UX/Design

P1. Track Keynote: Hear how Harvard Business Review and WGBH have Transformed Digital Engagement

Engaging customers and online audiences requires the right mix of technology, content, and tools, orchestrated in a way that leverages deep customer knowledge to deliver the right content at the right time in the right fashion. That’s a tall order, yet it is a “do or die” imperative for organizations that use content to make a living. In this session, you’ll learn how to transform and optimize customer digital engagement from presentations by two leading-edge organizations that are paving the way to the future using a blend of customer-centric design, dynamic and targeted content, big data and analytics, agile technologies and processes, and a vision for the future. These presentations will inspire you to kick-start your own digital engagement transformation initiatives!

You'll also meet the HBR.org development team: Daigo Fujiwara, Kevin Davis, Matt Wagner, Fred Lalande, and Ismail Ozyigit.

E4. Ways to Increase Reach and Collaboration

Sveta Kouznetsova: 8:30 – 9:00, Accessible Content: Quality Captioning and Transcription as Universal Design
To attract a wider audience, you need to make your aural information - audio, video, events - accessible via quality captioning and transcription. It is not necessarily for those with hearing difficulties. It also helps foreign language speakers, remedial readers, individuals with learning disabilities, those in noisy or quiet environments, and many more. Just being able to hear is not enough. Businesses would also benefit from captioning as it improves user experience and SEO of their aural information and attracts more loyal customers. Sveta will dispel common myths about deaf and hard of hearing people, share personal experiences, and discuss case studies of good quality captioning that goes beyond universal access and can be enjoyed by anyone and anywhere regardless of hearing abilities. Come and check the presentation signed by the deaf speaker, voiced by interpreters, and open captioned in real time. Let’s think outside of the ears! 

Donald DePalma: 9:00 – 9:30, Can't Read, Won't Buy: Why Language Matters on Global Websites
If you read English natively, you have enjoyed the best of the web since its creation. Content in this language has dominated the medium for nearly two decades while companies have catered to English-speaking markets and the enormous spending they generate. However, many corporations realize that billions of people don’t read English at all or well enough to make buying decisions, so they’re increasing the amount of information that they offer in other languages. As they reach out to global prospects, the big question is: If they localize their websites, will more buyers come? If they translate product literature, will they sell more? How much will localization help them grow? Common Sense Advisory surveyed consumers in 10 non-English-speaking countries to test the hypothesis that companies can increase their sales by localizing their products and websites. In this presentation, Dr. DePalma summarizes the results of this 2014 survey, analyzes the linguistic preferences of consumers, and discusses the impact on their online behavior.

C8. Responsive Design Practices and Options

Responsive design is trickier than you might think. Evolving web standards, multiple mobile operating systems and development frameworks, and rapidly proliferating types of devices with unpredictable display characteristics, processing capabilities, and features all conspire to force tradeoffs, and mean ongoing development and maintenance. This session looks at a number of the constraints, including performance issues, reliability of user agent detection, and utility of available device information.