Building Character: Creating Consistent Experiences With Design Principles

By understanding what principles are and where they come from we can move beyond the lists of best practices and heuristics we’re all familiar with and create unique, consistent experiences.

Inconsistency is one of the most common points of breakdown and frustration in the interactions and experiences we have. Whether we’re interacting with other people, applications, our bank, our doctor, our government, anyone, we form expectations and understandings of what someone or something will do based on our previous experiences and their past behaviors. When something happens that doesn’t fit with those expectations–that seems out of character–we’re caught off guard. What do we do next? What should we expect now?

Principles act as rules that guide how we think and act. Formed by our motivations, values and beliefs, we use them as “lenses” through which we examine information in order to make decisions on what to do. And because of their persistent influence on our behavior, they influence other’s views and expectations of us. Using these same kinds of constructs throughout the design process we can design interactions and consistent behaviors that set and live up to expectations for our audiences.

Guest Speaker

Adam Connor

Adam Connor, most recognizable by his magnificent beard, is a designer, author and illustrator based in Western Massachusetts. As VP of Organizational Design at Mad*Pow, Adam helps create positive change by addressing the relationships that people have with one another to foster more collaborative, creative and customer-centric organizations.

Adam and his team look closely at company culture and all of the ways that it gets expressed and reinforced. They explore how beliefs, behaviors and perceptions influence things like roles, structure, processes, and tools that organizations use every day. They then work collaboratively with teams to identify meaningful changes that teams can make to improve their capacity to work together creatively.

His work at Mad*Pow and extensive background in experience design, computer science, illustration, and film has taught him the value of delivering and receiving constructive feedback in the design process and the role it plays in effective collaboration. He has coached and trained teams across the world and from industry leading organizations such as Google, Disney, Fidelity, and Aetna.

In 2015 he and co-author Aaron Irizarry released Discussing Design: Improving Communication & Collaboration Through Critique with O’Reilly Publishing. His thoughts on collaboration and design can be found at adamconnor.com and discussingdesign.com.

Time and Location

6:00 – 6:30 Networking and refreshments

6:30 – 7:30 Presentation

7:30 – 8:00 Networking

Mad*Pow 27 Congress Street, Portsmouth NH