The MEX Conference Agenda - 19/20 May 2010
May 2010 | December 2009 | May 2009 | May 2008 | May 2007
Keep up-to-date with the latest session additions and speakers by subscribing to the MEX Newsletter or following MEX founder Marek Pawlowski on Twitter. MEX always sells out in advance - please register early to guarantee your place.
08:30:00
| Networking areas and garden cafe
| Registration
Networking breakfast and registration
Goals for the session
Take breakfast and meet the other MEX participants in the WallaceSpace garden cafe, where they'll be plenty of great brain food available to fuel up for the day.
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09:00:00
| Big Room
| Introduction
Introduction to MEX
Goals for the session
An introduction to the MEX Manifesto from the MEX team: Norbert Metzner and Marek Pawlowski. This session provides all the information you need to make the most of your 2 days at MEX.
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09:40:00
| Big Room
| Visions of the future
A new vision for customer experience in a multi-platform world
Goals for the session
How can network operators provide a great user experience for their customers in a multi-platform world? Garrett Johnston of fast-growing Russian operator MTS will explore future opportunities for operators as they seek to understand their role in forming the overall user experience, touching on the challenges of new device types and deep integration with retail and customer service experience.
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Garrett Johnston
Group Director, Strategic Marketing
MTS
Bio >>
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10:10:00
| Big Room
| Visions of the future
Evolving interaction design to harness the untapped discovery potential of mobile devices
- Nearly an infinite amount of digital information is available to us via our mobile devices - and it is global and growing exponentially.
- Now imagine serving, on the same device, visibility into all of the interactions that our social and professional networks have with each other, their friends and a myriad of communication and function-based web services. What results is a network of connections, patterns and understanding that more deeply connects us to each other: a continuous flow of ambient personal social discovery.
- Within this construct of transparency, organisation and connection, what surprises, fears, alerts and relationship re-factoring await?
- A discussion of interaction paradigms for combining, presenting and managing this breadth of information and communication, as well as some of the social outcomes that result.
Goals for the session
Describing the myriad contextual elements which inform our ability and interest in using mobile devices to discover connections, services and the physical environment. Providing a future vision of how mobile interfaces can adapt and respond to become compelling discovery tools.
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Parrish Hanna
Global Director of Experience Planning
Motorola
Bio >>
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10:40:00
| Networking areas and garden cafe
| Networking break
Networking and morning coffee
Goals for the session
Coffee, cookies and refreshments served in the WallaceSpace garden cafe and throughout the venue.
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11:00:00
| Big Room
| Tools and techniques
Design strategies for creating mobile user experiences across multiple touchpoints
- 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. For instance, a TV might be one of many touchpoints in a much larger digital ecosystem, which collectively have the ability to deliver a new user experience. Ensuring that this experience is coherent and consistent to people is critical - and also a challenge.
- Our role as designers is shifting. It is taken for granted that we still need to design the individual devices well. But to be successful we also need to understand all of the inter-relationships between each device – effectively connecting all the dots. Now it is more about orchestrating the overall experience. It is about understanding that it is no longer just about touchpoints, but about enlivening an entire experience.
- Because of this, our process has also shifted slightly. Depth/expertise in the core domains is still important (IxD, ID, Engineering, etc.) but leaders now need to have more of a hybrid approach (blended and blurred with greater breadth). It is about deliberately not going too deep and keeping a broad perspective, in order to focus on the overall consistency of the experience. It is also useful to have a broad understanding of the technical landscape (feasibility) 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.
Goals for the session
Examining the challenges the industry faces as it evolves from designing product experiences limited to a single device into complex webs of interaction across numerous customer touchpoints. Providing tools and techniques for how to combine disciplines and ensure your user experience doesn't break in the gaps between your products.
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Heather Martin
Director of Interaction Design
Smart Design
Bio >>
Blake McEldowney
Director of Industrial Design & Creative Director
Smart Design
Bio >>
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11:30:00
| Big Room
| Learning from great experiences
Multi-platform user experience design - learning from crisis situations
- The presentation will discuss the challenges in designing great user experience in extreme work domains. Several examples will be presented from design projects focusing on bringing innovative mobile solutions to emergency and crisis responders. A fundamental approach in these studies has been to base the design on existing yet disparate content services.
- Basing your design on what already exists opens up a web of complexity that, if successfully handled, can result in focused, friendly and radical solutions at low costs for professional mass-markets.
- How can we study complex settings coloured by multiple interruptions, environmental distractions and disparate platforms and transform the findings into resources for the design process of mobile solutions?
- How can we evolve our design thinking in partnership with users in specific work domains and effectively combine platforms like phones, user-generated content service and web browsers to build usable services?
- How do we successfully transfer insights from extreme work domains to other applications and services?
Goals for the session
Drawing on lessons from a detailed ethnographic study of mobile device usage by emergency services in crisis situations, this presentation provides tools and techniques for combining commercial components to create a vertically focused user experience. The session will look closely at how user experience requirements change in high pressure environments and when multiple platforms can be distracting users from their mobile device.
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Dr Jonas Landgren
PhD
University of Gothenburg / Ideaviate AB
Bio >>
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12:00:00
| Team rooms
| Creative breakouts
Breakout session 1: Meet your challenge
Goals for the session
You'll be assigned to one of several MEX breakout teams. Each team is assigned a challenge relating to the MEX Manifesto, which you'll work on over the course of the conference. On the afternoon of Day 2, each group will be asked to give a 10 minute presentation to summarise the team's response to the challenge. Your team will be led by an expert facilitator appointed by MEX and supported by an illustrator, who'll help the group to visualise its ideas. Teams will also be provided with a variety of stimulus materials in a MEX 'Inspiration Box' to help them create genuinely new ideas.
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13:00:00
| Networking areas and garden cafe
| Lunch
Networking and lunch
Goals for the session
The WallaceSpace chefs prepare lunch in individual boxes, so you can get together with everyone in the Garden Cafe or find a quiet sofa to network with a key contact.
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14:00:00
| Big Room
| Visions of the future
Integrating people and mobile services through Voice in the User Interface (VUI)
- Integrating mobile user experience with people, why voice works, the two sides of the relationship, the people, and the technology.
- How our minds work in relation to voice, the social aspects of using VUI. What that means in terms of market opportunity by segment - now and in the future.
- Open Voice Platform and crowd-sourced libraries. Mediating mobile devices and services through agents that are represented by your mobile, and that you can talk to. 5 aspects of intelligent mobile user experience design.
Goals for the session
A joint presentation from the authors of 'Sound Barriers', a major research study into voice interfaces in mobile devices. Nicky Hickman and Penny Allen bring together their combined experience of mobile industry innovation and psychology to explain the challenges and opportunities for using voice to create new mobile experiences.
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Nicky Hickman
Director
Inglis Jane
Bio >>
Penny Allen
MSc Student, Interactive Systems
Edinburgh Napier University
Bio >>
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14:30:00
| Big Room
| Learning from great experiences
Van Men prefer voice: audible opportunities inspired by forgotten mobile workers
- While the mobile industry fixates on multi-touch interfaces, app stores and social networking, compelling opportunities are missed.
- By immersing ourselves in the context of the Van Men we identified needs unmet by current mobile experience, and uncovered joined-up opportunities for device manufactures, car makers, and service providers.
- What are the challenges to providing joined-up solutions? What are the user experience directions that will help deliver them?
Goals for the session
Through the story of a forgotten mobile worker - the Van Men - this talk will bring insight around mobile work and highlight opportunities for a multi-dimensional mobile experience. Such experience weaves together voice and human interaction, with other dimensions, to address contexts for which the mobile experience is currently not relevant. Some of these opportunities will be brought to life in scenarios that combine different platforms, channels and interfaces.
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Oren Horev
User Experience Strategist
Plan
Bio >>
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15:00:00
| Networking areas and garden cafe
| Networking break
Networking and afternoon tea
Goals for the session
Tea, cookies and refreshments served in the WallaceSpace garden cafe and throughout the venue.
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15:30:00
| Big Room
| Learning from great experiences
Serendipitous discovery of the world around us
- What does serendipitous discovery mean, and how does it differ from task-based search? What are the different use cases, what are the interaction flows, and what are the implications for the UI? Are these two top-level use cases in competition with each other? How efficient are traditional task-based search applications on mobile anyway?
- How does the application learn the user's content preferences? Is it necessary to explicitly ask the user, or are there other ways of discerning her likes and dislikes? Which is best? How does the social graph play into this, and what about the dangers of the empty room syndrome? What are the implications for the 'engine', whether that be on a server or in the mobile application?
- The difference between location-based content that is 'broadcast' (one user to any user) versus 'personal' (one user to friends) and managing the tension between these in a mobile application.
- What happens when we add commercial content to our applications? Can ads ever co-exist happily with user-generated content, and if so, how do we do it without relegating the ad to become a second-class citizen? Why receiving a text message from Starbucks as you walk past is the most ridiculous thing ever, and how to achieve a similar aim while delighting the user. 'Facebook and the menopausal ad' or 'why a little ad relevance is a very dangerous thing'.
Goals for the session
Many of the metaphors we used for discovering new places, information and experiences in the mobile environment are relics of traditional methods. This talk explores how new techniques can transform mobile devices into the ideal platform for serendipitous discovery.
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Nick Healey
Founder
Slash Design
Bio >>
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16:00:00
| Big Room
| Tools and techniques
Creating magical interface moments and why beauty is not enough
- When designing a device that does not enjoy the existing exposure and brand loyalty of established manufacturers, the team was confronted with the need to sway the user at every point, from first glimpse to prolonged use. This understanding created a surprising shift in balance of form versus function which shaped our UX strategy when creating the 'Else' interaction.
- What is a magic moment? Is it just a pretty face? Magic at the first use versus magic after a month's use.
- What are the benefits of magic moments? Magic is fun, but why should we invest in creating these specific points when we could be investing more time in general issues that affect more parts of the product?
- Why is it so hard to create a magic moment? The issue of designing the app versus designing a platform. What have we learned from a unique opportunity of designing every aspect of a product, from platform to the smallest application?
Goals for the session
A discussion around magical moments in the interface: what are they, why do we need them and how are they created? Challenging the conventional wisdom that magical moments must be graphically oriented delving deeper into the functional meaning of interface magic.
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Itai Vonshak
Co-founder
Elements
Bio >>
Alex Rapoport
Co-founder
Elements
Bio >>
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16:30:00
| Team rooms
| Creative breakouts
Breakout session 2: Explore and research
Goals for the session
The facilitator will guide your MEX breakout team as you continue to research and develop initial ideas in response to your MEX challenge. All group members will be involved in responding to the task, drawing on the diverse expertise among MEX participants.
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17:30:00
| Big Room
| Summary
Summary of key themes
Goals for the session
The MEX team brings the whole conference together for a quick summary of the key themes which have emerged during the day.
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18:00:00
| Garden cafe
| Evening networking event
The 2010 MEX User Experience Awards
Goals for the session
A special evening reception, where the 3rd annual MEX User Experience Awards are presented across 5 categories, including the announcement of the 2010 MEX User Experience Innovator of the Year.
Hosted in the WallaceSpace Garden Cafe, with great food, drink and hospitality, the Awards is an opportunity to relax, network with 100 of the industry's deepest thinkers and see the latest user experience innovations.
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09:00:00
| Networking areas and garden cafe
| Registration
Networking breakfast and registration
Goals for the session
Take breakfast and meet the other MEX participants in the WallaceSpace garden cafe, where they'll be plenty of great brain food available to fuel up for the day.
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09:30:00
| Big Room
| Visions of the future
Understanding content evolution and new wireless form factors
- Where are the device classes that transform content?
- It has been an old truth among mobile designers that, as screens grow, the experience can be transformed. At what size does it become possible to to create magazines - content experiences where 'UI chrome' is not needed for a delightful experience?
- Is the iPad driven by new content or the existing internet? What happens to the experience when one goes from the smallest content experience size to the iPad experience? How do the apps get transformed?
- Tablets are evolving the reading experience just by mobilising and digitising it. However, by making content connected, we can cause a social transformation. In this transformation luddite incumbents will get disrupted. What are the emerging experience trends can we observe and what kind of experience can we envision?
Goals for the session
Looking at the emergence of a new class of wireless devices with larger displays, multiple screens and the effect this will have on user experience. The talk brings insights from several projects where new form factors have prompted new thinking about content and interface design.
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Christian Lindholm
Managing Partner
Fjord
Bio >>
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10:00:00
| Big Room
| Learning from great experiences
Creating multi-channel user experience across mobile, web and other mediums
Goals for the session
Drawing on his experience as Head of Innovation at Lastminute.com, Marko Balabanovic examines how global media companies can create effective user experiences which combine multiple platforms and wireless networks to provide an overall offering for the consumer.
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Marko Balabanovic
Head of Innovation
Lastminute.com
Bio >>
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10:30:00
| Networking areas and garden cafe
| Networking break
Networking and morning coffee
Goals for the session
Coffee, cookies and refreshments served in the WallaceSpace garden cafe and throughout the venue.
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11:00:00
| Big Room
| Tools and techniques
Creating emotional interface connection outside the visual dimension
Goals for the session
Touch provides a new dimension for enhancing the emotional connection of mobile and multi-platform experiences. This session will explore how haptics can add new layers of interactivity to the user experience, moving beyond the industry's current obsession with designing purely for visual dimension.
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Dr Danny Grant
Principal Engineer, Research
Immersion Corporation
Bio >>
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11:30:00
| Big Room
| Vision of the future
Interfaces which age and learn with the user
- Can an interface evolve alongside its user? This raises a tri-dimensional problem: the adaptation to the task, to the context (home or work, static or mobility), and to the user itself since his/her skills evolve over time. These questions are transversally challenging mobile applications - and their respective devices.
- We will focus on an emerging new category of mobile devices - the computerized slates for pupils - and will envision how these slates could be a learning and discovery tool from the very start - rather than yet another discipline to learn.
- How can the interface follows the child's learning curve, skillset acquisition and psycho-physiological development? How can the interface adapt itself to the pupil's context - either school or home?
Goals for the session
Explore how an interface could respond to the educational needs of users throughout their school careers, adapting input mechanisms, graphical elements, interaction flow and applications as the user's ability grows. The presentation will examine the concept of an interface which ages with us, exploring a prototype example for school students, and illustrating wider lessons for user experience principles which could help the industry.
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Guillaume Largillier
Chairman, Chief Strategy Officer
Stantum
Bio >>
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12:00:00
| Team rooms
| Creative breakouts
Breakout session 3: Prototyping and building
Goals for the session
After a brief recap of the previous day's progress, your team will start to bring together its research and ideas into a cohesive response your MEX challenge. Working with the facilitator and group illustrator, you'll prototype and begin building your project.
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13:00:00
| Networking areas and garden cafe
| Lunch
Networking and lunch
Goals for the session
The WallaceSpace chefs prepare lunch in individual boxes, so you can get together with everyone in the Garden Cafe or find a quiet sofa to network with a key contact.
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14:00:00
| Big Room
| Visions of the future
Building applications across multiple platforms
Goals for the session
Daniel Tenner shares his experiences of building multi-platform and multi-channel experiences across mobile, web and PC as CTO of Woobius. Coming from the architecture business, Woobius has developed a multi-platform visual chat application which allows architects to collaborate remotely on blueprints.
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Daniel Tenner
CTO
Woobius
Bio >>
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14:30:00
| Big Room
| Tools and techniques
Hypersensing the mobile DNA of the future
- Where do current scenarios succeed/fail? What needs to change?
- Exploring the edges of the future experiences spectrum
- Discovering impermanence and transience as drivers for design
- Developing a sensitivity for non-conforming scenarios
Goals for the session
The intention of the session is to 'step out of orbit', looking at the various trends, themes and topics. It will build upon the thinking from the other parts of the programme. In a collaborative effort between speaker and audience a possible experience architecture will be constructed. As such, it will be a practical exercise on method as well as content discussion.
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Willem Boijens
Marketing, innovation & design executive
Vodafone
Bio >>
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15:00:00
| Team rooms
| Creative breakouts
Breakout session 4: Prepare to present
Goals for the session
The final hour of your MEX breakout time will be spent finalising your group's response and structuring your presentation ready to share with the other teams.
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16:00:00
| Big Room
| Creative breakout presentations
Breakout team presentations
Goals for the session
Each MEX breakout team will have 10 minutes to present their conclusion to the conference, using their creativity, visual aids and public speaking skills to deliver their response. It is an informal session with plenty of time for feedback and discussion.
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17:30:00
| Big Room
| Closing conference
Summary of key themes
Goals for the session
The MEX team closes the event with a quick summary of the key themes from both days.
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