Aaron Irizarry

Head of Credit Solutions Design, Capital One

Aaron Irizarry, aka “Ron,” is the Head of Credit Solutions Design in Capital One’s Commercial Bank. Aaron is also the co-author of Discussing Design: Improving Communication and Collaboration through Critique. More importantly, Aaron loves connecting with people through food, is a lover of heavy metal, and a lifelong Dodgers fan.

Abi Jones

UX Manager, Google Health

Abi Jones leads a team of designers and researchers in Google Health, an organization that works across a variety of medical specialties to dramatically improve the availability and accuracy of medical services, with a focus on cancer, skin conditions, and diabetic eye disease.

She writes about team culture and management at jonesabi.com.

How to Make the Right Turn

5-year career plans are supposed to align you and your manager on a path to a bright and shiny future, one where you’ve achieved your goals through a combination of skill and perseverance. Instead, they set you up for failure by closing your mind to the opportunities right in front of you.

The person you are today has abilities, limitations, and nemeses that you didn’t predict for yourself 5 years ago. And the role you’ll have 5 years from now, can’t be decided just by looking at the jobs that exist today.

Instead of making a 5-year-plan, start planning for what’s next.

In this keynote, you’ll learn how to identify the work that fuels you, reflect on the principles that guide your preferences, consider the upsides of spite, and identify the people who will support you as you take the next step in your career.

Alesha Arp

Senior User Experience Researcher, MIND Research Institute

Alesha Arp is a Senior User Experience Researcher whose work has informed the design of software platforms, digital and physical spaces, and business processes.

At MIND Research Institute, her plate and heart are full with UX research, CX strategy and impactful design of digital, physical, and experiential products for Kindergarten through high school students and educators.

Alesha earned her Master’s in User Experience Design, Information Architecture and Knowledge Management from Kent State. She has presented at World IA Day, Information Architecture Conference, and Big Design.

For more, keep up with Alesha at aleshaarpuxdportfolio.com or on Twitter as @AleshaArp.

Usage Maturity Matrix: A Tool for Making User-Centered Design Decisions within Project Constraints

Project constraints often challenge our ability to meet user needs. With a usage maturity matrix, which shows a user’s comfort and familiarity with, and degree of use of a product, process or place, as our guide we are better able to focus our design efforts where our users and our business stakeholders need us most.

In this presentation, you’ll learn what a usage maturity matrix is and how to create one. This powerful tool can influence which features and functions we design into our present projects and can serve as a lasting guide impacting our ongoing design roadmap.

Clifton Simmons

Sr. UX Content Strategist, Allstate

Clifton is a senior content strategist for Allstate, focusing on claims and roadside service. He’s dedicated to inspiring a diverse generation of UX design professionals, working as a mentor and instructor in various programs. Prior to his work on UX design, Clifton has worked at large ad agencies as an experiential marketer for USAA, Chevy, Coke and McDonald’s.

For more, keep up with Clifton at professoradman.com or on Twitter as @ProfessorAdMan.

“Du” Good: How UXers Can Help Change Our Companies & Communities

As UX practitioners we pride ourselves on human-centered design, but do we really practice what we preach when statistics continually reflect a staggering lack of diversity? Even in a pandemic, studies show industry leaders predict an increased demand for UX design professionals.

You’ve protested. You’ve made public statements to do better. Now you’re probably asking, “What now?” Learn how companies can start to fulfill their promises to create a more diverse UX design workforce. Corporate volunteerism is also a way for companies to empower employees to continue the fight against systemic racism by enabling your UX staff to support community organizations in need of our digital skills. As an example, this talk will include work as a skills-based volunteer for the DuSable Museum of African American history and how we collaborated with museum staff to develop the digital marketing campaign, “this is What We Du.”

Dani Nordin

Director Experience Design, athenahealth

Dani Nordin is an experienced UX strategist, designer and researcher, who’s been working in the design industry for over 20 years, most of it on digital products. She’s currently Director of Experience Design at athenahealth, heading up the Orders and Results zone for the athenaClinicals EHR. She’s also a part-time lecturer at Northeastern University’s College of Professional Studies, where she teaches design thinking for emerging technologies.

Prior to joining athenahealth, she built out a UX practice and design system for Pegasystems’ digital experiences, and she helped to build a user research and design practice for Harvard Business Review (hbr.org).

She lives in Watertown MA with her husband, two daughters, and a dapper golden retriever named Larry.

For more, keep up with Dani at daninordin.com or on Twitter as @danigrrl.

Increase Your Design Influence By Understanding Your Organization’s Decision-making Style

As designers, we like to think of ourselves as makers. When we’re working on large, wicked problems, the challenge is that “making” is no longer a solo endeavor; it’s something that requires a lot of people and functionality to make happen. This can leave designers feeling like we’ve had to compromise our standards to appease business or development stakeholders. It also inadvertently creates an us-versus-them mentality that actually makes it less likely that we’ll be successful in moving forward our vision of what’s possible.

So what does this mean for us? Simply understanding what your product’s users are dealing with isn’t enough. To make truly great products, you need to understand how people, organizations, systems and content play together. In this presentation, we’ll focus on some ways to help understand the organizational context you’re working within, and to adjust your approach to increase your success within those organizations.

Kevin Klos

Senior UX Designer, Best Buy

With a background in UX, visual design, and front-end development and armed with a human-centered design thought process and WCAG guidelines, Kevin has taken on and solved UX challenges for clients such as Marriott Bonvoy, US Bank, Dunkin’, United Airlines and more. Away from UX and on the ice, Kevin can also be found in costume as a hockey mascot that performs magic tricks.

For more, keep up with Kevin at klosencounters.com or on Twitter as @kevinklos.

5 Ways to Ensure Web Accessibility (and Avoid Legal Trouble)

What do Beyoncé, Domino’s Pizza, and Amazon have in common? They have all been sued for non-compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. And they are not alone. Kevin will share 5 ways to ensure your web site is accessible (and can avoid legal trouble) and will discuss what ADA and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines guidelines are.

UsableNet has found on average, one web site-based lawsuit is filed every hour. This presentation asks and answers: Who is suing and why? What are the consequences? Why is it happening and what can be done about it? Kevin will highlight which groups are served by web accessibility, outline ways to achieve the WCAG guidelines, and provide an understanding of how ADA noncompliance lawsuits originated. You’ll also learn how to broaden your market penetration by ensuring your web apps and sites are accessible to all.

Lauren Liss

Assistant Professor, Interactive Arts + Media, Columbia College Chicago

Lauren Liss coordinates the Interaction Design major and the User Experience and Web Development minors in the Interactive Arts and Media (IAM) Department at Columbia College Chicago and has been a faculty member in this program since 2006. She teaches interface design, interaction theory, user experience and usability, and collaborative development.

Lauren also runs an interaction design company, Goodspark, which focuses on content management systems and usability analysis for small businesses, with a specialization in women-owned businesses and creative firms. She received her Masters in Education, Learning Design and Leadership, New Learning, from the University of Illinois, where she studied knowledge acquisition and educational theory through the lens of usability and technology.

Consent & Ethics in Experience Design

As we rapidly approach “The Uncanny Valley” of experience design, what obligation do technology creators have in maintaining an environment of informed consent and ethics with their audience? This session will explore the realities and impact that persuasive design techniques (both intentional and not) play into how participants engage with technology.

We will look at examples of efficient, devious, deceptive design, as well as well-intentioned design choices that may have unintended consequences. We will discuss the idea of consent as it relates to the people that interact with our interface, and how we can morally augment their experiences for the greater good without leaving them in the dark.

Lindsey Latiolais

Senior UX Researcher, Neighborhoods.com

Lindsey Latiolais is a 10-year veteran of UX research, currently working as the Head of Research (aka the only researcher) at Neighborhoods.com, a post-startup real estate company. She has an undergraduate degree in Psychology and a Master’s in Human-Centered Design and Engineering. She’s recently been turning her skills onto the discipline of UX research itself to find ways to increase her impact and evolve the field.

Outside of work, when not in the middle of a global pandemic, she loves indoor bouldering and scuba diving in the tropics. During a global pandemic, she plays a lot of Minecraft and hangs out with a lot of dogs.

For more, keep up with Lindsey at latchedux.com or on Twitter as @latchedux.

Educating User Researchers: Using UX Skills to Design a Research Training Program

Many people hoping to break into the field of user research don’t even know what skills are necessary to do the job and are missing fundamental concepts. They have to invest additional time and sometimes resources into gaining more skills, in addition to what they’ve already put into learning design skills they won’t use, and they have to rely on volunteer-mentors or companies to create apprenticeship training programs that vary wildly.

Some UX training programs for combine user research and UX design capabilities. This contributes to two problems: people aren’t appropriately trained in what they’ll truly need to do the work and to get a job in the field, and UX research isn’t respected as a discipline requiring specialized skills and knowledge. Training programs that focus on user research will give people the confidence to advocate for themselves and their expertise and, hopefully, encourage companies to recognize that not just anyone can whip out a survey or a usability test script and get back accurate, actionable insights that drive a better product.

Margo Stern

Content Strategy Lead, Level

Margo Stern, a Content Strategist at Level, has been making the rounds in Silicon Valley content circles since it became a thing (about ten years ago). After stints at Google, Twitter and Facebook, she made the switch to the start-up world in September 2020. Margo lives in San Francisco with her husband and (at least) two cats.

When she’s not working, Margo can be found at a dance or yoga class or at the top of a local mountain. She’s also a member of a musical improv troupe with regular shows in San Francisco.

For more, keep up with Margo at margostern.com.

Make Your Own Demands: Forging a Career Path in Content Strategy

Now that some of the industry has begun to rally around the job title of “Content Strategist,” what does the actual job and career path look like? Why should we keep showing up and do the hard job, at scale? What are the challenges we all face, and when is some of this wicked ambiguity going to get cleared up?

In this talk, I consider the common challenges of a CS, the insecurities we battle, and how to sort out what to do when we’re faced with them. Drawing on my experience at Google, Twitter and Facebook both as a manager and as an individual contributor, I’ll share my worst mistakes, my best wisdom, and maybe some well-intentioned speculation.

Melinda Kilner

Senior Product Designer, Gem

Melinda is a Senior Product Designer at Gem, helping teams nurture top talent. With a background in front-end development, she also has extensive experience designing for the learning and training space, and helping worldwide organizations build their digital content design systems. When she’s not working, you can find her in San Francisco, baking sourdough and catching up on podcasts.

For more, keep up with Melinda at melindakilner.com.

Job Hunting In the Time of COVID

The global pandemic has forced many of us to fully rethink how to do our work remotely while managing the increasing anxiety around what the future will look like. It is not an obvious time to add searching for a new job into the mix.

Nonetheless, I decided to leave a company of 9 years in pursuit of something new. As a designer used to collaborating shoulder-to-shoulder at a whiteboard, I had many concerns. How would I get a feel for what it was like to work with new colleagues? Would I be able to grasp the company culture? Would I be able to convey my best self though screens alone? Would I survive the back-to-back Zooms?

Come learn what I’ve learned while tackling the job hunt in an entirely remote environment; from the challenges to the surprising upsides and opportunities that eventually led to landing a new role at Gem.

Saskia Videler

Content Strategist, The Dutchess

Saskia Videler is a senior content strategist in Belgium. She helps organizations streamline their content and communication efforts. Over the years, she has created style guides for a myriad of organizations; both small and large, many for-profit, some NGO’s, some government institutions.

She also produced and hosted the content and UX podcast Efficiently Effective.

For more, keep up with Saskia at thedutchess.be or on Twitter as @SaskiaVideler.

Adventures in Style: What I’ve Learned Creating Several Content Style Guides

Whether you work for a 5 or 50.000 person organisation, you will need to work together with the right people, to know what the user needs, to find the right balance with what the organisation wants, to document well, and to make sure the guidelines are adopted, to be able to call your content style guide a success.

Content style guides inform the voice, tone, grammar, verbosity and vocabulary of the content. Done well, they are a great tool for collaboration that will help you get your product on point, faster (and with fewer discussions).

This talk will cover learned experiences and common pitfalls (real mistakes I’ve personally made and learned from) you might encounter in content style guide creation, management, and implementation. It will help you avoid them, and to create or improve your own style guide.

Sup Suh

Experience Designer, Bounteous

Sup Suh is an experience designer at Bounteous, where his work encompasses everything from user research to human-centered design. He is originally from Korea but now based in Chicago. He has 10 years of experience working in the tech industry as a consultant and a designer. His expertise includes industries such as ecommerce, telecommunications, media, healthcare and automotive. He has a masters degree in Human Computer Interaction from DePaul university.

Design Considerations for Building a Successful Intranet

A successful intranet increases productivity and collaboration and it also contributes to a sense of belonging and engagement. However, as multiple content authors publish their content, it usually becomes difficult and frustrating to maintain unless we have a well-defined strategy in place.

This talk, I will talk about content strategies that helped me overcome design challenges of working with big organizations. I will talk about how content strategy can help organizations to turn complex ideas into a simple digital experience, how to empower authors with content system and how to keep the intranet experience sustainable.

Tricia Okin

User Experience Lead & Service Designer

Tricia Okin is a lead user experience designer and service designer who uses design thinking for the public good and the good of her clients’ businesses. As an experienced design leader and strategist who has practiced human-centered design since 2004, she brings design to bear on wicked human and business problems such as educational innovation, open access health, and technology awareness. One of her current projects includes working with the Anti-Defamation League to create a toolkit educators use to reduce the school to prison pipeline and address law enforcement presence in schools. On another engaging project, she is working with a non-profit to design a tablet healthcare application used by community health workers in rural Rwanda who see hundreds of patients per day. Her approach to design is holistic and inclusive while being driven by effective results.

For more, keep up with Tricia at triciaokin.com or on Twitter as @papercutny.

Designing Health Systems For Group Encounters in Rural Rwandan Communities

83% of Rwanda’s 12,000,000 population lives rurally outside of its main capital of Kigali. The Rwandan universal healthcare system was entirely built from the ground up after the Rwandan genocide as a way to address the health needs of all its citizens equally. This system, which is free to citizens, can successfully deliver quality healthcare at roughly $2 per person per year. It addresses the more immediate needs of the country’s rural citizens via an extensive network of healthcare centers and local community healthcare workers CHWs located in villages. Services offered at these clinics range from antenatal care, administering child nutrition programs, and diagnosing acute illnesses (including COVID-19 and malaria).

E-Heza is a tablet application used by CHWs in some of these health clinics. The ultimate goals of the CHWs are to diagnose, provide routine and simple care, and ultimately refer complex patients to the better equipped regional health centers. E-Heza’s primary role is to document patient care, support decision making, and lastly replace a paper-based system that required significant cognitive load on CHW and health center staff.

In this talk we’ll be addressing several topics:

• How do we adapt the participatory design process when we’re unable to have direct access with the users of our designs? How do we build relationships with local healthcare team members when we have to design across geographical and cultural lines? How does the local team aid the work and send feedback back up the chain to affect design changes?
• What does designing for a one-to-many healthcare interaction look like in terms of processing large segments of people and enabling non-clinical staff to make accurate medical decisions?
• Are there parallel challenges to designing for American healthcare systems and those of rural Rwanda and how might they be affected by assumptions of class and race?