UXLx Talks

Designing for AI requires new considerations and new ways of thinking. We must focus our design talents on a new type of relationship with machines—one that is far more dynamic than ever before. What should these relationships look like? How might we take an ethical approach to create the best experiences with AI? And what role does design thinking have in helping us design for AI?

elationships with internal stakeholders are often the key to planning, creating, and maintaining strategic content that gets results. Being able to have productive conversations, even when the topic is tricky, is a skill every content professional can and should develop.
From having to tell a stakeholder their idea isn’t on-strategy, to critiquing a non-writer’s writing, to approaching a frank conversation about content that is offensive or insensitive, we’ll walk through an approach to planning for and facilitating tough talks with stakeholders.
Using real-world examples from 20 years in the fields of marketing, communications, content strategy, and user experience spanning a wide variety of industries and organizations, this session will give you a framework to:

• Determine whether a conversation is needed.
• Apply methods we practice with content to plan the conversation.
• Facilitate challenging conversations productively.

Join me on a fast and furious tour of all the ways we screw up helping users do what they came to do. We’ll see exhibits from the following categories of UI horrors:

• Sticky bandage
• Vow of silence
• Overeager assistant
• The only customer is you

and my personal least-favourite

• To you this is a tool to get work done, to me this is art

Do you want fewer leaky funnels, better user created data, and to be able to meet the needs of different user groups through one interface? We’ll then take a look at how to achieve this by building better instructions, fallbacks and reroutes into products and tools. All through the power of simple, effective, well-placed sentences.

In the current political climate, it seems like we’ve all but given up on productive, respectful discourse. However, there are simple design and content design choices we can make that encourage collaboration over conflict, even when dealing with hot-button issues.
In this session we’ll look at real-world examples of how the way we phrase a question or design an interaction can have a huge impact on the quality of conversation, and the three rules they share.

Like most aspects of product and development, research looks very different at startups compared to enterprise businesses. But how does the transition actually happen? How do you know when it is time to move from one research approach to another?
This presentation will address how to determine which research practices best fit your organization and what you need to do to level up your research when the time is right.
Learn how to anticipate these process changes and become an effective research powerhouse on the other side.

Design systems come with promises. Sometimes, though, they don't deliver. Our assumptions and expectations about such systems are partly to blame. But there is hope! By recognising design systems for what they are, we can use them more effectively.

Most AI projects fail. Some fail quietly before launch; some fail spectacularly publicly, becoming another media horror story about AI. Why does this happen? Because the current process for designing AI products and services is broken, especially when it comes to product strategy—what projects to pursue. But a new approach to designing AI is possible, one that instills more cooperation between designers, PMs, data scientists, and engineers.This talk walks through a new method that has been developed over many years at Carnegie Mellon University's Human-Computer Interaction Institute. This method uses elements of user-centered design and technology capabilities to find situations where moderate technical performance, high value, and low risk combine to make successful AI projects.This talk looks specifically about not just how, but also where and when AI should be deployed—and why most companies are doing AI wrong.

The way organizations are approaching product development and emerging technologies are constantly changing. At the same time our practice as designers is evolving with new tools, techniques, and approaches, surfacing at a pace that can be hard to keep up with.

In the ever-evolving world of technology and user needs, staying ahead to craft superior user experiences is the challenge of our time for UX designers. The question isn't just how to meet the demands of today but how to remain flexible for the unknowns of tomorrow.
Understanding the significant impact of the external environment on user experiences, coupled with the dynamic nature of user evolution, lies at the heart of forward-thinking design. But how exactly can we leverage these behavioural insights for more impactful experiences?

Individuals and organizations all over the world are experimenting with design thinking as a methodology for helping them create innovative user experiences. In this presentation, IDEO Partner Tom Kelley will describe the opportunity to go beyond understanding the toolset of design thinking and embrace a mindset of creative confidence. Drawing on his research from the New York Times bestseller this topic, Tom will highlight strategies for nurturing continuous innovation, such as:

Throughout his presentation, Tom will illustrate his ideas using real-life examples from thirty years of working in the field of design and innovation.