Creating Holistic User Experiences

Have you ever considered what it’s like to:

• take a bus on a rainy day to a library to start to hunt for a job?
• plan for your daughter’s college education when you don’t have a college education?
• organize your reservations so the right books are available at the right time for your vacation?

These are examples of real world situations that people undertake. We all try hard to deliver solutions for tasks we are familiar with but we often only consider a small slice of these users huge real-life experiences.

User experience is about seeing the world from another person’s perspective and considering how to support their needs. It is also about how we look at the services and tools we provide and how through understanding our users need, we can make them more relevant and engaging. A user-centered focus makes it possible to create welcoming, supportive and efficient experiences that hide the seams of technologies, teams, and spaces.

This session will introduce you to the value of approaching the design of your services and systems from a user-centered approach and how you can apply observation methods to learn about your users and apply insights. Applying user experience techniques to enhance experience does not need to be expensive but it does require putting the people you serve in the center of system and design thinking.

This webinar was originally presented on October 29, 2014.