Talk show hosts know all about uncovering deep insights – after all, that’s their bread and butter. In this talk, Kimberley from Meld Studios will share what she has learned from watching and listening to the best interviewers in TV and radio. Please note, this will be an Alan Jones-free zone.

Running a half day, or, a full day design sprint is intimidating if you have never run a design sprint before. I’ll focus on why design sprints are awesome, tips for how to include non-designers, my go-to design exercises, and provide a sample agenda to get you started.

In my usability and user research recruiting I’m worried that I’m getting too many nice people who are self-selecting to participate because they are giving and supportive people. To have a well-rounded picture, we need to talk to the jerks. How do I find the jerks?

Whether you’re drowning in data or struggling for insights the hardest thing can be getting a project out of the gate. Like Johnny Cash sang, the key is to take it “One Piece at a Time.” I’ll talk about ways to rethink starting (or re-starting) a project without getting overwhelmed.

If we think about the city as an operating system, what would the digital interfaces through which we interact with the city look like? This talk will walk through a series of experimental prototypes and discuss challenges and design lessons learned through their deployment in urban space.

Interested in responsive design? Richard and Jolanda will share their key insights in redesigning one of the most highly trafficked Victorian Government websites into a smart, engaging experience. Learn about the challenges of responsive design for large websites and how they resolved them. The VicRoads website will go live one month before the conference.

The questions we ask ourselves at the idea generation stage of design play a critical role in the nature of the ideas generated. Bold questions beget bold ideas; and incrementalism begins in the same way. In this talk we will look at how problem framing and reframing can impact the ideas teams generate, and how problem statements can be ‘tuned’ to better deliver feasible concepts within your organisation. We’ll look at some recent examples from our work at Meld Studios as well as some well-known case studies from around the world.

More designers are being tasked with designing solutions where the contexts of use. purchase, and even realized value may be completely separate. This and other factors that will be used to define the unique attributes of “The Enterprise”. I’ll then relate some stories of my 10+ years of experience specifically designing for these environments where scale, complexity, business models, and culture.

The internet as we knew it doesn’t exist anymore. It’s now the one we carry in our pockets; the one users expect to provide information and to facilitate task completion. If you’re looking to create digital experiences that withstand scrutiny and support both needs, this is a talk you can’t miss.

How do you change something as endemic in Australian culture as excessive alcohol consumption? This isn’t a typical consulting job. It requires a design partnership. We’ll describe how Hello Sunday Morning and Tobias & Tobias Australia have been working together to find more effective approaches to affecting alcohol-related behaviour.