Sunday, 8:30am, Continental Ballroom
Insight is one of the most widely used and poorly understood concepts in the creative process. Insight is what drives the big idea, validates the crazy hunch and frames both problem and solution in one fell swoop. Without the right perspective, knowledge and grounding, generating insight can be unpredictable, wildly unreliable and completely inconsistent in application.
Understanding how to generate, identify, frame and use insight effectively is a poorly understood practice. It’s also increasingly an increasingly critical skill to have when working on solving complex problems. As an information architect, insight is one of the best tools you can use to unpack difficult challenges and turn them into effective solutions.
This session has two goals. The first goal is to help information architects understand the nature of insight and how insights are formed. Insight generation is a repeatable and accessible process when well understood and properly undertaken. This session will clearly explain how individuals can consistently generate relevant and useful insight with a range of inputs and tools. The second goal is to help information architects understand how to use insight as core element of design, business and team leadership activities.
The session will cover how to effectively position and use insight as a transformative leadership tool at all levels, whether solving challenging experience design problems or enabling team and business success.
The theory and framework that serves as the basis for this session comes from two types of knowledge: academic research and real world experience. The session leader will use both of these two sources to help give a balanced and practical view of the topic. Session attendees can expect to leave with a clear understanding of the definition and nature of insight, how to consistently generate insight, and how to effectively apply it in a range of contexts.
As part of this session, the presenter will provide a practical case study from a successful yearlong initiative that helped to transform a large user experience team into an insightcentric group of practitioners who gained increased credibility and trust with both peers and clients.
INSTRUCTOR
Matthew Milan
Matthew Milan is a Principal and Design Director with Normative, a design strategy studio based in Toronto. Over the last ten years, Matthew has led teams of information architects, usability analysts, design researchers and design strategists in the creation of all types of interactive experiences for a range of clients including Citigroup, Hallmark, Georgia Pacific and Microsoft. His work has ranged from designing 3D interfaces for web mapping tools to leading global product innovation strategy initiatives. His work has helped a number of companies attain “best in industry” rankings with Forrester.
Matthew has a Masters degree in Information Architecture and speaks and writes regularly on topics ranging from interaction design to marketing strategy. Matthew is active in the experience design and account planning communities and moonlights as an instructor at the Miami Ad School. He is also a core member of the Unfinished Business project.
He is the co-founder of the UX Irregulars, a Toronto area user experience group and an advisor for the Information Architecture Institute. He blogs at mmilan.typepad.com and harbors an unhealthy obsession for soft systems theory, maneuver warfare strategy and Lego.