Philip Likens

Philip Likens is the Principal UX Designer for Sabre Labs, a travel-focused emerging technology incubator. He is the creator of iHeartColor for iPhone and runs Crosstrain Camps: Events for Coders and Creatives in Dallas, Texas. Philip believes design, innovation, and entrepreneurship can produce human flourishing.

For more, keep up with Philip at deptof.com or on Twitter as @philiplikens.

Presentations

UX Camp 2014: Mobile Camp

Experiencing the Mobile Mainframe

Google Glass, Samsung Gear, MetaWatch, Fitbit Flex, and a whole host of other devices are weaving a connectivity web with a similar underlying pattern: the smartphone is emerging as the mobile mainframe. Our phones are powerful, always-on, always-connected machines that pipe data to and from these terminals (or devices). The result is an amazing collection of capabilities and experiences for the user.

I’ve spent the last few months diving into the world of the mobile mainframe, bouncing between platforms and devices. I’d like to share my own journey, highlight the powerful experiences this model provides, discuss the downsides of the mobile mainframe as it stands today, and make some outlandish predictions about the future as I see it.

UX Camp 2013: Prototype Camp

Deciding What to Build Without Killing Each Other

Deciding what to build is hard. Making the decision as a team is even tougher. Team members often have differing views on which portions of the prototype are most important and what functionality to include. Tensions from the decision-making process can drive teams apart. In our labs group we have adopted a framework for making prototyping and project decisions. This presentation outlines the framework we use in Sabre Labs, as well as some examples of times we’ve gotten it right, and other times we haven’t.