Leadership By Design 2023

About Chicago Camps

Learn design leadership from the experts at Leadership by Design 2023.

Leadership By Design 2023 is an online 2-day conference focused on all aspects of design leadership.

On Thursday & Friday, September 14th & 15th, from where ever you are starting at 10a CDT. We’ll have 2 days of stellar keynotes and focused design leadership presentations with thoughtful Q&A that allow you to gain a lot of insightful learning. In addition, each day has an uplifting interstitial that is sure to be refreshing and reinvigorating after deep content sessions.

We continue to provide a stage with inclusive continuing education that is great for our community. Don’t miss out–join us and expand your User Experience horizons–and don’t worry: we record the sessions so you can revisit them later.

And we have swag! We’re partnering with Nerditees (again!) to bring you this delightfully well-considered t-shirt:

The Thoughtfulness Layer unisex t-shirt

Introducing “The Thoughtfulness Layer” Tee: A Symbol of Mindful Leadership
In a world where leadership is not just about authority but empathy, where guiding others means movingwith intent, and where being deliberate is synonymous with caring, we present to you our exclusive Leadership By Design 2023 t-shirt: “The Thoughtfulness Layer.”

This heather black tee resonates with the philosophy of reflective and conscious leadership. Imprintedwith multiple silver waves across the front, each wave represents the multitude of tasks, decisions, andresponsibilities that a design leader faces. However, it’s the light blue wave, set apart from the rest, thatcatches the eye and symbolizes The Thoughtfulness Layer.

Why light blue? This solitary wave is a tribute to the leader who stands out, not just for their skill but fortheir mindfulness. It’s the gentle reminder that in the midst of chaos, it takes a thoughtful leader tonurture, guide, and uplift those around them.

Hand printed, artisan-style if you will, and infused with the creativity that embodies our theme, this t-shirtis more than a piece of clothing. It’s a conversation starter, an emblem of a belief, and a celebration ofthose who choose to lead with thoughtfulness.

Wear it as a statement, gift it as a gesture, or embrace it as a personal mantra. Let the ThoughtfulnessLayer be a symbol of who you are and the leader you aspire to be.

Order yours today, and be part of the movement that believes in leadership not as a position, but as a purposeful, caring, and thoughtful journey.

Each swag item purchased adds to our pool of “Need 1, Take 1” passes that are available to anyone who has a need–no questions asked.

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Tickets
$15
Early Bird Ticket

Only 20 tickets at this price!

Early Bird for Only $15
$26
General Admission

Only $26! An outstanding bargain!

Join Us for Only $26!
Free
Pay What You Can

Any contribution is appreciated.

Pay What You Can
Free
Need 1, Take 1

For anyone with a need. Please join!

Need 1, Take 1
Speakers
Eytan Mirsky
Eytan Mirsky
Musician, Actor
Eytan Mirsky is a New York City-based singer/songwriter best known for the songs he contributed to the indie films "Happiness," "American Splendor" and "The Tao of Steve."
Design Thinking
Design Thinking
Comic
Design Thinking!
DESIGN THINKING! is a weekly webcomic about being a creative in an increasingly uncreative tech-first world.
Steven Kellert
Steven Kellert
Ukulele Fan, Editor
Steven Kellert is a Chicagoan with a penchant for hitting all the right notes—be it on paper or a ukulele.
Christina Goldschmidt
Christina Goldschmidt
VP, Product Design
Warner Music Group
Christina Goldschmidt is an award-winning design leader who is known for transforming product design teams to work at enterprise scale while fostering cultures that drive both business and social impact.
Karen VanHouten
Karen VanHouten
Senior Director of Product Strategy
Infobeans
A curious skeptic and expert snark, Karen has a deep love for beautiful messes fostered over 20 years of work in UX and product.
Amy Jiménez Márquez
Amy Jiménez Márquez
VP of Experience Design
Zillow
Amy Jiménez Márquez is the owner and Publisher of Boxes and Arrows, devoted to the practice, innovation, and discussion of design—including graphic design, interaction design, information architecture, and the design of business.
Celia Hodent
Celia Hodent
Author, Consultant
Independent
Celia Hodent is an expert in the application of cognitive science and psychology to improve products, systems, services, and video games. She currently leads an independent UX consultancy, working with a wide range of international media and enterprise companies.
Farai Madzima
Farai Madzima
UX Manager
Shopify
Farai Madzima is a UX Manager at Shopify in Ottawa, Canada. He’s an interaction designer and organiser of Pixel Up! meetups and conferences.
Fred Beecher
Fred Beecher
Senior Director, Design Operations
Rocket Mortgage
Fred Beecher has worked in User Experience since 1998. He is an established contributor in the field, having authored the first official Axure training program in 2007 and having written and spoken extensively on prototyping, design process, design education, and UX career development.
Erin 'Folletto" Casali
Erin ‘Folletto’ Casali
Senior Director of Product Design, EMEA
Xero
Erin Casali, known as “Folletto”, is a senior product design director and coach. She has a hybrid background in design, psychology, business and technology — with a people-centered approach.
Tutti Taygerly
Tutti Taygerly
Executive Leadership Coach
Taygerly Labs
Tutti coaches cofounders and tech leaders to embrace their unique leadership style to achieve professional impact and a sustainable company culture.
Low-cost, high-quality events for the User Experience community.
Chicago Camps
Event Producer
Chicago Camps
Chicago Camps, LLC was formed and founded with the intention of bringing high-value, low-cost events to the User Experience community.
Schedule

We'll open the doors a little early and let folks in. Sometimes, we have surprises, sometimes, we play music, sometimes it's a little quiet. Get there a little early to be ready for kick-off!

Morning Wake Up!

Steven Kellert joins us as a refreshing and fun wake up to Leadership By Design 2023, serenading us with his ukulele and a variety of pop hits across many decades and, dare we suggest it: Eras.

Speakers:

Announcements and gratitude, schedule for the day, and general information about the event.

Speakers:

The New Innovation Toolkit

With the magical promise of Design Thinking starting to lose its shine, as Design Leaders how are we to help our teams – and ourselves – solve problems, build products and get to real solutions? There are untapped methods for accessing your subconscious for brainstorming to solve creative problems and business problems that can help you unlock your decision making. Using data to prove that this is a trend sweeping society, this talk will detail practical methods for accessing the subconscious to help make decisions by looking at problems differently and alleviating anxiety and stress around decision making. The surprise twist is that these practices are traditionally considered mystical and not usually used in business: the tarot, breathwork and shamanic journeying.

Christina Goldschmidt

Christina Goldschmidt is an award-winning design leader who is known for transforming product design teams to work at enterprise scale while fostering cultures that drive both business and social impact. Before joining Etsy as VP, Head of Product Design, Christina spent 25 years gaining cross-functional experience driving digital innovation at Fortune 500 companies like Accenture, Morgan Stanley, American Express, Omnicom Media Group, The Discovery Channel and others.

Christina’s expertise extends beyond design into product and tech, helping teams innovate by focusing on the intersection of desirability, viability, and feasibility. With an equal focus on management, her key to helping designers unlock and empower themselves and their careers is a strong foundation in anthropology and customer behavior. As an advocate for mental health, she works to help managers lead from a place of authenticity.

Christina received her MBA from NYU Stern and a B.S. in design from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She is passionate about education and is a leading instructor and guest lecturer at NYU Stern and General Assembly, to name a few. She has also been featured at SXSW, Fortune Magazine, Ecommerce Design Summit, InVision’s Inside Design and HR Transform. Outside of work she loves to focus on craft, be it in millinery, ikebana, cooking or the perfect cocktail.

Speakers:

15 minute break.

Designing serendipity: intentionally crafting our success

The best creative teams often appear, from the outside, to be driven by luck; their success seemingly the result of a series of happy accidents, coincidence, and a few wonderfully creative minds blended together in an “innovation cocktail.” Healthy, sustainable success is anything but accidental.

We’ll explore three layers to reframe the way we think about project and team design. Starting with cycles, the natural rhythm and energies of the individuals on our team, and how building awareness and making the right compromises can create a rhythm that drives the team as a whole. We’ll move beyond the concept of “sprint” to the idea of project-specific cadences, ways to build momentum towards specific milestones while providing ample slack for recovery. And we’ll talk about ceremonies, methods we use the ensure we are keeping our promises to each other and supporting the habits that will make our success feel like luck.

Karen VanHouten

A curious skeptic and expert snark, Karen has a deep love for beautiful messes fostered over 20 years of work in UX and product. Karen currently works as the Senior Director of Product Strategy and Project Delivery at Infobeans, where she likes to say she helps teams make better mistakes. She is passionate about intentionally designed work environments, and focuses on inclusion, collaboration, and team health as the most consistent drivers for success. She also swears a lot, loves all things late 80s/early 90s pop culture, and can show you where she lives on her hand.

For more, keep up with Karen at designinginward.com or on Twitter/Bluesky as @designinginward.

Speakers:

15 minute break.

Design Thinking will be here to talk about what it means to make a comic, where the inspiration comes from, and how many UX practices go into making something so funny look so easy.

Speakers:

15 minute break.

Picking up the pieces of a toxic work environment

Toxicity in the workplace didn’t start with any of the crises that have happened since early 2020. People have been dealing with work-induced trauma for a long time. To repair it, we need to consider where it comes from, how to heal it, and how to prevent it.

At a time when some companies are forcing in-office or hybrid work on a population who became comfortable with the psychological and physical safety that comes with working from home, learning how to help our team members heal from past trauma and move forward is even more important.

Learn how to recognize signs of trauma, and identify toxicity in your company, in others, and most importantly, in yourselves. And then identify how to recognize it, reverse it, and work to heal the teams affected by it.

Amy Jiménez Márquez

Amy Jiménez Márquez is the owner and Publisher of Boxes and Arrows, devoted to the practice, innovation, and discussion of design—including graphic design, interaction design, information architecture, and the design of business.

She is also the VP of Experience Design at Zillow. Previously, she was the UX Design Manager for Alexa Adaptive Personality Experience at Amazon. With a Master’s degree in Directing, Amy has been performing improvisational comedy for over 20 years, and enjoys applying improv collaboration techniques to her daily work. She has been leading cross-disciplinary design teams for the past 5+ years, including information architects, conversational designers, UX designers, UX researchers, and VUI designers.

For more, keep up with Amy at amymarquez.com or on Twitter as @amymarquez.

Speakers:

15 minute break

The Only One of Your Kind in the Room: Perils and Opportunities

We are solving the challenges of building and maintaining diverse teams. Slowly. As a result we find people from minority groups being the only ones of their kind in a team, project, or company. For some this is an opportunity to stand out and excel. Yet for others, particularly from under-represented minorities, it is a position of vulnerability. Being “one of a kind” stops them from bringing their whole authentic selves to work.

“I’m the only __ person here, if I say it, they won’t understand.” 
“If I say the wrong thing will they think it’s because I’m a __ person.” 
“They only invited me because I’m a __ person.”

In this talk, Farai traces his career journey from contributor to lead, during most of which he was the only one of his kind in the room. He also shares insights from interviews he’s conducted with tech contributors and leaders around the world. The result is a session filled with tactics that can leaders can use immediately to better understand, mentor, and sponsor the “one of a kind” folks in their teams to their full potential.

Farai Madzima

Born in Zimbabwe, Farai was going to be doctor but didn’t get the grades. Now he’s a designer. Make of that what you will.

Using words, scribbles, and pixels he’s spent the last 14 years helping design and build products and teams in the UK, South Africa and Canada.

Today, he makes a living designing interactions and leading a team as a UX Manager at Shopify in Ottawa.

In South Africa, Farai designed banking apps used by many across the continent. He grappled with unique design challenges because most internet users have never used a laptop or desktop. And some buy data by the megabyte.

Farai enjoys speaking about bridging knowledge gaps between designers. He’s appeared at events worldwide, including IXDA Interaction and IASummit.

He organises Pixel Up! , a series of UX and design conferences and meetups in South Africa. These events connect designers and developers in Africa with their peers around the world.

Also, he adores verbiage, in all languages, township jazz, nerdy hip-hop, and the number 127.

Speakers:

Wrapping up the day.

Speakers:

We'll open the doors a little early and let folks in. Sometimes, we have surprises, sometimes, we play music, sometimes it's a little quiet. Get there a little early to be ready for kick-off!

Steven Kellert joins us as a refreshing and fun wake up to Leadership By Design 2023, serenading us with his ukulele and a variety of pop hits across many decades and, dare we suggest it: Eras.

Speakers:

Announcements and gratitude, schedule for the day, and general information about the event.

Speakers:

Make Space to Lead

Do you find yourself in firefighter mode, rapidly moving from flare-up to flare-up? Are you continually context-switching between each urgent and evolving priority? Does it feel like you’re drowning in the quicksand of changing customer or leadership needs amidst this global context of uncertainty?

From her personal experience as a design leader and her work as a coach to leaders in tech, Tutti shares a leadership model that takes a systemic approach to leading that changes limiting patterns and focuses on flow states. Make space to lead across these four different facets of your leadership: Personal, Projects & Processes, People, and the Organization as a whole.

Tutti Taygerly

Tutti coaches cofounders and tech leaders to embrace their unique leadership style to achieve professional impact and a sustainable company culture. She focuses on working with women, people of color, and immigrants. Previously she was a design leader at design firms, startups, and large companies including Disney and Facebook. Tutti writes for Harvard Business Review, Business Insider, and Fast Company and her book Make Space to Lead shows high achievers how to reframe our relationship to work.

Tutti grew up in seven countries on three continents and is settled in San Francisco as her home base. She spends her time parenting two spirited girls, obsessively reading, and paddling out for the next wave. Find her at tuttitaygerly.com.

Speakers:

15 minute break.

The Presence Framework for New Remote Managers

Being a good remote manager includes an approach that requires a change from traditional effective management approaches. This is not a radical change, but rather an evolution. The overall idea is grounded on making people feel the presence even in a remote space, by valuing the social aspects within the work, as well as a shift on how work is structured.
This talk will provide an useful framework to rethink the management practice in remote spaces… that can be applied in any space with excellent results.

Erin ‘Folletto’ Casali

Erin Casali, known as “Folletto”, is a senior product design director and coach. She has a hybrid background in design, psychology, business and technology — with a people-centered approach. Over the years she built products and helped businesses transform by trusting people and giving them agency and by clarifying goals, with a firm belief in transparency and diversity. Her objective is to change for the better the quality of life of the people through the businesses and products she designs. She currently works in Xero, and was previously in Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, Tumblr, Jetpack, WooCommerce, and a more other products.

She believes that “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”, as Leonardo DaVinci reportedly said and her approach is to reach a focused simplicity through the existing complexity.

During her 17+ years of professional experience she designed consumer and enterprise products and services for millions of users worldwide in different markets — and with WordPress, 40%+ of the web. She worked with companies like Bank of England, Intesa Sanpaolo, Banca Sella, Unicredit, Nokia, Vodafone, Telecom Italia, Ferrari, and Benetton.

She co-founded Good 50×70, an international social communication project and Baker Framework, a platform to publish HTML5 books and magazines on the iPad.

She was a design partner in the startup WideTag where she led the product design of WideNoise, listed in the Compasso D’Oro selection, the ADI Design Index 2010, and selected in the Top 10 Internet of Things Products of 2009. She worked on P2, a remote collaboration platform that got nominated for ProductHunt’s Golden Kitty Award in 2020.

She developed with Gianandrea Giacoma Motivational Design, a method that provides a theoretical approach and tools to deal with social dynamics and design social environments.

She has been on the board of advisors in many startups over the years: Ernest, Impacton, Flythegap, PosterForTomorrow, Tallyfy, Pick1, Tonight.eu, and Hunie.co.

Speakers:

15 minute break.

Eytan Mirsky, a musician of many albums, and many, many songs, joins us to play through some of his greatest hits, and some of your favorite cover songs.

Speakers:

15 minute break.

Managing Design Skills at Scale

No matter what is happening in the world of design or the world at large, design leaders will always be accountable for driving business outcomes through their craft. Good design leads to good outcomes. Good design is good process. And good process is the craft of human-centered design.

On a small design team, leaders have the luxury of working with each team member one-on-one to continually improve each individual’s level of craft. However, when operating a team at scale, this level of individual interaction is not feasible. The creation, maintenance, and application of a Skills Framework empowers leaders to set consistent standards of practice, irrespective of the team’s size. Other benefits include increasing clarity around roles and expectations, increasing team member engagement, and facilitating cross-training across specializations.

Building a Skills Framework requires sustained effort and dedication. Following the pattern outlined in this talk will help you accelerate the creation of a customized Skills Framework that meets the unique needs of your team and your organization.

Fred Beecher

Fred Beecher has worked in User Experience since 1998. He is an established contributor in the field, having authored the first official Axure training program in 2007 and having written and spoken extensively on prototyping, design process, design education, and UX career development. In 2013 he designed, implemented, and led a UX apprenticeship program at The Nerdery. From 2015 to 2017, Fred led the 40+ person design team at The Nerdery. He went on to build and lead Design Operations practices for both Best Buy and Rocket Mortgage, where he is currently Senior Director of Design Operations.

Speakers:

15 minute break.

The UX & Cognitive Science Behind Engaging Games

User experience (UX) is still a very new mindset to the video game industry, and has specific challenges considering that games need to be fun and engaging. As former director of UX at Epic Games and 15-year+ veteran in the game industry, Celia Hodent will explain her UX framework, which was used on Fortnite. More specifically, after explaining the main brain limitations to take into account when designing a game, the talk will break down game UX in two main pillars: usability and “engage-ability”, offering a list of ingredients for game developers to create their own successful game recipe. It will also touch on the ethical considerations to have when designing for engagement.

Celia Hodent

Celia Hodent is an expert in the application of cognitive science and psychology to improve products, systems, services, and video games. She currently leads an independent UX consultancy, working with a wide range of international media and enterprise companies.

She works in-depth with companies to help ensure their products are both engaging and successful by considering the entire user experience they will provide to their audience. Celia conducts workshops and provides guidance on the topics of playful learning (“gamification”), ethics, implicit biases, and inclusion in tech and video games.

Celia holds a PhD in psychology and has over ten years experience in the development of user experience (UX) strategy in the entertainment industry, and more specifically with videogame studios through her work at Ubisoft, LucasArts, and as Director of UX at Epic Games (Fortnite). She is founder and chair of the Game UX Summit, and a member of the Foresight Committee at CNIL (National Commission on Informatics and Liberty, an independent French administrative regulatory body).

Celia is the author of The Gamer’s Brain: How Neuroscience and UX can Impact Video Game Design (2017), The Psychology of Video Games (2020), What UX Really Is: Introducing a Mindset to Great Experiences (2021), and co-editor of Game Usability: Advice from the Experts for Advancing UX Strategy and Practice in Videogames (2022).

Twitter: @CeliaHodent

Blog: celiahodent.com

Speakers:
Tickets
$15
Early Bird Ticket

Only 20 tickets at this price!

Early Bird for Only $15
$26
General Admission

Only $26! An outstanding bargain!

Join Us for Only $26!
Free
Pay What You Can

Any contribution is appreciated.

Pay What You Can
Free
Need 1, Take 1

For anyone with a need. Please join!

Need 1, Take 1
Event Details
Add to Calendar
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