Rachel Hinman
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Rachel Hinman

Rachel Hinman is a designer, researcher and author of The Mobile Frontier: A Guide for Designing Mobile Experiences.

With a background in UX and corporate research labs, Rachel’s career has been spent understanding and designing new and emergent technology experience. Currently, she manages a team of mobile UX designers for Kohl’s department store’s e-commerce group. Her team focuses on reinventing the mobile retail experience and creating new and innovative in-store experiences for Kohl’s customers. Previously, she was a senior research scientist with Intel focused on wearable technology. Prior to Intel, Rachel was a senior research scientist at the Nokia Research Center, an experience design director at Adaptive Path, and a mobile researcher and strategist for Yahoo’s mobile group.

Rachel received a Masters Degree in Design Planning from the Institute of Design in Chicago. She is the creative force behind the 90 Mobiles in 90 Days Project and her perspectives on mobile user experience has been featured in Interactions Magazine, BusinessWeek, and Wired. She writes and speaks frequently on the topic of mobile research and design. Her clients and previous employers have included IDEO, Microsoft, Yahoo! Mobile, Nokia, and Kaiser Permanente.

Clearleft says

The best thing about curating UX London is the ability to expose you to amazing speakers you may not have seen before. Rachel is one such person. We love her and we know you will too.

Talk: Our Wearable Future: Opportunities and Challenges for Wearable Technology

It’s hard to dispute that wearable technology is being lauded as the next big thing. With predictions that the wearable technology market will generate USD22.9 billion in revenue by 2020, it’s difficult to ignore all the hype surrounding wearables today. However, despite the seemingly limitless opportunity of this emergent technology space, new and innovative wearable products and services are in short supply. Businesses, technologists and designers alike are struggling to make sense of this new and challenging design space.

In this talk, Rachel discuss what makes creating successful wearable products so difficult and some of the key challenges facing wearable technology today. She’ll provide an overview of the current wearable landscape and outline the four key areas for innovation where designers, businesses and technologists can focus their energies. Rachel will discuss some of the emerging technologies poised to be instrumental in enabling this new technology inflection point. Finally, she’ll provide a set of human-centred design heuristics that can be used to guide the design and development of your wearable technology ideas.

Workshop: Getting Beyond the Watch: How to Begin Designing Wearable Experiences

Wearables are being lauded as the next technology game changer; the next technology frontier. Yet designing technology experiences that are worn on the human body presents a host of challenges for UX professionals. While wearable technology is a design space ripe with opportunity, many creatives are left asking the same question: Where do I begin?

In this workshop, Rachel will provide an overview of the current wearable technology landscape – a “who is doing what” in the wearable technology world – along with list of wearable themes that can help guide your brainstorming and ideation process. She will provide a list of design principles that outline some of the key differences between designing experiences worn on the body versus screens that are held. Finally, Rachel will provide information on the latest innovations in material science and hardware, and the opportunity to get some hands on experience working with these materials.

Workshop attendees will:

  • Learn who is doing what in the current wearable technology landscape
  • Understand best practices for designing experiences that are worn on the body
  • Learn key design limitations and constraints of designing wearables.
  • Get an overview of innovations in material science that are fuelling wearable technology trends and hands on experience working with some of these materials.

Speakers