USID Conference was organised by the USID Foundation, focusing on research and emerging trends in the fields of innovation, design and user experience. With participants from industry and academics, the event offered a variety of sessions, top-notch speakers in the industry and great networking opportunities. It also had workshops that provided interactive sessions, role-plays and games. Texavi team took active part in these sessions and also contested in the competitions, clinching a few awards too. Visit www.facebook.com/texavi for all the interesting photos of USID Conference.

What was USID about

The conference spread over 3-days, was a fantastic platform for practicing professionals and research scholars alike. It gave them opportunities to understand the latest research happening in the customer experience, design and product innovation areas around the world. Special emphasis was laid on the developing world, focusing on grass-root level innovation in rural areas by companies such as Microsoft, Samsung and Philips. Research papers on emerging areas and cutting-edge technologies were presented by academic and industry researchers.

What's special at USID Conference

USID had a blend of talks, paper presentations, panel discussions and interactive workshops. Eminent speakers at the conference gave motivating and insightful talks. Bill Buxton from Microsoft Research gave an interesting keynote speech on the interaction design patterns and what we can learn from the user research. Experts from large organisations and also top universities presented their views on the emerging areas of user experience and product development. The keynote talks and the closing ceremony with Indian traditional dances was a fitting finale to the conference.

Texavi's participation at USID

Intuit conducted the innovation workshop at the USID conference. Texavi team actively participated in this workshop, which focused on the practical aspects of the Customer-focused product engineering process. Referred to as Designing for Delight (D4D) process, this approach is practical and efficient in unearthing the needs of the users. At the end of the workshop, participants were asked to present their projects. Texavi team gave a talk on the approach, rationale, activities and deliverables with supporting case studies. Texavi won the award for Best Articulated Presentation and also too home the accolades of the audience.

Key Takeaways from USID

The interesting talks and interactive workshops at the conference offered an insight into researching the customers and users' needs. Participants learnt the importance of design thinking, and reaching out to the customers at the bottom of the pyramid. Also, some of the other takeaways include the importance of understanding culture in the product development, and the aspect of acting local but impacting globally. The 'Designing for Delight' (D4D) approach emphasised on involving users throughout the product development process.