Why designers suck at innovation (and what to do to suck less)

Talk

Our work – as Information Architects and UX designers – has focused more and more often on defining and crafting innovative products and services; ones that win the hearts and minds of people, while creating a business advantage (commercial or social) for the organizations launching them. Our success rate in this field is what granted us ‘a place at in the boardroom’ in recent years. Still, too many of the initiatives we work on are shelved before – or immediately after launch. Too many of our projects fall in traps that hinder their chances of success.

Starting from personal experience – lots of successful launches and lots of failures in more than a decade of work – and analyzing some prominent case studies, this talk focuses on 4 key traps we tend to fall into: problem definition; definition of business model and processes; role of technology breakthroughs; team structure. These are traps that teams of designers and Information Architects now need to consider – with their new and broader scope of action.

For each of these traps, the talk highlights what are the risks and how they can be prevented, or at least mitigated. It provides tips and advice to leaders and practitioners alike, to help them launch products and services that can fully express the innovative potential. It formalises techniques and design approaches to add to our toolkit as designers in the boardroom.

The audience will walk away with: A framework to highlight the riskiest traps to launch innovative products. A series of actions that IA, UX and design practitioners can take to avoid them, and – on the contrary – make the most radical innovations thrive. A series of actions that IA, UX and design leaders can take to create the conditions for success.