UX Australia

Let me ask you this - How certain are you that the product, service, feature that you researched, is delivering positive outcomes for people in the real world? Is it working the way you said it would work? When did you last check? Human-centred design practices enable evidence-led decision making. The assumed outcome of this practice is that we build everyday products and services that enhance peo...

Exploring the aftermath of enforced behaviour change (from Covid-19) on younger people’s habits, identity and behaviour and understanding what it means for the ABC as we deliver audience informed digital experiences. Over the last 2.5 years, people across Australia, and much of the world, endured a period of enforced behaviour change, that radically changed how we lived, socialised and worked. The...

How to gain rich, valuable insights to help you truly understand your customers. You might be comfortable designing based on data, but how rich and robust is that data? In this talk you’ll learn how to conduct meaningful research in a fast, easy and more effective way. It will explore ways to plan and run research, so you can gather unique, valuable and actionable insights. Come along to master th...

Anthropology’s, and by extension Ethnography’s remit is frequently defined as asking the question, 'what does it mean to be human'? But, what if humans were not at the centre of what we do? Solving global issues and promoting systemic change, means changing not just the inputs but also our point of view.

Children are often seen but not heard in the design process. How can you look at them more as co-creators than consumers for your product or service? This talk will help you to understand working with child-centred design mindset in startup or company. As a design for children rights advocate Saloni will explain her own framework as she learnt and unlearnt listening to children’s voices and design...

The good, the bad and the complex: appreciating complexity through frontline UXR During this presentation, I will delve into the challenges I faced while transitioning from researching consumer products to products used by expert users. I will share how the typical research process gave me limited kind of work I could do and how opening up to rethinking research processes helped me see how far res...

When were the concepts behind the double diamond invented? When was the first 'how might we' question asked? When did people start 'brainstorming'? The answers are all in a 30 year period after the end of World War 2, when parallel intellectual movements centred around creating scientific methodologies for creativity and design thrived in America and the UK. Many of the ideas, principles, and desi...

As designer leaders, we want to be able to make wise decisions and we want to draw on wisdom to guide us as we lead our teams and design in organisations. Fortunately we don’t have to wait until we are old and grey to access wisdom; it can be experienced through ways of thinking and acting. In this talk we will explore what wisdom is made up of (according to research )and how we as design leaders...

Lessons learnt from 20 years establishing and scaling Design-led Innovation at a team, organisation and country level.

Many of us have taken for granted the ability of our teams to show up for work with energy, positivity and a willingness to jump into a room with several other humans for days at a time to swarm on a design challenge. This is not true anymore. Leading design teams in the context of ‘the new normal’ (hybrid teams, fully remote, new resilience challenges) requires us to really understand the princip...

We continue to see more and more organisations prioritise employee engagement and strengthening their Employee Value Proposition (EVP). Whilst there is no 'one size fits all' answer when it comes to building and scaling an empowered and engaged team - prioritising people over process is key to growth. Gain insights and a practical approach to apply with your teams in an ever-changing landscape.

Is money the only way to recruit and retain staff? There are more factors than money that an employer can use for both retaining and hiring designers. Using Daniel Pink’s model of mastery, autonomy and purpose, I will go through ways to craft roles and packages that will appeal to the market.

Design hiring is broken. And with The Great Resignation and Remote Jobs Boom, we’re in the most competitive recruiting market of our lifetimes. A radically transparent approach earns designers’ trust, speeds up your hiring cycles, and helps all candidates perform their best

When we think of “users” we often confine their identities to how they’re interacting with our products and services. But how might we understand their mental models of the world and how those behaviors translate into the experiences we deliver? In this session, we’ll explore ethnographic and visual methods for continuous research, the role of language and metaphors in survey design, and actionabl...

Traditional leadership styles are centred on Eurocentric concepts of authority figures influencing and guiding through the organisation to achieve their ends. SEVA leadership challenges this concept to create a new paradigm that integrates concepts of communal wellbeing, equality, and inclusiveness through service. Based on the Sikh concept of ‘Seva’ or ‘Sewa’,, there are three facets to SEVA Lead...

One of the biggest challenges for design leaders today, is creating cultures of trust & authenticity that allows people to thrive. Feelings are the most under-utilised tool we all have to shape culture. Carolyn will explore through her own experiences, how acknowledging and utilising feelings has guided her & the team at Creatable to create more impactful experiences for our people and our users.

How do we set our future design leaders up for success now and not leave until they become a design leader? Our talk will share how our trials and tribulations of challenging the norm of a leadership team, to ensure we stay true to our principles and break the mold for inclusion.

Designing practices for hybrid and flexible teams requires a very clear understanding of what must be consistent and what can be flexible. In this presentation I will draw on some specific case studies and stories from my time as both a researcher and consultant in business process design and work practice. As researchers we talk about a desire to make our findings relevant to industry and as cons...

In a complex and uncertain world, businesses have focused on the importance of 'telling a good story' to cut through the noise. But how can designers use storytelling to inform their day-to-day work? Not just when crafting presentations or communicating to clients, but within the DNA of our digital products. In this talk, we'll take proven narrative structures and apply them to the new world of we...

Scaling UX Culture. UXA Day 2

Defending design: writing to influence UXA Day 2

Do you squirm in your seat when asked to introduce yourself? Do you find networking awkward and embarrassing? In meetings, do you find yourself keeping quiet even though you have something to say? Does a quiet evening at home with a book sound more attractive to you than an evening socialising with people you’ve never met? If your answer to most of these questions is yes, congratulations: you are...

Death to “best practice”: The journey to cohesive design practice at scale. UXA2022 Day 2

Inclusive design for cognitive disabilities, neurodiversity, and chronic illness. UXA2022 Day 1

UX Australia Day 1 How Enterprise Software Can be Saved by UX Research and Service Design.