About Sheryl Cababa
With one foot planted in design research and strategy, and another in interaction design, Sheryl is an executive creative director and educator with the ability to see both the forest as well as the trees. She has worked at consultancies such as Artefact, frog and Adaptive Path, as well as technology companies like Philips and Microsoft. She encourages designers to employ systems thinking and human-centered design to help create a more equitable world.
Talk
Could We? Should We? Tackling the Unintended Consequences of Design
The world has been jarred awake by tech gone wrong.
We are realizing that the effects of our most celebrated products are not always positive – and that for every advancement, there is a potential unintended impact.
Asking whether we should, is just as important as asking whether we could. Sheryl has been creating, sharing, and teaching methods in her practice to help designers broaden their thinking beyond the user. The way to do this is to surface the outcomes – both the ones you want to happen, and the ones you want to avoid – during the creative process.
In this session, you’ll learn key areas of focus to become a more outcome-oriented creator.
Workshop
Envisioning Outcomes to Build Better Products
Instead of “move fast and break things,” it’s time to slow down and ask the right questions of our tech products.
After years creating products that engage the user and keep them coming back for more, the tech + design community is realizing that the consequences of delight at scale aren’t so enchanting after all. Fake news, smartphone addiction and dirty tricks with data have demonstrated that delightful products don’t have inherently good outcomes.
But the impact of technology doesn’t have to come as a surprise. We can build more trustworthy and transparent products by surfacing their outcomes during the design process—both the ones you want to happen, and the ones you want to avoid.
What you will learn:
This session will help you tackle the ghosts of technology future and build better products using outcome-focused strategies and tools. Learn how to think beyond the immediate benefits of product use to identify potential unintended consequences and design things that contribute to a desired outcome—for the user and at scale.