Fault lines of user experience: the intersection of business and design.

One of the central challenges of the User Experience discipline has always been how early in the development cycle it can exert any degree of influence. The challenge that our field is facing today more pronounced than ever is how to influence the decision makers that give directions guiding individual product development. And vice versa, this early decision making process can benefit from user experience approaches that help ground its direction in user research, and inform its decisions creatively through concepts and design thinking -- see for example the concept of Business Design™ (as taught by the Rotman school of management, with similar approaches being the foundation of successes such as design consultancies like IDEO). The goal of the panel will be to draw together a community of experts and interested audience members in this topic and initiate a discourse on its key issues and opportunities.