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!

Starting the event!

Design Safety: A Trauma-Informed User Research Guide

Throughout civic tech, people are striving to increase engagement with vulnerable and underserved communities, and in private industry, product teams are including more diverse pools of participants in their user research. These inclusion strategies mean that researchers will undoubtedly work with people who are living with the impact of trauma, which presents risk of causing additional harm. With attention and tools, user researchers can minimize this risk to vulnerable participants and improve the experience for everyone involved.

Tactics such as content warnings and informed consent help people protect themselves, and other tools are available to help us do user research ethically.Combining the principles of a trauma informed approach (created by SAMHSA), an ethical research framework, and a little creativity, sets us properly on a path to learning safely. Join us to learn how to apply trauma informed principles to user research, and get tools to use in your own research design.

This session includes:
• An introduction to the effects of trauma and who it impacts
• What is trauma informed user research
• How to use the ethical researcher checklist and other tools to improve your user research with all participants

Gail Swanson

Gail Swanson helps people solve product and service problems without blowing themselves up. Throughout her design career across many industries, she’s been dedicated to helping talented folks be effective at their jobs. Gail built the strategy practice at 18F, and has returned to public service improving the experience of disaster survivors as they recover and rebuild. Gail speaks and writes about all manners of design, strategy, and digital innovation.

For more, keep up with Gail at gailswanson.us  

15 minute break.

Building an Inclusive Research Practice

For too long, traditional research methodologies have been narrowly focused, often sidelining the full spectrum of human diversity. This has predominantly served a homogeneous audience, overlooking the vast experiences that define our global community.

In this session, Lori Baker will take us beyond the surface of inclusivity in research. Drawing from her extensive experience and transformative work with diverse clients, Lori will detail the challenges of traditional methodologies and how they can be reimagined. She will share specific strategies and tools she has developed to ensure research practices are truly inclusive, covering aspects such as engaging underrepresented groups, challenging biases, and designing studies that reflect a broader human experience.

Attendees will leave equipped with practical insights and actionable steps to broaden the scope of their research methodologies, making them more equitable and representative of the world we live in. Join Lori in redefining the boundaries of inclusivity in research, making it a cornerstone of your practice.

Lori Baker

Lori has extensive experience in finding creative solutions to client needs that also meet user needs through extensive research and cross- department collaboration.

Her ability to foster collaboration paired with her focus on user needs has helped guide a number of successful projects for new and existing systems.

15 minute break.

Age & Tech: Experience Need Not Apply

At the heart of the tech design industry is a worm in the bud: old people are not allowed. We see the stories every day, both explicitly and implicitly: “Tech is a young persons game.” It’s not that anyone would say it out-loud; well almost nobody. Mark Zuckerberg has been quoted as saying, ”Young people are just smarter,” but that was in 2007 when he was 23. One wonders how he feels about it now that he is rapidly approaching 40?

In this session I will explore the uncomfortable but vital topic of how ageism is an unspoken factor in hiring and advancement in the design industry, providing research and statistics on where we stand now. I’ll discuss some of the common “reasons” given for not hiring experienced designers, the benefits experience can offer in a constantly evolving and changing profession, and how ageism becomes a negative multiplier when combined with sexism and racism, further preventing diversity in an already homogeneous profession.

More importantly, I want to engage in a discussion with the audience to hear their experiences with ageism, how other forms of discrimination have compounded the problem for them, and consider paths forward.

Jason Cranford Teague

Jason is a Web pioneer having designed the first Web based publication in 1994. In the thirty years since, he has worked on numerous products applying creative problem solving techniques to find solutions that innovate and satisfy. In addition to having written books and articles on digital media design, he is a sought after international speaker, worked with the W3C to establish Web design standards, taught UX Design at Drexel University, and is currently an advisor to the University of Richmond’s Customer Experience Program.

Jason recently started a digital strategy consulting agency — CranfordTeague.com — focusing on improving educational outcomes by creating digital experiences to meet students’ individual needs for learning.

He and his wife live in beautiful Greensboro, NC, USA. They are the parents to two children and two cats. In addition to his consulting work, Jason is the author of the children’s book Yuri Was Very Brave (www.yuribrave.com) about Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space.

15 minute break.

Beyond Extraction: Reframing UX Research Into Long-term Relationships and Strategic Change Management

UX research is more than collecting data and gathering information–it’s a foundational tool to build relationships with people who are impacted by and who develop products and services. Because of this, it can be a method to guide strategic change within our organizations. When we reframe UX research as a pivotal element in building deep connections and trust, we shift research from being transactional to a longer term partnership that is closely aligned with user needs and organizational objectives.

We need to include non-researchers in the research process; this is how we empower teams with diverse viewpoints to develop a holistic understanding of a user ecosystem. Side by side with product managers, engineers, and designers, we continuously learn together, paving a way for a more engaged, informed, and collaborative culture.

This approach not only elevates UX research as a key component of change management—through ongoing alignment, adoption, and adaptation—but also mirrors the internal dynamics necessary for companies facing organizational restructuring, policy updates, and growth challenges.

With practical examples, this session will explore:

- Strategies for involving non-research stakeholders in the UX research process, enhancing cross-functional collaboration.
- Techniques for establishing and maintaining trust and credibility among internal and external team members, and fostering an open communication culture.
- The role of UX research in facilitating organizational change, with actionable insights for applying these principles to internal company transformations.

You will leave this session with some tools to start building lasting relationships through UX research, both within your teams and with users and stakeholders; ultimately supporting meaningful change across product/service development and your organization.

Carmen Bocanegra

Since she first learned to talk, Carmen has asked a lot of questions. This led to a desire to understand the how/why/what behind almost everything, a love of experimentation, and academic pursuit of science. She ended up working in an advertising agency in the digital production department because it sounded fun and different than anything she had done before.

Over the past decade, Carmen has led teams of colleagues, stakeholders, and clients through the process of discovery, framing, research, strategy, and design at startups, consultancies, and in-house teams. She’s deeply passionate about improving how teams work together, understanding impact, and ensuring that our language, code, and practices are inclusive and accessible to all.

She currently lives in North Carolina with her spouse and dog and works in civic tech as a Director of Federal Portfolios, Health and Human Services at Truss.

15 minuted break.

First Principles, UX Quality, and a New Design Spirit

The path of the commercial software experience design profession has become much more murky and uncertain that nearly anyone anticipated. Today requires a new way of thinking about what we do, realizing that what led to our previous success will not lead us to more of it. This is not an uncommon human scenario, though.

Through some tough love for ourselves and going even deeper on what we actually do when we design, we’ll forge ahead and emerge better and stronger from this painful period. It might not be as hard as we think, either.

Phillip Hunter

Phillip figured out in 2023 that he was supposed to be a designer after all. Fortunately, even while uncertain, he worked in interesting spaces like some of the earliest commercial conversational NLU/NLP applications, nurturing enterprise services toward becoming enjoyable tools, and applying analytics to UX design decisions.

15 minute break.

Challenging the Concept of “Human-Centered”: It’s Time for a Rethink

Since the beginning of experience design, we have been focused on being human-centered for nearly every product, service and interface created.

What does human-centered really mean, and do we know if we achieve that as a goal when designing an experience?

At an organizational-level, practitioners must first agree on an aligned definition of “human-centered”, as it relates to the product/service/offering being put out to the world. What contributes to an experience being considered as human-centered? How close to that definition must products be for them to be considered truly “human-centered”? Without a clear and shared definition of human-centeredness, it is impossible to measure how “well” we achieve it within an organization.

Though this has long been a concept that is emphasized in theory – in practice, this moment of rethinking is imperative for multiple reasons. The design of experiences is at a tipping point. Can we afford to only be human-centered, and that too, with a poorly defined understanding of what constitutes the concept in the first place?

It is time to deconstruct what human-centered really means and consider the potential of being “human-calibrated” instead. In a world where we must be more responsible given truths about the environment and the climate, humans are only one part of the equation.

Meena Kothandaraman

With 30 years of experience, Meena has consulted to emphasize the strategic value and positioning of qualitative research in the design of product, space and service. Meena is fascinated by the complexity of human behavior, and applies a credible, structured and transparent approach to integrating human stories and anecdotes into mainstream processes. This ensures that research activities provide the best service to the organization, and that learning objectives are addressed to maximize potential.

Meena is a founding member of twig+fish, a research and strategy practice based in Boston, MA, that espouses these research beliefs, while maintaining a utopic work-life balance. She is also a key Lecturer in the Bentley University Human Factors and Information Design (HFID) graduate program. Over her 20-year tenure, her capstone qualitative research course has guided now-leading practitioners to integrating meaningful and successful research practices.

She holds an M.S. in Information Resources Management from Syracuse University and a B.Com . in MIS from the University of Ottawa, Canada. Meena is always inspired in her work by her other passions, namely performing as a South-Indian Classical Violinist, pursuing culinary arts through a cooking show, and staying up to date with her two teenager interests!

For more, keep up with Meena on Twitter as @meena_ko.

Wrapping up the day.