Dan Brown
Together with Nathan Curtis, Dan Brown founded EightShapes in 2006. Though specializing in information architecture, user research, and design discovery, Dan’s career spans most aspects of UX design.
Dan wrote three books on the practice of user experience, including Communicating Design, widely considered essential to the UX canon. He writes articles on the messier side of design, speaks widely on discovery and collaboration, and occasionally creates decks of cards to help teams work on their issues.
For more, keep up with Dan at eightshapes.com or on Twitter as @brownorama.
Presentations
Tent Talks Session: The Information Architecture of Products
On Wednesday, August 9th at 5:00pm Central, Dan Brown joins us for a live Q&A session: “The Information Architecture of Products.”
Leadership By Design 2017
Curiosity, Skepticism, Humility: Achieving the Right Mindset for Design Discovery in Teams
Discovery, the first part of the design process, is crucial for aligning teams and leading them to design success. A well-aligned team works toward the same goal, and brings out the best in each other because they all understand what their trying to achieve.
Discovery can take many forms: a multi-month endeavor to prepare for a complex business application, or a four-day “sprint” to align the team around a vision for a new product. Whatever the form, however, teams are prepping and priming themselves to do detailed design and development work.
Discovery is complicated, chaotic, and messy. In discovery, teams gather information about the problem and then explore different ways to tackle it. Through critical thinking, they refine their understanding of the problem and zero-in on a concrete plan for execution. Discovery requires participants to shift attitudes and perspectives almost constantly. Team members go from “tell me more about” to “how about this idea” in the blink of an eye.
To pull this off successfully, team members need to embrace a discovery mindset. This attitude emphasizes learning. It relies on team members maintaining an open mind, questioning everything, and above all not taking themselves too seriously.
In this session, we’ll look at why this attitude is important, how it affects your team’s approach to discovery, and ways you can cultivate this mindset in yourself and those you lead.
