Magic, Hurt feelings and Forgiveness

We live in modern times, witchcraft has been replaced by technologically magical products and service whose appearance is as alluring as our expectations of how we can use them. The more utopian the products and service we use become the less we need to understand how they work, which is fine, until something goes wrong and you need to get it working again. This talk will be examine the pitfalls of simplified 'seamless' designs, how something which was perceived as magical one day can be the source of great frustration then next, when things are no longer working as expected or worse completely broken. Through understanding the importance of 'seams' to aid the diagnosis of problems, and how self-service maintenance can be used to empower users, we can see how design with emotions in mind is vital. In a world of immaculately created artefacts be it on-screen or in-hand, the role of perception is intrinsically linked to emotion as an effective design approach, yet often overlooked.

What will be covered?
A journey starting with designing for simplicity and its consequences, travelling though; handling faults & errors, diagnosing problems, and how to help the user do things for themselves. And introducing perception design as an effective approach as part of designing products & services.

• Design simplicity
• Diagnosing the problem
• Self-service
• Emotional design
• Perception design

Who should attend?
This talk is for anyone who has had a negative experience using a product or service, and those who are tasked with designing these experiences; Designers, Developers, User experience practitioners, product managers and anyone who has been near an 'unhappy' path…