborations that are emerging. These include: First, a new hybrid role, the ‘Devigner,’ that bridges designer and developer. Next, a new breed of experience-focused tools that allows designers and developers to concurrently sketch and prototype interactions. Third, the development of lightweight software languages that allow designers to maintain control of the creative decisions late into the cycle. And finally, the emergence of work styles and organizational cultures that depend on designer and developers not just working together, but the designer learning tricks from the developer toolbox, and vice versa.
Key Learning Points:
Manager: How to build your organization to keep designer and developer roles working smoothly together and focused on developing truly compelling experiences.
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Manager: Emerging paradigms in user experience technologies and tools
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Designer: How to work effectively with developers, and appropriate level of development to immerse yourself in, evolving to become a ‘devigner.’
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Developer: How to work effectively with developers and designers, evolving to become a ‘devigner.’
About the Presenter
Surya Vanka is a veteran of Microsoft where he oversees engineering standards to create products that provide customers with a high-quality user experience. He is responsible for ensuring that the 600 design and user experience professionals spread across Microsoft remain at the cutting edge of research and design innovation, and that user needs rather than technology remain at the center of the company’s product development process.
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