UXLx Talks

We need a new kind of designer, focused on problems of scale and the algorithms that can help - or exacerbate - matters.  Historically, designers have improved the world through the thoughtful design of products and experiences. But these delightful moments mean little if we fail to design for the complex, dynamic, and increasingly tech-driven systems in which we now live. As designers, we need to...

In our jobs and our design projects we work with ideas all day long - but what do we really know about how ideas work? This entertaining and provocative talk will teach you timeless patterns and useful insights pulled from the history of great projects from the past, ones that can help you be more productive and raise the quality of the ideas you work with. From the surprising origins of the Eiffe...

How we think about the world affects what we do. The imaginaries we have—the stories we tell ourselves and each other, the language and framings and metaphors we use, the associations and mental imagery that come to mind when we think about concepts—make a difference to the way we approach the issues that affect us, from the personal decisions of everyday life right up to global challenges such as...

t’s been 20+ years since the advent of IA, isn’t it about time we had more tools for our work? Enter IA Lenses, a new tool to help IAs evaluate and interrogate their concepts by looking at them from unique perspectives. Information architecture remains the hardest part of the design process because it deals with abstractions. Even if you’re designing a navigation system, that part of the UI reveal...

So many designers go into UX to make the world better. While making delightful commercial products can fulfill this ambition, there’s also an important role for UX in the work of public institutions. In this inspiring talk, Cyd will discuss how UX practitioners can partner with public servants to shape institutional experiences that honor people’s time and human dignity. She will talk about the be...

Technology has allowed services to have a more pervasive role in people's lives, influencing their everyday behaviors. And we are swimming in a sea of academic insights on how people make decisions and what levers influence their behavior. But what does it mean to apply these insights practically in the design of our products and services? How do we leverage new behavior change methods into our ex...

When you think of an organization with a terrible user experience, what comes to mind? Is it their inconsistent styling and awkward onboarding? Or is it their terrible customer support, buggy software, and conflicted revenue model? We claim the grandiose label of “user experience” designers, but most of what makes a user experience good or bad has nothing to do with pixels, content, or CSS. It may...

The UXLX audience knows the power and the barriers of language—speaking the same language as someone else provides a deep and meaningful connection. It lets you build empathy, share insights, and collaborate productively. Designers need to understand the language of business for the same reasons—we need to learn to speak CEO to be our most effective. Successful designs live in the real world of bu...

UX strategy is the intersection of UX design and business strategy. It’s a series of techniques that help product makers and stakeholders to derisk their product vision before it is released into the marketplace. But what of you aren’t working for some hip tech company but instead at a traditional enterprise with legacy systems, outdated processes and a siloed corporate structure? Using a healthca...

July 6th, 2016 Pokémon Go launches and no one knows what’s about to happen. Weeks later people are swarming over fences, fields, and across cities trying to catch ‘em all. The game heralds the public introduction of augmented reality. The promise of AR seemed endless. A year and a half later, Pokémon Go is still around but it’s lost the luster it once had. Even more, augmented reality has lost ste...

Your project just failed. Well congratulations. If you're not stumbling and messing up from time to time you're not learning. Doing things that make us embarrassed and expose our fallibility can be the best lessons for all of us. If you allow them, these moments of failure and vulnerability are a portal to new knowledge. In this talk we'll look at how teams can use failure to increase their person...

Science is a dialogue with nature. In the United States as well as in much of Europe, science has lost value in the public mind in recent years. Climate change denial is a leading force in this shift. In past years I have been extremely hopeful that humanity would engage in slowing or stopping climate change. But many of our efforts have been thwarted, not only by the growth of nationalism, but al...

Design is increasingly gaining influence in the companies we work in and the world at large, which means our actions as designers have an increasing influence on shaping the world around us. All of our individual choices, collectively form our manufactured world. Do you know where the choices you are making are leading, not just on the scale of your project, but on a larger scale? Are you making c...

“Thud” is the sound a bowling ball makes when dropped onto damp earth. But it’s also the sound that most of our software makes when it hits the market. We’re great at celebrating our wild successes, and finding people to blame for catastrophic failures. This talk is about how we spend most of our work trying to figure out which we have on our hands: a success or a failure. Jeff will share stories...

Technology is inundating us with access to more information than ever before. We face decision fatigue on a daily basis and we have to consider, how is all this information benefiting our lives.  To deal with this overwhelm, we see a lot of products giving users more control. Users are given all the information and can filter and sort it to suit them best. However, this creates a lot of work for u...

Experience designers, product makers and marketers could be blamed for being master manipulators. After all, the digital products they create are so much part of our lives they often end up going to bed with us at night and are the first things we wake up with. In this talk, we'll explore how your biology predicts which products will be successful at engaging us and why we should avoid the dark ar...

Every designer has had to justify their designs to a non-designer, yet most lack the ability to convince people they’re right. The ability to effectively articulate your decisions is critical to the success of a project, because the most articulate person usually wins. In this session, you’ll learn practical tips for talking about your designs to executives, managers, developers, and other designe...

As designers, we optimize for the happy path. The applicant gets the job. The girl gets the boy.  The service works flawlessly. But of course in many product experiences, the typical path is not necessarily a happy one: bad things happen. We are left-swiped. We fail to get off the couch. We send cover letters and applications into the silent void. These moments can leave us with unhappy users who...

The concept of jobs to be done provides a lens for understanding value creation. It’s straightforward principle: people “hire” products to fulfill a need.  For instance, you might hire a new suit to make you look good at a job interview. Or, you hire Facebook to stay in touch with friends. You could also hire a chocolate bar to relieve stress.  Viewing customers in this way – as goal-driven actors...

Among the first principles of UX design, the most sacred tenet can be stated as follows: you are not your user.  User-centricity is a fat thumb on the scale of “doing it right” in our field. To such an extent, that other measures of value and virtue are either subordinated, or precluded from consideration altogether.   The Danish physicist Nils Bohr is reported to have said that while the opposite...

Have you ever dreamed of being a superhero and having superpowers? When Jody was a kid, she wanted the Jedi mind trick. And then to be like Jean Grey from the X-men. Where she would spend hours upon hours just focusing on objects, trying to move them with her mind. With many of the newest technologies just like VR we’re able to do that. In her talk Jody shares mind blowing insights of what the fut...

Five years ago, I sold my suburban home in Silicon Valley and moved to an old farm deep in agricultural country. Everything was new to me, but I was most surprised to discover how the new lessons of farming paralleled the important lessons of interaction design. This talk will give you some useful insight into your work by reflecting on the farmer’s job.

In this talk we’ll look what algorithms are good for, and where they fall down. It’ll discuss what it means to design a service using algorithms and the skills you’ll need to develop and adapt if you’re to thrive in the next era of experience design.

Over the past few years there’s been a push in the product development world to “make products that people love”. A great User Experience is now essential to creating a successful product. While many companies focus on having the best design and the greatest experience, they are still missing the most important step in product development - learning about their customers. With Agile and Lean gaini...

In this presentation we explore some of the fascinating and innovative services that are re-shaping the internet at the hands of consumers in emerging economies. Driven by mobile, the power of personal relationships, and the breakneck pace of globalisation, these services provide a glimpse into the business models, opportunities, and challenges, we will face when growing a truly global web.