Empathy-Building Tools for Better Collaboration
Kyra Edeker will discuss three concrete communication tools pulled from user research techniques, mindfulness practice and modern psychology that can improve your happiness, your team’s dynamic and your product. Whether you work as a solo consultant or within in a large company’s product team, there are constantly competing user needs, business pressures, design timelines, and development constraints. Collaborating with stakeholders isn’t always easy. Empathy-building tools are often used in user research but most of us don’t turn this same open ear toward our own team. By using some simple practices to create empathy for others, you can improve communication with your collaborators. With better communication comes better decision making and better products.
Presenters
Kyra Edeker is a user researcher and experience designer who has worked in technology for 16 years. With a prior incarnation as a front-end developer, she has filled many roles while creating products. She has always found joy in taking the initial chaotic soup of requirements, user data and expectations and distilling it with a goal in mind: to create elegant interfaces and services that makes users' lives better. Kyra has worked with large companies including PayPal, Motorola, Charles Schwab, and Microsoft, as well as startups, non-profits and universities. In all of them she has found that the bedrock tools of user research can improve teams' collaboration.
Kyra co-founded IxDA Austin and has spoken at design community events in Berlin, Germany and Austin, Texas.
Saturday, March 10
