User Experience Techniques:  Inspiring Users to Identify What They Didn't Know They Needed
A MITX User Experience Event

Speakers:

• Dan Berlin - Senior Research Associate, OTOinsights
• Michael Hawley - VP Experience Design, Mad*Pow

Research traditionally uncovers known complaints and desires in terms of what people will tell you. However, it is via contextual or ethnographic observation that you can witness "real world" behaviors, influences, scenarios, technologies, and actors - all of which help you get the sense for what will truly delight someone or alleviate frustration.

If you simply ask users about what would make life better, you will rarely get meaningful answers. But noticing where people spend their time doing things they "have to" and don't "want to" will lead to inspiration of what would make their life more convenient and less frustrating. An observation of what people want to do, enjoy doing, or look forward to doing, will lead to inspiration around what will make them shout from the rooftops in glee.  

In this MITX User Experience session, we will discuss how research inspires design and how reality inspires creativity.   Instead of discussing traditional usability test questions (such as "what would the ideal experience be for you?" ), we will focus on activities such as Laddering, Game play, Storytelling and Triading that can help expose opportunities for radical innovation and designing products that people can't live without.

We'll also discuss emotional engagement (because research shows that users who make an emotional connection with a site will be more engaged) and neuromarketing (because everything must think before speaking and there are techniques to measure a user's physiological and neurological reactions.

Don't miss this conversation about both qualitative and quantitative methods for helping users identify what they didn't know - what they didn't know. 

Follow this event on Twitter using hashtag MITXUX

Agenda:
8:00am - 8:30am  Breakfast & Networking
8:30am - 10:00am Presentations & Discussion

This event is being hosted at Hill Holliday - check out their site!

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