All the Cool Stuff We Want to Share With You at SXSW 2018

Amplifying Your Startup’s Impact Through Story

Bringing a product to life is one thing, getting people excited about it is another. Founders need to inspire people to believe in their company’s potential, whether those people are investors, employees or users. Hosted by frog, a leading design firm, and CrunchFund, a leading early-stage VC firm, this workshop is about taking your awesome product and building a story around it – one that is compelling, believable, and able to amplify the effect that you will have in the world. Vote now!

SPEAKERS

Kristin Krajecki, Brand Director, frog

Pat Gallagher, Partner and Co-Founder, CrunchFund

Taylor Hamilton, Principal Film Director, frog

My Air Conditioner: The Authoritarian

Smart devices make our lives more convenient by responding to our desires, but is that really smart? As energy resources dwindle, we must design networked devices to make sustainable decisions for society. In this talk, we will challenge today’s attitudes towards energy consumption and our limited definition of a smart device. We’ll explore how Authoritarian Objects not only respond to human whims but also to information from our infrastructure – moving us away from unlimited energy demand. Vote now!

SPEAKERS

Agnes Pyrchla, Senior Strategist, frog

Jon Grossman, Industrial Designer II, frog

Commanding Respect As The Only Woman In The Room

Studies show that women are more likely to be interrupted in meetings. In addition, men are more likely to critique females for coming on too strong in the workplace according to Stanford University’s Clayman Institute for Gender Research. With a combined 32+ years leading Fortune 500 project client and project teams, Alexis and Jona have a pointed perspective on commanding a room. They’ll discuss the strategies, tactics, challenges, and behaviors to put your best foot forward. Vote now!

SPEAKERS

Alexis Puchek, Principal Designer, frog

Jona Moore, Executive Technology Director, frog

Artificial Love: Designing for Emotional Intelligence

When our products have the ability to clearly communicate with us through artificial intelligence, the depth of our relationships with them will grow exponentially. In this emergent age of conversational UI, virtual assistants, and autonomous everythings, there is a need to craft the roles these emotionally intelligent AIs play in our lives. This talk will outline an approach to designing AI products that fundamentally redefine our relationship with technology. Vote now!

SPEAKER

Seth Snyder, Senior Interaction Designer, frog

Finding Design in the Criminal Justice System

Prosecutor Kelsey McKay realized that strangulation was not being taken seriously enough by first responders or victims; resulting trauma can cause death days or weeks later. To help convict strangulation perpetrators at trial, McKay created a field investigation tool that resulted in a 36% increase in filed offenses in just one year. This talk will explore how law enforcement agencies can replicate this success, and how designers can apply design research at government-sized scale. Vote now!

SPEAKERS

Ryan Menefee, Senior Strategist, frog

Kelsey McKay, Founder, McKay Training & Consulting

Death and Legacy in the Digital Age

We are hyper aware of how we create, curate, and live with digital versions of ourselves. But what happens to those digital selves in death? We design digital experiences with life in mind. How might we also start designing with the inevitability of death in mind? And with new start-ups holding out the promise of a digital reincarnation, how do we ensure we clearly differentiate between digital life and digital afterlife? Vote now!

SPEAKER

Rebecca Blum, Senior Strategist, frog

Designing Women: Do women innovate differently?

As design thinking expands beyond Stanford and start-ups to corporations and non-profits, we wanted to explore whether women bring a unique approach or perspective to innovation. Many of the most visible pioneers of design thinking have been men yet the approach is rooted in empathy, a trait often associated with women. We’ll talk to female practitioners of design thinking about what strengths women innovators bring to the table and debate whether gender plays a role in innovation at all. Vote now!

SPEAKERS

Turi McKinley, Executive Director, frog

Shanti Mathew, Strategy Director, Public Policy Lab

Danielle Merfeld, VP and GM, Niskayuna Technology Center, GE Global Research, General Electric

Ariba Jahan, Director of Innovation, Ad Council

How Bots Will Build the Businesses of Tomorrow

Intelligent bots that run automated tasks, simulating human decision making and interactions, will soon be improved and coordinated to deliver more of the complex roles in building and running businesses. In a fictional look into the future, we will explore how notable trends from today can plausibly create a the start-up businesses of tomorrow, including bot-based strategy, market exploration, R&D, marketing, sales and finance functions, with minimal human intervention. Vote now!

SPEAKER

Toshi Mogi, AVP Strategy, frog

Machines: How To Understand and Talk To Humans

Interacting with humans requires all our technological senses to understand them beyond words and gestures. Computer vision brings awareness of visual cues in facial expressions, body language, and appearance. Natural language understanding helps us get their meaning and intent. Sensing provides context to choreograph our input and output modes. This session explores cognitive services from Microsoft, IBM, Google, and others that drive our need for well-designed interactions with humans. Vote now!

SPEAKER

Robert Tuttle, Executive Technology Director, frog

Principles of Sense Augmentation for Shared Care

Healthcare technologies typically focus on supporting the patient. Yet, we know that care is a social process in which caregivers have a central role. If technology could enable caregivers to share a patient’s sensory experience, how might that improve health care? In this talk, we’ll introduce design principles – inspired by the body hacking community’s use of sense augmentation – for enhancing existing healthcare products, as well as designing new products for fostering empathy in shared care. Vote now!

SPEAKERS

Eryn Whitworth, Social Science Research Associate, U. of Texas at Austin

Fabiola Einhorn, Interaction Designer, frog

Relationship Design and the role of Commitment

In today’s disruptive, rapidly changing marketplace, customer loyalty is arguably more important than any other strategic imperative. And, depending on the industry, just meeting expectations is likely not enough to keep customers coming back. The organizations who will emerge as leaders are those who commit to their customers and design experiences aligned with the core principles of meaningful relationships. Vote now!

SPEAKER

Geoffrey Schwartz, Strategy Director, frog

Interface In Our Ears

Since the early 1980s, human computer interaction has primarily been facilitated through Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs). However, the combination of screen fatigue, burgeoning artificial intelligence, and technology embedded in everything from cars to homes, is exposing a need for new types of interfaces that extend beyond the visual. This talk will explore the emergence of the AUI (audio user interface), and the role audio might and should play in expressing user experiences. Vote now!

SPEAKER

Christine Todorovich, Principal Design Director, frog

Dirty Little Liars: Why are there Product Failures?

Google Glass and Heinz Purple Squirt Ketchup. How can these products be such market failures? We are swimming in data, yet it’s a fact that over 50% of products fail every year. Why is this happing despite having so much data easily accessible to us? Of course, much of the answer is that humans are messy and unpredictable. How do we cope with unpredictability and find meaningful insight? In this session, we will explore the rise of quant analysis and the fall of qual analysis. Are we better off? Vote now!

SPEAKERS

Charles Marcus, Co-founder, Vidlet

Mahin Samandani, Partner, McKinsey and Company

Charlie Burgoyne, Principal Director of Data Science, frog

Tracy Thirion, CEO, Bamboo Worldwide