IDC 2021:
SCAD x Lextant Keynote

Partnering to Create a Certification in Upfront Design & User Experience Research
Category: User Experience Research, Design Research, Contextual Inquiry, Ethnography, Human-Centered Design

On September 22, 2021, I got the opportunity to be a student speaker at the IDC 2021: IDSA Education Symposium. I spoke about the partnership between Savannah College of Art and Design and Lextant - The Human Experience Firm, to create a certification in front-end design and user-experience research.

During this hour long session, I mentioned from a student perspective about how it benefited the students, in the hope to encourage more collaboration between design educators and design practitioners.

The Lextant certification partnership with SCAD was an incredible experience because it gave students an idea on what the Design Research industry is like, and how they approach problems and end up understanding their users.

The learning that Design Research transforms user behaviour, their needs and desires into innovative and actionable insights was something that stuck with me, because it is through Design Research that one can understand the ‘Ideal Experience’ of users.

Being a Design for Sustainability student at SCAD, I believe Design Research has an important role to play, since I want to integrate research with design to create better solutions to deal with the current challenges. Simply designing for people is not enough as we are not the only inhabitants of the earth. I want to design not just for people, but for the planet too, and I strongly believe Design Research will help me get to where I want to be.

A big thank you to International Design Conference for providing this wonderful opportunity!

View full video here.