Designing for Work, Karel Vredenburg, IBM Director of Design

PLEASE NOTE the DATE & LOCATION CHANGE! Date: Monday January 19, 2015 7:00PM 
Time: Networking starts at 6:45pm, Presentation starts at 7pm

Location: IBM Canada Lab, 8200 Warden Avenue, Markham.

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Presenter: Karel Vredenburg, IBM, Director of Design

Design has long been seen to be important for creating consumer products. Design hasn't been seen to be as important for enterprise products. Until now. At least for IBM. People spend the majority of their days working and we believe that they deserve to have at least as good an experience with the apps and products they use for work as they do with their consumer apps and products. Of course, it is a far greater challenge designing awesome enterprise products because the work domain, ecosystem, and social graph is more complex. This talk will outline the key elements of the new design program at IBM that is being used to design a new way to work for our clients, including our focus on hiring designers, prioritizing projects, using our design framework, and educating our staff experientially. Early examples that illustrate key elements of our approach will be provided and future directions for the design of new ways to work will also be discussed.  

I'm director of design at IBM and am responsible for worldwide evangelism of our design practices to ensure the understanding and adoption of them across all of IBM as well the application of them in working with key clients. I joined IBM more than a quarter a century ago after having done graduate studies, research, and teaching at the University of Toronto.  I introduced User-Centered Design at IBM in 1993 and assumed my company-wide role in 1995.  I've written over 60 conference and journal publications, written a book entitled "User-Centered Design: An Integrated Approach", contributed chapters to other edited books and served as special issue editor for the International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction special issue entitled "Designing the Total User Experience at IBM" and the "Ease of Use" issue of the IBM Systems Journal.  I'm a member of several international committees and working groups. I'm based in Toronto, Canada.