Business: Culture Change

Our environment refers to everything around us, including physical, chemical, and other natural forces. People constantly interact with their environment—including interactions between other people, animals, plants, soil, water, air, and other living and inanimate elements. They adapt themselves to the conditions of their environment. Their environment affects their growth and development as a person. What people do—or do not do—and the way we behave in our environment has huge impacts on others, affecting their behavior, body, mind, and heart.

Different fields of knowledge use the word environment differently:

• psychology—Our psychological environment constitutes the impacts of other people, physical things, and places on our psyche.
• electromagnetism—In our electromagnetic environment (EME), radio waves and other electromagnetic radiation and magnetic fields interact.
• astronomy—The galactic environment of our solar system is the larger context in which we live among the stars. Read More

Shifting trends are forcing technology companies to reimagine their value proposition. IBM has chosen to create disruption through design. In embracing the future, the company is essentially invoking its past. Back in 1956, IBM was the first large company to establish a corporate-wide design program. But this time, the company’s goals are more ambitious.

Recently, we interviewed Karel Vredenburg, Director of IBM Design’s worldwide client program and head of IBM Studios in Canada, who told us, “We’ve put everything into this transformation.” The company is investing more than $100 million in becoming design centered. Read More

In this edition of Ask UXmatters, our experts discuss whether they are seeing companies’ business models change from being engineering driven to being design driven. In addition, our experts explore what it means to be a design-driven organization and how all members of a product team can impact a product’s UX design.

While some of our experts believe that we are seeing a shift to design-driven organizations, others on our expert panel think we’re actually observing a very different phenomenon. Several of our panelists encourage UX designers to acknowledge the equally important roles of Engineering, Design, and Business, or Product Management, in designing optimal product user experiences. Read More