DESCRIPTION
When we design for experience, subtle and peculiar shifts come into play that demand a uniquely empathic way of thinking about our practice.
We’re no longer designing for an ‘audience’ or ‘viewers’ through our previously static / mass mediated, one-way delivery of the information and designs we’re communicating. Instead, when we consider aspects of interactive engagement for our ‘users’ to experience — we need to thoughtfully dream up the actual stories we’re asking the people in our audience to actively live out.
In this talk we discuss the benefits of putting story at the center of a human-centered design approach to improve the design process as well as the quality of the total human experience we’re ultimately all creating through our crucial work in designing for the direction of our mutual future.
About lou suSi
As the an experience designer for Arbor Networks’ Security Experience Innovation Labs — lou suSi guides the way to long-term, strategic ‘Blue Sky’ prototyping and immersive testing for the firm’s critically acclaimed DDoS application suite for both enterprise and service provider customers. And as Director of Human Awareness Research for myOwnMind, LLC — lou delves into his more personal and passionate entrepreneurial design side by designing unusually brilliant, inspiring storyFirst experiences that frequently touch upon Design for Good. lou also teaches a rather unique and tactile human-centered Interaction Design course at Massachusetts College of Art and Design and also enjoys an eclectic array of other mentoring and teaching past lives with: University of Massachusetts at Lowell; ArtScience Prize, Boston; and Endicott College.
UX Boston Conference and storyFirst Talk
Mentioned on the WGBH Interactive Blog
July 31, 2014 — WGBH Digital's Lisa Rosenthal nicely captured notes and high-level reflections on each of the 10 talks presented at UX Boston Conference #1 on July 19, 2014 — including highlights from my talk A storyFirst Approach to Human-Centered Design — read what Lisa got from the day of talks out at Microsoft NERD Center out on the WGBH Digital Blog
Saturday —July 19, 2014
UX Boston Conference #1
Microsoft NERD Center
One Memorial Drive, Suite 100
Kendall Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts
User Experience design is an overwhelmingly massive profession. It is one which lives in overlapping areas of design, psychology, technology, and art — that's why UXBoston Conference features 10 brilliant local designers from all corners of the trade with talks ranging from accessibility and research to motion and branding
A storyFirst Approach
to Human-Centered Design
lou suSi — designer
DESCRIPTION
When we design for experience, subtle and peculiar shifts come into play that demand a uniquely empathic way of thinking about our practice.
We’re no longer designing for an ‘audience’ or ‘viewers’ through our previously static / mass mediated, one-way delivery of the information and designs we’re communicating. Instead, when we consider aspects of interactive engagement for our ‘users’ to experience — we need to thoughtfully dream up the actual stories we’re asking the people in our audience to actively live out. In this talk we discuss the benefits of putting story at the center of a human-centered design approach to improve the design process as well as the quality of the total human experience we’re ultimately all creating through our work.
About lou suSi
lou suSi is an accomplished experience design professional with over 20 years in the field as a practicing professional designer and artist. He currently focuses on user experience, design education and leadership, public speaking, curation, performance art and cyberSurrealism. His most recent work as the Director of Human Awareness Research with myOwnMind LLC, qualitatively investigates the uncanny valley embedded within our evolving human experience as we adapt and deal with the ‘progress’ of The Information Age.
Thursday, February 20 2014 — 6:30pm
The Trustee’s Room — 11th Floor, The Tower Building
Massachusetts College of Art and Design
Thursday Night Lecture Series
Hear and experience some of the great artists and scholars
teaching in MassArt’s Continuing Education Program
A storyFirst Approach
to Human-Centered Design
lou suSi — designer
DESCRIPTION
Most people think of Design as the product of an activity — as 'The Design'. But my personal and political stance as a lifelong experience design professional sees Design as something entirely different.
I define Design as a living, breathing and active process to create significance in the world.
At its best, the profession of Design leverages an inclusive, cross-functional design team — along with external, collaborative design participants — in a time-based and extensive set of customized, iterative and evolving design processes that allow us to make thoughtful, critical daily design decisions — contextually, people-informed decisions — that shape, mold and ultimately guide the artifactual remains of all the living work we do.
An additional note for your consideration — I see Design in a far more holistic light than most, and I consider Design to be a wonderful, mysterious force that can help us all — to not merely make a living but to also make a better, more significant life.
About lou suSi
lou is an accomplished experience design professional with over 20 years as a practicing professional designer in the industry.
He currently focuses on user experience, design education and leadership, public speaking, performance art and cyberSurrealism.
As a graduate of Dynamic Media Institute — MassArt's amazing, future-forward graduate design MFA program — lou extended certain aspects of the original Surrealist movement as a means to actively investigate our relationship with and through technology, critically evaluating our presentday human experiences in an increasingly machine-integrated and self-fulfilling, evolutionary technohumanic ecosystem.
His MFA thesis book — confounded: future fetish design performance for human advocacy — leveraged prototyping, guerilla research techniques, design and performance art to amass a first-person collection of qualitative data through storytelling to inform his quasi-scientific findings, resulting in some rather humorous insights into our supposed ‘progress’ as a society dealing with The Information Age.
lou's previous professional lifetimes in his daily design work include stops along the way at Avid, Monster, Mobiquity, Schneider Electric and WebEx Communications. He currently contributes to the experience design initiatives of Sallie Mae's Web Strategy team as UX Manager.
For the last 3 years lou also taught MassArt's course in Interaction Design for the Continuing and Professional Education department as part of the Design Certificate sequence. His previous teaching engagements include Web and other design-related curriculum and coursework at UMass Lowell, TechBoston, MassArt, Endicott College, SMFA and ArtScience Prize at Cloud Place.
Related Links of Interest
- UX Boston Conference #1 MeetUp
- Massachusetts College of Art and Design
- Dynamic Media Institute @ MassArt
- Rate storyFirst on SpeakerRate
- 'We live our stories' on Medium
- lou suSi on the web
- lou suSi on LinkedIn
- lou suSi on Good.is
- lou's thesis 'confounded' up on Blurb
- The Bureau of cyberSurreal investigation
All of the contents of this website © 2016 lou suSi for storyFirst. All rights reserved.