UXLx Talks

Sharing work with your cross-functional colleagues can be a source of major stress and anxiety. How are people who can't do your work supposed to understand your work? What if they think you're bad at your job? Or, even worse, what if they ask you to make changes that are ill-advised or impossible? In this talk, product leader and author Matt LeMay proposes a powerful yet counterintuitive approach...

Stress changes the human brain, enhancing some abilities and degrading others. In some of the most dangerous industries, creators of life-saving products have discovered how to leverage brain science and smart design to harness good instincts while reducing panic and aggression. They use human-centered design to help their users land airplanes, avoid car crashes, resuscitate heart attack victims,...

One of the best books on user experience design is Dale Carnegie’s 1936 How to Win Friends and Influence People. No, really. This classic manual on human relations is more relevant than ever as human-computer interaction increasingly mimics human-to-human interaction. (Consider: conversational design, chatbots, voice interfaces, AI assistants, etc.) In this session, you'll learn how to craft frien...

Designers are in-demand more than ever and we need to be creative in how we solve our hiring challenges. Learn how Wendy built entry level design programs with Amazon's UX Apprenticeship, Publicis' Early Careers, and at early stage startups – and how you can build the next generation of design talent at your company.

As the second year of the pandemic began, Christian Crumlish started working with the Office of Innovation in the State of California's Government Operations agency as a product manager on the state's Covid response website (COVID19.CA.GOV). Today, more than one year later, Christian is now lead PM for the state's Covid site, along with Cannabis.ca.gov, digital.ca.gov, and upcoming projects. Meanw...

The stories we tell the world about our products and services are polished and clear. We invest in these stories, hire shiny agencies and experts to craft compelling messages to inspire our audiences to respond as we hope. The results are undeniable—higher sales, greater connection, better success—so why are the stories we tell each other internally so lousy? Why aren’t we investing time and effor...

Notes extend our minds. They offload our memories and allow us to think through complex issues. People have amplified their cognition using notes for a long time. But something is new: the hyperlink. Mindfully linked notes create networks that extend our minds in powerful new ways. This presentation offers an overview of current note-taking practices and technologies and shows how a bit of informa...

What exactly does "working in the office" mean in a pandemic reality world? There are lots of opportunities to reframe collaboration, teaming and leadership to yield the best innovation and meaningful work.  The place to start is by applying Natalie Nixon's 3i Creativity™ framework: inquiry, improvisation and intuition.  In this talk, Natalie shares examples and tactical methods to boost emerging...

Design leaders have evolved from being responsible for executing design concepts to having a crucial role in driving change across organizations. This is welcome progress, but with greater responsibility comes new challenges, especially when it comes to championing change in organizations likely to resist it. As design-driven changemakers have risen in the ranks of business, they’ve “learned on th...

Design teams and organizations are confronting rarely-seen degrees of turbulence, unpredictability, ambiguity, and complexity today. Generational trends and macro-economic forces are creating a pressure-cooker for business and design leaders where every decision can seemingly save or sink the company.  But there are techniques and approaches design leaders can deploy consistently with their busine...

Most people know about AI through movies and TV shows. This one has an unblinking, red eye. That one crushes human skulls under its metal—and humanoid—foot. But how does the AI seen on screen match up with the science of AI? How does what you’ve seen color the way you think about it? How optimistic you are? What you think should be done, and how you would vote on AI policy? Join Chris Noessel, kee...

AI-enabled systems that are responsible and human-centered, will be powerful partners to humans in the very near future. UX research (UXR) is necessary to create systems that people are willing to be responsible for. This talk describes the UXR skills and methods that are needed for proper data identification and preparation, bias identification, prevention of harm, human-machine interaction desig...

New tools can help you be more strategic about the impact your can make in your career, projects, and organizations. Nearly everyone wants to make a positive contribution to the world but traditional UX tools haven’t made this particularly easy nor empowered UX professionals to participate at a strategic level. I’ll explain some of the new tools that can help you leverage your skills to accomplish...

You’ve been there before. You thought you could trust someone with a secret. You thought it would be safe, but now somehow everyone seems to know. Or maybe they didn’t share it, but the way they used it felt manipulative. Doesn’t feel fair. But now that it’s out there, do you even have control anymore? Ok. Now imagine that person was your supermarket. Or your bank. Or your boss. In this talk, Nore...

Designers have been sensing a mismatch between their tools and methods and the needs of a world that operates at scale. This mismatch often results in unintended consequences, as well as potentially harmful outcomes. To mitigate, designers need to take on a systems thinking mindset. I'll introduce you to why this is important, and how design thinking and systems thinking can work hand in hand.

Here is a scenario - does this resonate? You conduct data gathering in a research study. As the researcher, you place heavy emphasis on how to ask the “right question”. Even after careful scrutiny of your questions, in your interactions with participants, you get shallow answers. This results in lots of chatter afterward about the participant being “good” or “bad”. Let’s think about the details he...

If you feel like you’re swimming upstream with your design system, it’s likely the result of a cultural problem—not a technical one. It may be time for you to look at your design system from a different perspective. In this session, Ben Callahan will show you how design systems and company culture are inextricably linked. We'll examine how a deeper understanding of each is necessary to get you whe...

s user experience a creative expression? We typically think of creativity as an external force that we don’t control or an artistic talent that we don’t have. The reality is that creativity is a procedural, programmable characteristic of problem solving. Which makes creativity a skill, one we not only practice daily in UX, but one we can improve. And Creative Boot Camp author Stefan Mumaw is going...

Here's the deal: Average ideas for average people wins the race to be… average. Innovation isn't magic; it's predictable and repeatable if you know where to find it. Treating accessibility as an extreme use case (not an edge case) generates new valuable products — both digital and physical.  We'll see how accessible first design is not just the right approach for innovative UX outcomes— it's the s...