Compelling Curiosity: Ways to Intrigue, Excite and Engage

Before our products or services can inform, entertain, challenge, or satisfy, they must first engage. Curiosity is a powerful way to engage. This talk will explore the power that curiosity brings to user experience.

Key takeaways:

• Get a primer on the basics of curiosity
• Discover a framework for creating moments of curiosity in your products or services
• See examples of curiosity in the customer experience and its impact

Speaker bio:

Cassini Nazir is a designer of conversations, curricula, and interfaces.

He is a Program Director and Clinical Associate Professor in New College at the University of North Texas where he teaches classes in design thinking and interaction design.

In spring 2020, he was Designer-in-Residence for the SMU Masters in Design and Innovation (MADI) program.

Prior to joining UNT, Cassini taught at The University of Texas at Dallas, where he directed two research labs. He was founding director of the ATEC Usability Lab, which fosters collaborative research with community partners and offers experiential learning to students. He was also Director of Design for the ArtSciLab, a transdisciplinary research lab helping the arts, science, and technology communities by pursuing initiatives of societal urgency and cultural timeliness.

His academic projects include collaborations with art historians, biochemists, brain scientists, futurists, materials scientists, new media artists, and a university press. He has worked with industry partners such as Intuit, Toyota, Sabre, DFW Airport, and projekt202.

His current research explores how curiosity can be meaningfully infused into design processes. Because curiosity is also linguistically rooted in notions of care, he explores ways that designers can extend care to those for whom they build as well as that which they choose to build.