Silvia is lead experience designer, founder and chief executive at the Swiss based Institute of Software-Ergonomics and Usability in Zurich, a leading Swiss UX research and usability consultancy. She is also the current President of the Usability Professionals´ Association – an international organization present in the regions Asia, Europe, North America, Latin America and MEAOS — and was the founding President of the Swiss UPA chapter. She is a member of the AMC SIGCHI, STC and iXDA.

As a strategic experience designer Silvia helped drive many strategic projects in areas like Automotive, B2B / B2C, E-Learning, Energy Services, ERP Systems, Financial Services, OCR Forms, Online Shops / E-Commerce, Pharmaceutics, Telecommunication & Tourism.

Silvia originally graduated in psychology, and now works since 17 years in the field as a usability specialist and experience designer. She has done international usability and UX ground work for clients like: BMW, Comparis.ch, Credit Suisse, Roche Disetronic, Novartis, Endress & Hauser, Eurotax Glass, Ex-Libris, Fujitsu Siemens, Julius Bär, Leica Geosystems, Mettler Toledo, Migrosbank, Phonak, Rega, Sunrise, Swiss Casinos, Techem, T-Mobile, UBS.

Following her original academic route Silvia is also a lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences in Switzerland where she teaches since many years usability and interaction design. Silvia was a ACM SIGCHI Student Design Judge (2007/08) and UPA International Student Design Competition Judge (2009/10).

More than anything else, Silvia is a welcoming, inspiring and very visionary person who lived, worked and visited all continents during her career. She feels home in Asia as much as she does in the US or Switzerland where she was born and currently lives.

Telecom Experience Design — it’s all about meaning!

Our profession has drastically changed over the last twenty years. Were we originally hired to test the usability of a product or a service; we are now hired to ensure the best possible experience design. A recent comparative Eyetracking study covering the three major telecom providers in Switzerland suggests that emotional design is more important than site structure when it comes to subjective user satisfaction. However, the study results also suggest that users prefer a good call centre experience over a website which is packed with extensive amounts of information.

In this presentation, Silvia Zimmermann, President UPA International, will highlight some key factors of good Experience Design for Telecom websites and compare them with original usability test and design approaches in our field. She will talk about the importance of meaning and context and will share her strategies for creating good experience designs that work for various users with different knowledge.