Aug Refresh Meetup 08/31: Sean Rankin

Posted by Gene

August 16, 2011

Why Enterprise Software Sucks

User Experience & Enterprise Software

By: Sean Rankin

Come out August 31st at 6:00 PM @ IT-Ology – 1301 Gervais Street

If you’re a designer or developer working at one of the fancy-pants design studios around town, this talk is going to make you cringe and want to drive sharp objects under your fingernails.

Increasingly, companies that build enterprise tools are trying to insert experience design into their development process. For practitioners, that spells opportunity – but it’s important to note that this opportunity comes with many challenges. This session will focus on the ins-and-outs of user experience design in the feature-rich, overly-complex, and head-spinning world of enterprise software; The software that runs businesses.

Selling your ideas in a culture based on technology rather than design can be tough. Sean will offer some background on what to expect if you decide work with these guys, as well as some ways to pitch the concept that the UX discipline is a valuable asset that should have the proverbial “seat at the table”.

As a bonus, you’ll be treated to a carefully curated Enterprise Software Wall of Shame that he only brings out on special occasions.

Sean Rankin

User Experience Designer
Duck Creek Technologies (Now: Accenture)
sean [at] internetwonderboy [dot] com
Twitter: @srankin

Sean’s Bio

Sean Rankin is one of those relics that witnessed the dot-com bust and lived to tell. His story starts back in 1994, when he wandered into a computer lab at USC to check out this new thing they were calling the “world-wide web”. Thankfully, that encounter derailed a future career in law enforcement, and our community is a safer place.

Over the last ten years, Sean has focused his career around software design in the insurance and financial services industries. He currently spends his days leading the user experience efforts at Duck Creek Technologies, a provider of enterprise solutions for the insurance industry. When asked by the technology folks about what he does for a living, he proudly replies “my job is to make technology easy and fun to use”.

In his spare time, Sean can be found running downtown with his dog Isabel, freaking-out about first-time parenthood, and cramming for one of his b-school exams.