Stephen Anderson
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Stephen Anderson

Stephen P. Anderson is the Chief Experience Officer at BloomBoard

In his role as Chief Experience Officer at BloomBoard, Stephen is transforming how teachers grow as professionals. A former high school teacher, Stephen continues to challenge and inspire people as an international speaker; he’s presented at some of the world’s largest organisations, teaching product teams about interactive visualisations, emotional design, and other fun topics.

Stephen is most recognised as the man behind the Mental Notes card deck—a tool that’s widely used by product teams to apply psychology to interaction design. He also authored Seductive Interaction Design, which answers the question: “How do we get people to fall in love with our applications?”

Clearleft says

Stephen is one of the most consistently good speakers we know, and his talk on Sandboxes was the stand-out hit at the IA Summit last year. He’s also one of the nicest people we know, so make sure you hit him up in the breaks.

Talk: Sweating the UX Details

We all enjoy well-designed, well-crafted experiences, but all too often our development processes (Agile, Lean) and organisational cultures seem to pit deadlines and quick iterations against a thoughtful attention to details. Sacrificing quality on the altar of quick is a dangerous mistake, especially as the bar for “good enough” continues to rise in 2015.

We see an ever increasing attention to detail, specifically when it comes the careful use of animation, typography, communications with customers, and creating all-around frictionless experiences. This attention to detail isn’t limited to Apple anymore. Instead, we’re seeing this across industries—companies like Uber, Square, Virgin, and Nest are sweating the details to dominate their competition through design.

So, what does it take for a company to consistently deliver great customer experiences? And what exactly does it mean to be a “design-driven” company?

Speaker Stephen P. Anderson will share his experiences, both as a consultant and now as part of an executive team, trying to balance the needs of the business with needs of the customer. He’ll share the tools and processes he uses to reconcile “getting it done” with “getting it done right,” showing how you can create a culture that values both shipping and quality experiences. He’ll explore what craftsmanship looks like for (mostly) digital experiences, with numerous examples of companies and products that are raising the bar for UX professionals.

Slides
https://www.slideshare.net/stephenpa/sweating-the-ux-details

Workshop: Practical Innovation

Design has earned the attention of businesses everywhere. The demand for breakthrough ideas couldn’t be stronger. It’s time for smart “idea” people to take centre stage. And yet… When given the space to be creative—whether it’s a user interface, data visualisation, or new product idea—we often fall back on safe, familiar patterns.

How do we break out of these safe practices? And how do we arrive at creative ideas that solve actual user problems?

What separates the celebrated “creative” person from others is a set of habits, routinely practiced. The ability reframe problems, link unrelated concepts, place insights ahead of ideas— habits such as these are common to innovators everywhere.

In this workshop, speaker Stephen P. Anderson will share the 8 habits of highly innovative people, with a focus on how we, as designers and product teams, can apply these habits in our day-to-day work.

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN:

  • Dozens of practical tips and exercises to help you produce more original design ideas
  • How to look at nearly any problem from multiple perspectives
  • How to reframe problems that are handed to you
  • Ways to blend seemingly unrelated ideas to produce something new
  • The creative thought process used by Stephen in his day-to-day design and product strategy work

Basically, you’ll learn how to get from “This needs some fresh ideas” to “I don’t know how you do it!”

Speakers