Next to that we have loads of new surprises we want to show you (but we can’t otherwise it wouldn’t be a surprise anymore)!

Stay tuned for speaker updates, which we will announce through the website and Twitter.

Anouk Randag - 31Volts

Since 2 years Anouk works in Utrecht at 31Volts, the 1st service design agency in the Netherlands. Service design is an upcoming discipline, resulting in innovated and new services, from end-user’s perspective. To make end-users happy and service providers proud, 31Volts applies a clear, creative and holistic service design process, with tangible deliverables.
Although educated and living in Delft, Anouk is definitely contributing to the design thinking climate in Utrecht (editorial note: Utrecht Rules!) for instance by context mapping the creative industries in the city.
Anouk is specialized in customer insights and facilitating co-creation sessions, dancing salsa and eating French fries. She’s a fervent visitor of Mobile Monday Amsterdam and looking forward to being a Team Captain during the Mobile Edition of DfC!

Ferry den Dopper - Tam Tam

Ferry loves puzzles: from online strategies to complex information architectures and rich but still accessible user experiences. And never quits before it’s solved. Designing for persuasion and conversion to him is essentially about being user centered, task oriented and presenting relevant calls-to-action at the right time.

Ferry is a senior user experience designer in the Online Communication team of Tam Tam, a full-service web agency in Delft and Utrecht, which ranked fourth in this year’s top 10 list of web agencies. He has advised and designed for the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, Dutch Tax Administration, Technical Universities Delft and Eindhoven, the Dutch Red Cross and the Dutch Judiciary.

When he is not working on projects, Ferry is probably writing for his blog or for Frankwatching, debating on the Dutch web guidelines and advocating accessibility, giving guest lectures, attending a conference, or just relaxing.

This is Ferry’s first DfC as a team captain, and he’s looking forward to it!

Stop! Before we begin, check to see if you know your experience design classics:

• Anything by Donald Norman (”beautiful things work better”)
• “Designing for People” by Henry Dreyfuss
• George A. Miller’s “The Psychology of Communication” (with Chapter 2: “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two”)
• Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s “Flow”
• Christopher Alexander’s “The Timeless Way of Building” and “A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction”
• Nathan Shedroff’s “Experience Design” (you may want to check the new edition “1.1″).

From that last one I’ll use the definition of Experience Design, just so we’re all on the same page:

“Experience Design is an approach to creating successful experiences for people in any medium. This approach includes consideration and design in all 3 spatial dimensions, over time, all 5 common senses, and interactivity, as well as customer value, personal meaning, and emotional context. Experience Design is not merely the design of Web pages or other interactive media or on-screen digital content. Designed experiences can be in any medium, including spatial/environmental installations, print products, hard products, services, broadcast images and sounds, live performances and events, digital and online media, etc.”

Got that? Good. Let’s see what happened since those works were written.

Experience Design

Design answers the who, what, when and where questions. So let’s look at social (who), things (what), time (when) and mobile (where, and the theme for Design for Conversion).

Who: Social

I know you, you know me, so let’s…let’s do what? The rule is that you don’t connect to people directly, but through social objects. And who designs these social objects?

• Jyry Engeström’s PubSubHubbub, “A simple, open, server-to-server publish/subscribe protocol“
• Kars Alfrink’s Hubbub; “We create physical, social games for public space. Our games get people moving and talking.”
• David Armano’s Social Business by Design; “Social Business Design is the intentional creation of dynamic and socially calibrated systems, processes, and culture”
• And to show what happens with good experience designers: Christina Wodtke, formerly a well-known Information Architect, is now Manager Social of MySpace.

What: Things

Eventually, everything will get an IP-address. And we will be able to interact with it, or access the data from its sensors. What will that be like?

• Tom Coates’ Native to a Web of Data
• Ulla-Maaria Engeström’s “Thinglink”
• Adam Greenfield’s “Everyware”

When: Time

Interaction Design is all about time. The 4^th dimension (Why is Dr.Who not called Dr.When?).

• Bill Scott’s “Interesting Moments“
• User Interface Engineering’s Seducible Moments; “If we identify the key seducible moment for a specific offer, we can often see over 10 times as many requests.”
• Stephen Anderson’s “The Conversation Gets Interesting: Creating the Adaptive Interface” About interfaces that adapt over time based on usage
• Matt Jones’ “All the time in the world” Presentation from the recent Design by Fire conference, with the brilliant observation “what will happen if everything pings you all the time?” (see “Things”)

Where: Mobile

This one is simple: Get an iPhone. Oh, and read Dakota Reese Brown’s “Four Key Principles of Mobile User Experience Design”:

1. There is an intimate relationship between a user and their mobile device.
2. Screen size implies a user’s state. The user’s state infers their commitment to what is on the screen.
3. Mobile interfaces are truncated. Other interfaces are not.
4. Design for mobile platforms — the real ones (voice, messaging, internet, apps

Service Design

Yes, Service Design is here. And it’s supposed to be new, even though every book or article you read acknowledges that the service industry (main examples: hotels, restaurants) have been designing their services for ages. So what is new: The inclusion and central placement of the digital channel in modern services that do not require face-to-face contact.

Some books will try to make you believe there is something new (like “Service Design – Designing Services with Innovative Methods” by Satu Miettinen and Mikko Koivisto) but a lot of it should sound very, very familiar for anyone who ever realized that redesigning a website and its FAQ section might have an influence on the types of questions a call centre might get.

For further updates on this field, try and visit the Service Design drinks or talks that are popping up everywhere. Here in The Netherlands, it’s 31volts and STBY that alternate as hosts. Oh, and check out Arne van Oosterom’s design thinkers network WENOVSKI.

As for the visual standards in service design, the Design Management Institute has been around for a while and started to cover designing for interactive services a while ago. Case in point: they co-published “Design Thinking: Integrating Innovation, Customer Experience, and Brand Value”

Oh, and don’t forget about Service Design’s nephew-with-an-MBA: Design Thinking. This is all about making sure executives are using designers’ tried-and-tested methods to do the creative part of their work. This fall’s “Change by Design” by IDEO’s Tim Brown  might as well be the last book written about his subject.

Optimal Experience Design

And now for the tricky part: Optimal Experience Design. You might say (again) that there’s nothing new here: a good designer always strives for the optimal experience. Usually there are business or technical requirements that will not allow us to create it. But now that business and technology environments are more conductive to design, we might take a stab at it.

Check out the following and see if you can apply the lessons to your next, more optimal design.

Cheating

M.I.T Professor Dan Ariely’s research with people who were told they were wearing “fake” designer sunglasses were found significantly more likely to cheat on tests than ones told they were wearing “real” ones.

Seduction

Christopher Fahey’s “The Three Stages of Seduction” (below)  and his presentation on “Style“.

Persuadability

“Persuadability interiorises rational and emotional needs, the surfer’s momentum, our value proposition and the best of our online marketing strategies into a whole, using real-time measurement to monitor our conversion rates and allowing us to “tweak”, in a process of continuous improvement.”

Emotion

• Good-old Philips Design is involved in both toys for stock brokers and Vibrators (Note of the editor: “sensual massagers”)!
• From a Forrester report, these are the 3 principles for Emotional Experience Design:

1. Address customers’ real goals
2. Develop a coherent personality
3. Engage a mix of sense

And finally, I encourage you to read “We Feel Fine – An Almanac to Human Emotion” with a great quote to finish this blog post:

I have a problem I’m sure many other bloggers face: I am perfectly comfortable sharing intimate details about my emotions with complete strangers I meet online but shy away from expressing my true feelings to anyone I know in real life. (by a woman in Maine, USA)

Scott Weiss, welcoming you, me and everyone to get involved in the design of the next big thing in user experience.

Marijn Driessen, from Design for Conversion, sips coffee with Scott Weiss, User Interface Technology Manager of the Symbian Foundation and chair of the UI Council. She meets a technology expert who is passionate about his new mission and speaks a language she can understand. Remarkably!

When marketing meets hard-core technology, the former tends to shy away. Faced with the prospect of being inundated with technical jargon, coding talk, platform logistics, infrastructure bits and bobs, it can be tough to have a conversation on a level playing field.

Needless to say, I was a little apprehensive when asked to interview Scott Weiss, User Interface Technology Manager of the Symbian Foundation and Chair of the UI Council. So I decided to research Scott Weiss just that little bit extra in preparation for our coffee break. Turns out the engineer with a degree from Stanford University, is a communicator par excellence. I couldn’t have wished for a clear or more succinct responses.

Design for Conversion is proud to welcome Scott Weiss as keynote speaker of this year’s first Mobile Edition. As usual, practitioners of online marketing, user experience design and analytics will get their hands dirty to solve tomorrow’s, in this case, mobile conversion challenges.

Introducing the Symbian Foundation

Scott’s job didn’t exist until recently.  A highly acclaimed user experience expert with some 15 years of experience, Scott jumped at the opportunity to reach potentially 100’s of millions of people to improve their mobile user experience. The Symbian Foundation also offers him the chance to work in the world of open source. That plus being able to continue to work in Central London persuaded him to leave his significant position as Executive Director of the London Human Factors International office and take on the challenge of open source user experience development.

The Symbian Foundation is a new venture, which uses the existing assets of the Symbian platform with the objective to facilitate the community of designers to create a more flexible interface. Enabling a differentiation of user experiences and thereby pushing the Symbian platform forward.

DfC: How will the Symbian Foundation be the answer to more diversity in user experience on the Symbian platform?

SW: “The key to the success of improving user experiences through open-source is getting the involvement and collaboration from the community. And this is exactly where the fit lies with your approach during the Design for Conversion event. The challenge in engaging the community lies in our ability to convert people from observers to participants.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

DfC: What will you do to stimulate participation?

SW: “There is a number of ways in which we facilitate people to contribute to improvements in user experience.

Online visual brainstorms

First, we have created a platform for visual brainstorming through the blog, Symbian UI brainstorm. We welcome suggestions from all over the world of how to improve the user interface, but they have to be in the form of a small graphic. Take something you don’t like and fix it visually! No comments, no voting, no judgements – and it’s completely anonymous. So far we’ve had more than 30.000 visitors since the launch in June and more than 60 different ideas up on the site.

Online discussion boards

We also encourage people who don’t have the ability to submit a visual design to actively criticise and suggest ideas about the platform in discussion threads on the developer.symbian.org website.

Collaborative workshop between foundation members and the public

Third, I conduct UI workshops. So far we’ve done two and we will continue to do them quarterly where members of the public as well as Symbian Foundation members are invited to attend and bring their ideas.

Voting on ideas

Another vehicle for participation is www.ideas.symbian.org. This is a site where someone can make a suggestion and it does involve discussion and voting.

Symbian - online UI Brainstorm

Symbian Expo

Finally, there is the Symbian Expo. Here we organise bird-of-a-feather meetings where we sit together and just come up with ways to make the platform better.”

DfC: With all that participation you do create some expectations. How do get those ideas to the next level of realisation? What is the decision chain?

SW: “The ideas inspire potential contributors (e.g. Nokia) to take them up and make them real. The Single Tap Enhancement is a direct result of the open-source spirit of the Symbian Foundation (ed. the single tap combines the acts to select and to open). This UI improvement was proposed by Ixios, a non-member company, and picked up by Nokia for realisation.

The process involves voting on the idea side, where the entire community gets involved. This is followed by a vote from the Symbian Council to decide whether or not to take it forward.”

DfC: In this open-source space, how do you facilitate the collaboration between the three disciplines that participate at DfC (online marketing, UX design and analytics)?

SW: “The three are quite important to the Symbian Foundation and myself. The community is primarily made up of designers, but we are also getting developers to contribute. As for marketers, if our platform isn’t delightful and seductive and convincing to the consumer no one is going to want the phones that run it. So we’re working with them, to reach out to their user base to help develop a seductive experience. “

DfC: In an earlier discussion with DfC speaker, Jérôme Nadel from Sagem Wireless, spoke about the Puma Phone that will be launched during the World Cup. Can I ask you in conclusion, how can the Symbian Foundation be of use to lifestyle brands, such as Puma, who want to engage with their consumers through mobile lifestyle gadgets?

SW: “The Symbian Foundation offers those brands the opportunity to come up with creative initiatives. Let’s say Puma wanted to do something that wasn’t possible on another operating system. The fact that we’re open source means that anyone can submit changes that benefit their customers. In the case of Puma, for instance, track footsteps or heartbeat, link how many steps were taken on a particular day, connected to appointments, so that people could log their hikes, to take video of what they’ve done using their phone and upload this to their blog or to the Puma site to share with other members of the Puma community.

If it can’t be done on the Symbian platform any member of the public can propose changes to make those things happen. “

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Design for Conversion, The Mobile Edition is held on December 11^th in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.  The early bird offer is closing this week.

Ronald Verschueren - NetMarketing

Ronald Verschueren is focused on what’s going on the hearts and minds of end-users to reach better usability and user experience. He is founder of NetMarketing Usability Experts and a HFI certified usability expert.

NetMarketing performed usability studies for mobile sites and apps of many companies, among which NS, De Telefoongids Gouden Gids and KPN. He did comparison studies on popular mobile sites like Trein, Nationale Vacaturebank and Vergelijk.nl. This new knowledge is in a UCD-way integrated in the design of his customers. At NetMarketing the disciplines usability, user experience and online (direct) marketing are integrated. He writes columns in Emerce and articles in a range of magazines, among which Frankwatching and Twinkle.
Ronald has been a team captain for the past two DFC conferences and looks forward to share insights on mobile.

Karin van den Driesche - Filter Design

Five years ago Karin van den Driesche started her own company in user research and design: Filterdesign. Filterdesign specializes in user centered design; putting the user/customer first during the design process. Using interviews, work models and persona development. UCD helps the organizations she works for to hear customer needs in a new way and to create new solutions to meet the large amount of different needs. For her, usability is an integral part -not a consequence- of the design process.

Karin enjoys (besides working) going out with friends, studying philosophy at the UVT, riding her bike, hiking and writing her weblog on human centered design. Last but not least Karin is a passionate board member for Smartkids. This foundation finances education for underprivileged, highly intelligent children in developing countries. At this very moment, 60 Ghanaian students are attending classes thanks to their SmartKids grants.

Lotte Zwijnenburg - Info.nl

The soul of sharing is best performed in true conversations. Conversations sharpen the minds-eye, code ideas into words or images and – if done successfully – transform your idea into a shared meaning that can be distributed. Interaction with others is the principle driver of human evolvement. The quest to understand the mix that creates that important ingredient “successfulness” has been Lotte’s driver and has put her on expeditions to the centre of our brains (psychology), the surrounding landscape (communication) and the contextual universe (law and rhetoric).

As a true believer of a holistic approach and convicted to the fact that to configure multi-layered solutions capable of establishing transformative experiences you need to combine ideas with commitment, a fair share of her vast experience has been dedicated to educate and create the soil on which integrated meaningful services can grow. The last 3 years at info.nl. A century ago she coached the designers at Postbank to re-imagine their forms-online. Her passion is to explore the components of influence. As your team-captain Lotte is more than experienced to help the team re-imagine and commit to creating the best multi-layered and integrated solution that will catch both hearts & minds of the audience.

Tom Prakke - Backbase

Tom started his work in the UX centre of Cambridge Technology Partners in his first project for Vodafone 10 years ago. As a free-lancer he has designed for clients like Philips and travel software giant Amadeus in the south of France. Tom joined Backbase consultancy as a senior UX designer more than 2 years ago and has recently moved from consultancy to product management as user experience manager. His latest challenge is to make user experience design an integral part of Backbase’s design process and with it create desirable and easy to use software. Currently Tom is working on the next-generation Backbase Rich Portal and Co-browse & Chat.