UXLx Talks

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 not only your team and company’s goals, but your own, as well—however you define that.

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, Noreen Whysel will discuss a framework for evaluating the relationship that digital technologies have with consumers and the digital harms and dark patterns that, whether we know it or not, violate that relationship. You will come away with an understanding of how to determine that what you are creating is fair, secure and in the user’s control. And that your relationship will be sound, respectful and long lasting.

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 here.
Do you really ever deliver the question *exactly* as it is written? When was the last time you spoke about a topic that you don’t think about all the time, for one hour or longer? Are your thoughts always well-formed?
It’s time to rethink the way we connect with participants when asking them questions.
In this talk, Meena will introduce the concept of an activity-based protocol, one that invites participants to think more deeply about what they want to share, and in a way that allows them to unravel their own thoughts. By applying this approach, it also inherently removes emphasis on the researcher to craft the “right question”. Meena will share examples from the field that encourage participants to share rich answers, while also allowing everyone involved in the research process to have a bit of fun when listening to participant stories.

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 where you want to go, including:

In this session you will learn the importance of cultural alignment so that you can achieve the goals for your design system faster. You will also be able to avoid past pitfalls thanks to a greater recognition of your newfound understanding of the importance culture plays in a systematic design practice.

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 to prove it to you. He’ll not only show you what makes us all creative and what simple changes in our processes can have the greatest effect, he’ll run you through a series of creativity exercises that will prove that a few small creative steps will have you generating ideas in greater quantity and quality.
Stefan will elaborate on the key characteristics of prolific creative output, identifying the obstacles to effective creative training and breaking down ideation into digestible steps, all the while using short, fun creative exercises to illuminate key points about creative practice, philosophy and application.

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 smartest.