Pre-con workshops produced by Seattle IxDA // 8 – 9:30am
These two 90-minute workshops give you a chance to explore new tools and methods for designing. Whether you’re a designer, CEO or dev, you’ll be sure to broaden your conceptual toolkit.
Registration information
Workshop registrations are on a first-come, first-served basis and are limited to 45 attendees per workshop. There is no additional cost to participate. When you register for the HIVE conference, you’ll have the option to sign up for a workshop.
Designing for the Future by Ming-Li Chai & Tazin Shadid
As designers of future products and experiences, how do we look beyond the noise, stay ahead of the curve, recognize an opportunity when it happens, and take advantage of it?
In this session, we will share a mindset and a toolset to help you factor in the future when you make design decisions today. We will walk you through key steps of the “fuzzy front end” of the innovation process: From developing foresight, to uncovering emerging opportunities, to creating future-forward scenarios. You will learn a synthesized blend of methodologies from leading institutions such as the Institute For the Future, Global Business Network, and Stanford Center for Foresight & Innovation.
Spontaneous Invention by Prarthana Panchal & Jon Mann
Put down that Sharpie marker and stack of Post-Its and get ready to supercharge your brainstorming sessions. Learn the tenets of Kinetic Brainstorming through first hand experience in this hands-on workshop.
This session showcases three brainstorming themes; Immersion, Tangibles, and Reframing with real world experiences from T-Mobile, Artefact and Microsoft. Following each showcase, attendees will partake in a focused activity and walk away with a toolkit listing several other techniques to revisit during their daily practice. Kinetic Brainstorming generates insights as well as ideas, and encourages fresh thinking for branding, experiences, and products.
Workshop Leaders
Ming-Li Chai, Strategic Researcher, Microsoft Lync Design Group, @minglichai
Ming-Li brings foresight to the early design process. She tracks social, technological and economic shifts to help identify emerging disruptions and opportunities, shapes disparate ideas into a coherent vision, and works with designers, engineers and business practitioners to formulate future solutions and experiences. Ming-Li started her foresight+design career 10 years ago at Herman Miller’s Future Insight and Ideation Studio, where she led strategic visioning and front end explorations, and collaborated with visionary designers and innovators around the world. She joined Microsoft Office Labs Envisioning Group in 2008 where she helped articulate and demonstrate Microsoft’s 10-year vision for information productivity. Currently she champions strategic design research and planning initiatives at Microsoft Lync to identify mid-long term opportunities in unified communications.
Jon Mann, Artefact
Jon has more than 12 years of experience in mobile and consumer electronics, crafting unique user experiences that bridge design, technology and business strategy, delivering innovative solutions for companies like T-Mobile, Casio, Good Technology, Volkswagen AG and more.
As a design director at Artefact, he weaves design, prototyping and storytelling to create innovative products and services for technology focused clients. A self-confessed gadget geek, he leverages nascent technologies and consumer trends to forecast and create the future.
Jon holds a Master’s degree in Product Design from Stanford University where he catalyzed his perspectives on design thinking, business strategy and a healthy dose of Silicon Valley technology.
Prarthana Panchal, Microsoft
Prarthana Panchal obtained her Masters degree in Media Design from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA. Her education served her well while accruing 10 years of expertise in user experience design from environments to mobility, from corporations to consultancies. Prarthana leads highly collaborative and multidisciplinary design projects, merging research, design, usability, and technology for brands like T-Mobile, Intel, Intuit, and Nokia. She currently works at Microsoft for the unified communications group.
Tazin, User Researcher, Microsoft
Tazin brings strong, compassionate user advocacy to the engineering process, and sound technical insights into design iterations. As a developer in previous life, he leverages his strong technical background to bridge the gap between technology, users, and product developers. Tazin currently works as a User Experience Researcher for Microsoft Lync where he focuses on the Voice, Video, and Collaboration efforts of Lync. Tazin¹s research interest includes communication and collaboration trends, desirability research, UX process and methodology development, and UX integration in development process. Outside of his UX role, Tazin spends most of his time using his design and research skills to solve real life problems such as global healthcare. He currently runs an organization that provides healthcare to 20,000 slum residents in Bangladesh every month.
