DRS2020 Conversation: What Creative Challenges Are Posed By Commercial UX Design Practice? August 12, 2020

What Creative Challenges Are Posed By Commercial UX Design Practice?

This online conversation facilitated by Dr. Bronwin Patrickson and Dr. Helen Davies was held as part of the 2020 Design Research Society Virtual International Conference, August 11 - 14, originally scheduled to be held at Brisbane, Australia.

Conversation Outline
Aim: To revisit historic debates regarding the definition of UX Design Practice, and challenge, or workshop those definitions by exploring new collaborative methodologies that are both creative and audience focused.
Approach: This discussion is grounded in the practical example of a current design research challenge to reinvent traditional media favourites for new and emerging extended reality applications.  That this project is a publicly funded (UKRI), collaboration between University researchers and Industry practitioners implicates some of the issues regarding the conceptualisation of UX Design as both a creative and commercial practice.
Inspired by this example, participants will be introduced to a range of creative UX design approaches, then invited to devise and share potential responses to the challenge of immersive media design.  During the course of the conversation participants will also conduct a mini-network analysis of the creative influences at play in such an exercise. 
Takeaways: Participants will be introduced to a range of creative UX practices, as well as the particular challenges of immersive and augmented reality media design.  The discussion enables participants to develop more nuanced ways to describe, analyse and evaluate UX Design practice and audience research being developed within a University/Industry collaboration.