Part 1: Webinar

23rd February - 9:30-11:00am

Audiences will have the opportunity to be inspired by a panel of high profile speakers of industry and academic leaders who will provide insights about technologies, innovations and funding opportunities available in Greater Manchester.

Part 2: Virtual Innovation Lab (invite only)

Through expert facilitation, the Virtual Innovation Lab will invite participants to co-create real-world innovative solutions to solve key challenges for a more inclusive. diverse and human-centred future. Date and time to be confirmed with participating organisations.

Why The Future of Human Experiences and Human-Centred Design?

The current pandemic disrupted our day-to-day way of living and many businesses had to redesign their services overnight, taking a human-centric approach to finding new ways of doing things.

Although the approach has been established for some time, Human-Centred Design (HCD) implementation has been accelerated hugely as a result of the pandemic and is steadily becoming the industry standard for (re)designing services to best suit us(-ers) and make our lives easier to navigate.

As the business world responds to the challenges of the pandemic, the organisations that best adopt HCD are those that will succeed. It’s already evident that organisations who apply Human-Centric Design have 32% higher revenue than traditional organisations (McKinsey), outperform the S&P 500 by 211% (Design Management Institute) and can cut costs by $20.6 million by accelerating projects (IBM).

HCD, and design thinking, is considered the best form of practice for business and product innovation that can be applied to both physical and digital systems and services. It’s a process that starts with building a deep empathy for the audience it’s being designed for, to then generate and filter ideas, build prototypes, have feedback loops and eventually put new design-led solutions that suit customer needs out in the world.

Although it might sound like an abstract concept, HCD can lead the transformation of a business. It can be used to shape experiences and in doing so improve employee engagement, customer satisfaction and sales. Design thinking can be applied in every type of service or product, has the capacity to improve physical or digital services `and can transform any industry and type of organisation from government services and eCommerce, to finance, health and education to name but a few.

IBM is one of the industry leaders that embarked on a journey to build a sustainable culture of human-centred outcomes in 2013. A practical example solution of implementing such methodologies comes from the finance cyber security space. After noticing cyber experts within different financial services firms were working in isolation from one another, their HCD team got to know the users and created something they never knew they needed – a secure, virtual space and community to share insights and data to boost knowledge and productivity.

In our fourth webinar, we will be exploring these methodologies in more depth, inviting experts in the field to share experiences and toolkits, and empower a critical discussion on the importance of a human-centric approach when (re)designing products, services, policies.

If you are a large organisation, public body or non-profit we want to hear from you; come forward and bring the biggest challenge you have related to the theme. We are here to support you identify and shape solutions.

Check out a PDF which provides an overview of the Innovate Manchester programme for Large Organisations, and for SMEs, explains what a challenge is and what previous attendees said about our webinars.

Speakers

The event will be chaired by Manchester's globally renowned entrepreneur Vikas Shah MBE.

Keynote

• Dr Caroline Jay - Head of Research in the School of Engineering and the Digital Futures Human-Centred Design Lead at the University of Manchester

Panelists

• Vimla Appadoo - Head of Experience Culture Shift and Co-Founder at HoneyBadger
• Alex Nelson - UX Principal, BBC R&D Future Experiences
• Phillipa Nazari - Assistant Director Information Governance and Data Protection Officer, Greater Manchester Combined Authority

Agenda

9.30 - FutureEverything - Intro to Innovate Manchester and Innovation Lab process

9:35 - Intro from the Chair

9.40 - Keynote presentation

9.55 - Thought Provocations

10.10 - Panel Discussion (40 min + 10 Q&A)

11.00 - Event ends

About Innovate Manchester

Innovate Manchester is an ambitious new events programme for Greater Manchester. The events are designed to bring together large organisations, SMEs, the public sector and academia to collaborate on new innovative ideas.

Through expert facilitation webinars and virtual Innovation labs, participants are invited to co-create innovative solutions towards a more sustainable future for all, responding to themes ranging from sustainability and industry 4.0 to data ethics and Human-Centric design.

Businesses looking to access specialist support can visit www.businessgrowthhub.com for more information about the organisation’s extensive range of services.

Innovate Manchester and other GC Business Growth Hub projects are part-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) as part of the GM Business Growth Hub project designed to help ambitious SME businesses achieve growth and increase employment in Greater Manchester. The Hub is also supported by the Greater Manchester Combined Authority and Greater Manchester local authorities.

Innovate Manchester is initiated in partnership with MIDAS and curated by FutureEverything