UXLx Talks

Effective collaboration remains a challenge for many. How can we make the most of the collective expertise in a team, whilst ensuring that each person can work in a way that enables them to do their best work?
This talk shares both practice-based and research-backed insights on characteristics of high-performing teams, principles for designing an effective team culture and how to create good team habits that stick.

TalkStrategy and the Design of Services

Strategic design is the process of translating game-changing decisions into clear, concise, and complete instructions for execution: the who, why, how, what, when and where of operations. Encoding them into the designs of systems and services allows us to “take more risk while avoiding it.” 
Having it both ways requires dexterity in switching between the abstract and the concrete. It requires thinking and tooling that is at once simple and sophisticated, advanced and primitive. This talk gives two examples of strategic design in practice: within a government agency and a major healthcare initiative.

Designing and delivering great closure experiences for products and business

Face it, all your projects are going to die and you haven’t even designed the end. In a world that is flooded with new apps, services, and products can we really assume that our product won’t be killed off in the evolutionary cycle of the ‘next big thing’? While we blindly focus on creating a user experience for on-boarding and usage we overlook the off-boarding.
Improving the design of endings promises enormous opportunities. Endings improve the accuracy of deleting, reclaiming or removing materials. They raise brand perception through increased communication. Businesses with better endings surprisingly have higher consumer satisfaction. Product creators have an opportunity and responsibility to lead in this emerging field of design. With the world in need of responsible consumer experiences, endings will be a competitive differentiator. 
The talk will reveal how shards of the consumer experience break lacking a coherent ending. It will provide examples of how this can be avoided and the improvements people can make. Techniques and approaches will be shared that help discussion, design and delivery of endings for consumers in your own projects and products.

It’s tempting to create one-size-fits-all onboarding experiences, constrained to a new user’s first day with your product, but onboarding can serve a much broader purpose. Products are constantly evolving. People are constantly learning. And everyone learns at different speeds. 
In this session, Krystal will share how good new-user experiences can be effective throughout the entire customer journey. You’ll see why it’s important to design guidance that addresses a range of product and user situations, and how onboarding makes sense as part of a longer-term approach to in-product education.

Closing Keynote of UXLx Masters in 2021, with Pamela Pavliscak.

Opening Keynote at UXLx Masters in 2021 with Peter Morville.

Design is one of the most powerful social influencers we have in shaping the world, so how can we use design to create a future that works better for all of us? Shifting from linear to circular systems requires a shift in mindset, development of creative tools and the adoption of systemic approaches to how design influences society and the environment.

Disinformation, data bias, dopamine addiction. Is our digital transformation going dystopian? Or has social media simply unmasked society?
Socrates claimed that the printing press was killing words and true understanding, and society now faces a similar debate over ideas and information on digital platforms. Explore technology’s positive impacts in lowering barriers to access and uniting the marginalized. Tackle myths about misinformation and language decay. On the technological horizon, Web3 and decentralization open the path to an inclusive digital future.

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: if you want to collaborate more effectively with your colleagues, show them things that are intentionally unimpressive, unfinished, and incomplete by design. This simple approach can dramatically improve team alignment and engagement--but only if you're willing to work through the uncertainty and discomfort of giving it a try!
This talk provides real-world examples and actionable guidance for designers, researchers, product managers, and anybody else working on a cross-functional team.

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, and escape burning buildings. Apply their techniques to your work in any field to create clear, intuitive experiences that effectively guide the behavior of your users, no matter their state of mind.
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