Matt Franks

There is no checklist for a good user experience
Oct 1, 2015

Ingenuix User Conference: As disruptive products / services deliver a value promise that considers the user's goals, behaviors, and emotional contexts; established products are trapped in a world of features, check-lists, and organizational silos. But these products and services are simply artifacts of the organizations that created them. While some continue to push the same quantitative approach, expecting "innovative" outcomes, others have turned to a user-centered design process to reframe their value promise and connect with their users. This talk will illustrate how design as a craft is establishing its role in shaping the product / service, the strategy, and the businesses behind them. We'll see how Blackboard, a 600 million-per-year "entrenched" LMS, is transitioning into a design led organization. Through this case study, we will examine the methods and philosophy of a user-centered design process, the role of rich narrative in guiding strategy, and how organizations must change their practices and structure to deliver a cohesive user experience across every platform.

This presentation includes a video

Interaction Design & Prototyping
Feb 23, 2015

"Easy to use" and "user friendly" have become part of our cultural vocabulary. For customers, these concepts represent the lens in which a user experience is evaluated. For business and product owners, these concepts become prioritized goals that are rarely defined and even harder to measure.

In successful digital product companies, Interaction design is used to understand what needs to be created so that users can accomplish their goals in the most "user friendly" manner possible. This 4 hour workshop covers basic interaction design methodologies and philosophy. It was presented at Designing For Digital, a conference in Austin Texas. This workshop also includes an activity guide.

Service Design Methods
Feb 23, 2015

Digital products no longer exist as contained product offerings. They manifest across multiple touch-points (mobile, tablet, web, in-person, etc..) and their interactions evolve with users over time. The demand for a seamless user experience is changing the way business and product managers develop product. They are forced to work across previously isolated teams and business units, in order to create meaningful, long-term relationships with their customers.

This workshop outlines an approach to defining, crafting, and refining a service offering that manifests across a series of touch-points. It was presented at Designing For Digital, a conference in Austin Texas. It includes an activity guide.

Design Synthesis
Mar 12, 2014

The movement from design research to actionable product and service direction is often seen as a mysterious part of design. While magical, the process known as Synthesis is actually quite rigorous; and is composed of a series of methods that help designers make sense of the world around them. This workshop explores the role of synthesis in the design process and included activites for participants to synthesize an existing data set into their own product / service direction. This workshop was given at The Google conference in Minneaplis Mn.

User Centered Design
Feb 20, 2014

What is user centered design and how do companies apply it to make products and services that people love?

This presentation was given at the Electronic Resources and Libraries conference in Austin Texas.

Point of View: Voice interaction in the home
Sept 20, 2012

Voice and gesture based interactions are because they have no perceived limits. At the same time, these imperceiveable limits create new challenges for users attempting to achieve a goal and for interaction designers defining how the system presents itself to the user. What is the future of voice based interaction in the home, and how will common human-to-human interaction paradigms translate into a world with limited visual affordances?