Speaking

Optimizing For Fun: Building delightful products at BuzzFeed

UXOK

At BuzzFeed Inc, we work on brands like BuzzFeed News, HuffPost, Complex, and more. We also build things like BuzzFeed Quizzes, Shopping experiences, and Communities. Many of our users come to BuzzFeed.com to kill time and be entertained. By not taking ourselves too seriously, incorporating playfulness into our design, and making flexible systems we’re able to deliver on that promise — fun products all the time. I’ll share: How we balance thoughtfulness and fun, how we incorporate delight into our product without distracting users, and how we build flexible systems.

How to design, launch, and iterate news products worth paying for

SRCCON

What can newsrooms learn from the process of launching a product? In this session we’ll use a WTF Just Happened Today as a case study to illustrate an example of launching an MVP product, validating product decisions, and iterating on a product. We’ll define a set of constraints through a group brainstorming session to identify a set of problems to be solved. From there, we’ll do a design brainstorm to think through products that can solve those problems, and create a hypothetical new news product worth paying for.

How can teams build a consistent culture of documentation?

SRCCON

Writing down processes, goals, and workflows is an important part of building healthy, transparent, and collaborative teams. But finding time to write and making sure that people read those documents is a constant challenge. This activity-based brainstorm session will lean into the expertise and experience of attendees to explore methods for building solid documentation practices into a team’s culture.

The intersection of media and technology

flatiron school

A panel about Product and Tech teams in media companies with other Product leaders.

Design Advice for Startups & Entrepreneurs

Stacklist

There's been a large focus on design and the thinking that goes into its processes in the tech industry in the past few years. Companies like Atlassian have gone from 1 designer: 25 engineers in 2012 to 1:9 in 2017. Facebook, Google, and Amazon hired 65 percent more designers for their companies and acquired more than 35 design agencies in 2017.

What's caused this new focus on design? Startups and companies have realized that design is a key differentiator for their products and a source of competitive advantage. But as an early-stage entrepreneur when should you focus on design and how do you budget for this aspect when it comes to building your startup?