Materials from Margaret’s workshop available
posted at 9:34 AM on March 4, 2009

For those who attended Margaret Gould Stewart’s rockin’ pre-conference workshop, she has posted the workshop materials online at the Managing User Experience Teams blog. Thanks Margaret!

change in schedule: Peter, not David
posted at 12:00 AM on March 2, 2009

Despite our best efforts, weather still calls the shots sometimes. Presenter David Butler, VP of Design at Coca-Cola will be unable to join us on Monday at 10-10:30am because the snowstorm in the U.S. Southeast has shut down the Atlanta airport.

The good news is we have a terrific substitute. David was planning to share how they redesigned the design function at Coca-Cola, so it seems quite appropriate to still talk about changing organizations. Peter Merholz, president of Adaptive Path, will be sharing 3 (Mostly) Difficult Steps to Becoming a Customer Experience-Driven Organization. Peter will focus on a few of the key steps that drive an organization’s ability to see experience as strategy.

It’ll be a highly interactive talk, so I ask you to sit up, get ready to share and state what you believe to be the way to change the mind of an organization.

— Brandon.

unofficial Sunday night gathering
posted at 2:55 PM on March 1, 2009

Attendee Dwayne King had the great thought about getting together for an informal happy hour on Sunday evening. We figure that’s an idea worth sharing.

Here’s the simple plan: if your interested, Dwayne, Henning, and I will be at Bar 888 in the Intercontinental Hotel around 5:30pm-ish. Drop by if you can!

— Brandon.

Monday afternoon workshops: getting hands-on
posted at 9:20 AM on March 1, 2009

From the previous MX events, we’ve heard that the content is great, but there’s a real desire to get hands-on with the concepts we talk about. As one attendee put it, “make me stretch my own way of doing things.” In response, we’ve brought workshops into the core of the MX schedule.

Monday afternoon from 2-5:30pm, we’re presenting you with a realistic but challenging business case to solve. In short, we’re asking you to put together the initiatives and direction of an internal UX group for the rest of 2009. And you must explain that plan in a form appropriate for a C-level executive.

Here’s the great part. We’ve invited five experts to lead five different workshops to help you solve the case. Each brings a different perspective and a different point of view. I encourage you to avoid the workshop that’s a familar way of working for you; seek out the workshop that stretches your approaches the most:

• Sara Beckman, Co-Director of the Management of Technology Program, Haas School of Business will lead the workshop Get Inside the Mind of Your CMO
• Scott Berkun, Author of The Myths of Innovation and Making Things Happen will lead Guerilla, No-Holds Barred, Possibly Illegal in 15 States, 
Tactics for Defining UX in Organizations
• Josh Levine, Design Strategist at The Matter Collaborative will lead the workshop Harnessing Collective Wisdom, The Power of Six Thinking Hats
• Michael Meyer, CEO of Adaptive Path leads you in Building the Business Case for User Experience
• Kate Rutter, Senior Practitioner at Adaptive Path will lead the workshop, Picture it! — Visual Solutions for Stagnant Organizations

I’m really proud of this super-strong line up and expect the workshops to lead to some of the most immediate and useful take-home learnings from MX. And if you’re  curious, here’s a peak at the case you’ll be asked to solve. I can’t wait for this to start.

— Brandon

DOWNLOADS: Session Abstracts and Speaker Bios
posted at 1:41 PM on February 27, 2009

We’re into saving money and trees this year. To that end, we have not produced a printed program book. All that same information — speaker bios and session abstracts — can be found here on the site for your viewing pleasure (see the sessions and schedule tabs) . If you do need a hard copy, check out these PDFs for downloading and printing…

Pre-conference Workshop: Sunday March 1 (Download PDF)

Day 1: Monday March 2 (Download PDF)

Day 2: Tuesday March 3 (Download PDF)

One week until MX: get ready.
posted at 4:14 PM on February 23, 2009

Terrifically excited that it’s only one week until we put down the email and PowerPoint, take off our gloves and roll up our selves to tackle the big issues and opportunities for managing experiences in today’s environment!

Now it’s time for a little orientation so you can get the most out of the two days. Here’s what you’ll need to know or do to get everything possible out of MX 2009:

• Get to know your fellow attendees in advance. One of the best part of MX is to meet and get to know people in similar circumstances to you. All you have to to is join the LinkedIn group for MX.
• Get in the right head space by diving into the books. We sent you three great read by three of our speakers: Scott Berkun’s Making Things Happen, Marty Neumeie’s The Designful Company, and Dan Roam’s The Back of the Napkin.
• Start sharing your ideas and expectations for MX. use twitter and the hashtag #MX09 to share ideas, ask questions, or give feedback; We’ll be watching.
• Know the schedule, know the format. Monday is about what it means to have experience as a strategy: we’ll hear from people who see it and do it, then get hands on practicing it with workshops. Tuesday focuss on what it take to get good experiences out into the world: the mindset, leadership, teams, and tactics.
• Be ready to take it all in. We’ll be video recording many of the session, sharing most of the slides and other content, plus taking graphical notes (here’s the graphical notes from MX 2008) so that you can focus on learning, sharing, and participating.
• And lastly, come talk to us at MX — we’re here for you. Henning, Brandon, and much of the Adaptive Path staff will be at the event ready to share ideas, swap methods, and push forward the discipline.

Looking forward to seeing you at MX!
— Brandon & Henning

Complete MX 2009 Schedule posted
posted at 10:09 PM on January 26, 2009

Welcome to the inaugural announcement for the MX 2009 blog! We’ve pretty much completed our schedule. We’re thrilled to bring you this amazing collection of speakers.

One key change for this year is the introduction of the workshop on the afternoon of Day 1, the Experience Strategy Challenge. In feedback we’ve received about earlier events, people told us they want more hands-on skills-building, and more chances to interact with their peers. This workshop delivers both. We’re still working out the final details, so watch this space!

Video of Ryan Armbruster at MX
posted at 4:57 PM on July 14, 2008

In this session we learned Ryan’s proven techniques for integrating the complexity of human emotions into all elements of experience design.

MX2008 | Ryan Armbruster from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

Video of Björn Hartmann at MX
posted at 4:55 PM on July 14, 2008

Björn unveiled his leading work in design tools for pervasive computing, sensor based interactions, and design by modification.

MX 2008 | Björn Hartmann from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

Video of Stephen Anderson at MX
posted at 4:54 PM on July 14, 2008

To understand how unorthodox ideas can make it through an organization, Stephen looked outside the design industry to filmmaking. Specifically, he analyzed at what it took to make the one of the most influential — and disruptive — films of all time: the original Star Wars movie.

MX2008 | Stephen Anderson from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

Video of Cordell Ratzlaff at MX
posted at 2:22 PM on June 30, 2008

Drawing on experience from Apple, frog design, and Cisco, Cordel helps us understand what it takes to create a culture that fosters breakout products.

MX 2008 | Cordell Ratzlaff from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

Video of Peter Coughlan at MX
posted at 2:20 PM on June 30, 2008

Peter Coughlan describes some organizations that currently deliver great customer experiences, and suggests how organizations might go about strengthening experience design capabilities when this has not been a focus.

MX 2008 | Peter Coughlan from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

Highlight Reel
posted at 12:22 PM on June 18, 2008

MX2008 | Highlights from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

Video of Matt Jones at MX
posted at 12:07 PM on June 18, 2008

Matt Jones cites examples from the development of Dopplr and other services, as he discussed recent trends in social software, object-centered sociality, the beginnings of social infrastructure (opensocial, xfn, hcard, openID), personal informatics, and approaches for baking social ettiquette into the design.

MX2008 | Matt Jones from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

Video of Margaret Gould Stewart at MX
posted at 11:10 AM on June 18, 2008

Margaret Gould Stewart, User Experience Manager at Google discusses the traits that make some managers particularly effective, how she has customized her management style over the years to both corporate context and the individuals on the teams she has led, plus some specific tactics and tools she uses to refine and improve her management practices.

MX 2008 | Margaret Gould Stewart from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

Video of Chip Conley at MX
posted at 2:41 PM on June 11, 2008

Chip Conley, CEO of Joie de Vivre Hospitality, spoke at Adaptive Path’s MX: Managing Through Creative Leadership conference. His keynote talk titled, PEAK: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow explores how to transform the workplace via the three key relationships in business with employees, customers and investors.

MX 2008 | Chip Conley from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

Prototyping Slide Deck
posted at 10:46 AM on May 22, 2008

You will find slides for Björn Hartmann’s presentation available on his session detail page. It’s a whopping 33MB PDF download!

Podcast Interviews with Speakers
posted at 8:28 AM on May 22, 2008

Jeff Parks and Chris Baum attended MX this year and recorded interviews with 6 of our speakers. Listen to podcasts of Cordell Ratzlaff, Richard Anderson, Björn Hartmann, Michael Recchiuti as well as Adaptive Path practitioners Brandon Schauer, Sarah Nelson, Henning Fischer, and Ryan Freitas.

Jeff Parks is the Podcast Editor for Boxes and Arrows and the President of I.A. Consultants. Chris Baum, editor-in-chief for Boxes and Arrows.

Planet of the Ape Slides
posted at 8:57 PM on May 19, 2008

Matt Jones has graciously posted the slides for his presentation.

A Graphic Guide to MX
posted at 9:45 AM on May 15, 2008

As part of the conference, we captured emerging insights from the speakers using graphic recording. The speakers’ talks were captured with memorable visuals and colorful typography, providing a visual snapshot of the presentation. At the end of the conference, the key topics were collected into a landscape map, summarizing the emergent patterns and themes.

Download a copy of the Graphic Guide to MX (PDF, 13MB) and share it with others!

Visit Kate Rutter’s photoset for high-resolution photos of the graphic recording.

More Slides are Up
posted at 12:05 PM on May 9, 2008

Check it out! Slides are posted in PDF format for the following six presentations. You’ll find a link to download the slide decks on each session’s page:

• Scott Hirsch - MIG
• Chip Conley - Joie de Vivre
• Ryan Freitas - Adaptive Path
• Stephen P. Anderson - Viewzi
• Rachel Hinman - Adaptive Path
• Julie Peters - Virgin

Curt Odar on Building a New UX Team
posted at 12:29 PM on May 6, 2008

Curt Odar, an MX attendee from the Corporate Executive Board, is building a UX organization inside a company that has traditionally not had that capability. He spoke to a number of other MX attendees and shared what he learned with us:

Part of my interest in coming to the MX conference was to learn how UX teams operate in other companies. I’m building out a UX function at my company and wanted to get after 3 key questions:

• How is the team funded?
• Where does it fit within the organization?
• How do you measure the team’s success?

I spoke with folks from eBay, Phizer, Misys, Cisco, Univision, and Nokia. Not a huge sample size, but I did find some patterns emerge:

• UX teams are funded centrally. In some cases, individual product lines will pay the central team for services. The key ingredient to start a UX team seemed to be having an Executive Sponsor and getting them passionate about it. Funding and enforcement of UX best practices then follow.
• UX teams generally report to product lines. This may have been obvious for some, but I had questioned whether a UX function might report into a central Marketing or IT function. As I move forward with in selling this concept within my company, I’ll target General Managers – less focus on the CMO or CIO.
• The question on measuring success brought a variety of answers, but the two common ones were Usability Metrics and Design Patterns. Usability Metrics – great quantifiable way to show improvements over existing products. Design Patterns – building out a library of reusable design (and hopefully reusable code). Other items discussed but perhaps not as quantifiable – avoiding rework, redirecting poor product concepts, or outright killing them.

Thanks Curt!

Pre-Conf “Method Cards”
posted at 9:17 AM on May 5, 2008

A number of the method cards you created during the pre-conference workshop with Kim are up on Flickr as a photoset. Please share with your office-mates!

Four New Slide Decks Posted
posted at 12:07 PM on May 1, 2008

We are gathering and posting slides from each of this year’s MX. Kim Lenox’s pre-conference deck went up already and now we’ve added slides for Cordell Ratzlaff, Margaret Stewart, Matt Jones and Nathan Shedroff.

Find a link to the slides in the right column of each session overview.

More About Graphic Recording
posted at 10:02 AM on May 1, 2008

Over on the main Adaptive Path blog, Alexa wrote about the graphic recording she and the team created in the back of the MX conference. She asks “What if the conference participants were involved in this process?”

At our recent MX Conference, we set out to capture emerging insights from the speakers using our graphic recording skills. With 4-5 colored markers fanning out from between our fingers at any given moment (picture a wolverine claw), we illuminated the speakers’ talks with memorable visuals and colorful typography. (Pictures coming soon.) On the last day of the conference, as I was running around with a pack of sticky notes trying to identify common themes across talks, it occurred to me: What if the conference participants were involved in this process?

Tag photos mxconf09 on flickr.com

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Session & Speaker Downloads (PDF)

Pre-Conference
Day 1
Day 2

Location:

Intercontinental
San Francisco
888 Howard Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
Google map

Reserve your room at the InterContinental by phone
(415) 616-6650 (mention the Adaptive Path group).
Or reserve online