A talk presented at Angela Yeh's Thrive By Design & Yeh IDeology 15 year Anniversary Design Summit. The theme for the summit was Metamorphosis: Designing our new Ear. This talk walks through the ways in which I as a designer commit to the future I want to build, recognize the tensions and challenges in achieving this outcome, and dig into three (of many) tools and how we can adapt them moving forward.

1. Adapting our Tools
for a Better Future
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2. Your host for the early afternoon:
Ariana Koblitz
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3. Adapt across industries, markets, design hats
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4. Plan for the next half hour
Set context
Define focus
Discuss tools
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5. Context
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8. Diversity Equity
Accountability
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10. Barriers to
diverse hiring
Competing
priorities
Disincentivized
to “do it right”
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11. Focus
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Empathy maps
Personas
How Might We
Journey Maps& Blueprints
Storyboards
Ethnographic research
Usability testing
Workshops
Assumption mapping
Brainstorming
Abstraction Ladder
Use case

14. 1. What makes this tool powerful
2. How it masks or falls short of nudging
us towards *better* design
3. Ways to adapt & iterate
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15. Tools
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16. Persona
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17. What makes this powerful
• Lets you “be in someone’s shoes”
• Enables teams to work from a shared
starting understanding
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Persona

18. How it masks or falls short of nudging
us towards *better* design
• Masks powerful nuances and differences
• Designers re-project themselves into it
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Persona

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Ways to adapt & iterate
• Create multiple
• Incorporate data from across the journey
specific to the company
Persona

20. Journey Maps - Blueprints
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What makes this powerful
• Busts myths on root causes of an
action
• Links “fluffy” considerations to concrete
transactional outcomes
• Enables teams multiple degrees
removed to feel closer
Journeys &
Blueprints

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How it masks or falls short of nudging
us towards *better* design
• Point in time visual
• Challenge balancing visualizing the
complexity & recognizing nuance
Journeys &
Blueprints

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Ways to adapt & iterate
• Formats that are accessible to non-
design team members
• Pant seeds for flags on when to change
Journeys &
Blueprints

24. Workshops
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25. What makes this powerful
• Brings teams to the table
• Generates buy-in
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Workshops

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How it masks or falls short of nudging
us towards *better* design
• Ideas balloon
• Assumptions get baked in
Workshops

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Ways to adapt & iterate
• Commit to pre-work
• Be transparent about post-workshop analysis
Workshops

28. +
Empathy maps
Personas
How Might We
Journey Maps & Blueprints Storyboards
Ethnographic research
Usability testing
Workshops
Assumption mapping
Brainstorming
Abstraction
Ladder
Use case

29. Thank you.
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Ariana Koblitz
akoblitz.com

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Ethnographic
research

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Empathy maps

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Abstraction Ladder

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How Might We’s

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Brainstorming

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Storyboarding

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Assumption Mapping

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Use case

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Usability Testing