We talk a lot about cross-channel experiences and how to address these new challenges as designers, but what about using our design skills, our hard won knowledge and empathy for customers to help companies decide what products and services will help grow their business? While companies are coming round to the value of customer experience, they’re struggling to acquire the skills needed for creating and managing touch points as well as understanding and prioritizing needs. And when we’re talking multi-channel ecosystems, who’s better equipped to address this complexity than those who have the skill set to not only understand it, but to design it and guide how it’s built.
From optimizing the cross-channel customer experience, to creating new product and service extensions, we’re heading into a prime moment for bringing our toolkit into the business arena. This talk is meant to be both a thought starter as well as a lively group discussion around how UX can begin to play a substantive role in a company’s digital strategy. Using examples from my own experiences and input from a variety of seasoned practitioners, we’ll examine the challenges and map the opportunities across our own journey as UX professionals who are starting to think about what’s next.
The UX profissional as Business Consultant
About Cindy Chastain
Cindy Chastain is a Creative Director, Experience Design at R/GA in New York, currently leading the strategy and design of a complex B2B commerce ecosystem for Nike. Her favorite activities these days include helping companies identify customer-informed opportunities in digital; developing clear, actionable experience strategies; and creating frameworks (and conditions) for helping teams innovate and create great work. She’s also an educator at heart, moonlighting as an adjunct professor of interaction design as well as recreational noodler of ideas, especially around storytelling and design, digital ecosystems, and the art of collaboration. Former clients include Hewlett Packard, Verizon, Qantas Airlines, Walmart, BBC Worldwide, GlaxoSmith Klein, Showtime, Coca-Cola, Unilever, Pfizer and HSBC. She holds an MFA in screenwriting from Columbia University and earned a BS in Radio, TV, Film from Northwestern University.
via Cindy Chastain: New Frontiers – the UX Professional as Business Consultant.
