Carol J. Smith

Sr. Research Scientist, Human-Machine Interaction, Carnegie Mellon University

Carol Smith has been has been improving the human experience across industries for 20 years and working to improve AI systems since 2015. She is a Senior Research Scientist in Human-Machine Interaction at Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute and an adjunct instructor for CMU’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII). Carol has an M.S. in Human-Computer Interaction from DePaul University and is an active UX community organizer.

For more, keep up with Carol at carologic.com or on Twitter as @carologic.

Ethics & Trust for Emerging Technologies

Emerging technologies such as automated vacuums and smart refrigerators are becoming more common in homes, and we all find ourselves conversing regularly with chatbots (whether we want to or not!). As these systems augment humans at work and at play, design teams are challenged with managing the complexity of the interactions, and need to ensure that humans are kept safe and in control. Unfortunately, ethical statements such as “do no harm” are simplistic and unhelpful when designing complex interactions.

Carol will introduce practical approaches that integrate ethical design principles; engage teams in speculative work to proactively identify bias and harms; and help you and your team to focus on supporting users in gaining calibrated trust of these new systems. Strong leadership and facilitation skills are needed to guide teams through these often uncomfortable discussions. Be prepared to guide your team successfully through this important work.

Mags Hanley

Digital Management Coach, Mentor, & Teacher

Mags Hanley is a career and executive coach for UX designers. Using her over 25 years as a Designer and UX Leader, she works with designers at all stages of their careers. In particular, she loves to work with:

• Designers who want to define the next step in their career. Her book Career Architecture provides a guide for that journey
• Emerging design leaders who want to set themselves up for success. Her two main programs are Senior-to-Leader Community and Emerging Design Leader workshops
• Senior Design Leaders striving to be more effective in their practice

Mags is also a tea drinking (blame Irish parents and 14 years living in the UK), jazz singing, Tigers (Aussie Rules football) supporter, based in Melbourne Australia. She loves to connect with designers all over the world and can be booked in for virtual tea or coffee via Calendly.

For more, keep up with Mags at magshanley.com or on Twitter as @magshanley.

And Now You Are a Leader…

You’ve been promoted, you have the role you’ve been working towards for the last 2-5 years in design leadership. Now, what do you do?

Mags Hanley will take you through the four main decisions to establish your ‘right’ design leadership; your leadership style, the most effective projects to focus on, recruitment, and strategic relationships.

Wendy Johansson

Co-founder & Chief Product Experience Officer, MiSalud Health

Wendy Johansson is a founder, entrepreneur, and Product Experience leader who has spent her career building equitable teams and products in tech. Wendy has previously co-founded and exited Wizeline a global product development company, built a diverse and inclusive UX Apprentice program at Amazon, led a global team of designers as Global VP of Experience at Publicis Sapient, and built her early career as a UX leader at successful early-stage startups.

In her free time, Wendy mentors the next generation of design leaders at On Deck Design Fellowship, invests in startups in LatAm with the CompuSoluciones Corporate Venture Fund, champions women and POC in tech, and grows dahlias and tomatoes. She is currently the co-founder and Chief Product Experience Officer of MiSalud Health, a healthtech company with a mission to close the health equity gap for Hispanics in the United States.

For more, keep up with Wendy at wendyjohansson.com or on Twitter as @uxwendy.

Designing Equitable Teams

Designers are in-demand more than ever and we need to be equitable and creative in how we solve our hiring challenges. Learn how Wendy built inclusive entry level design programs with Amazon’s UX Apprenticeship, Publicis’ Early Careers, and at early stage startups—and how you can build the next generation of equitable design teams.

Wil Reynolds

Founder & VP of Innovation, Seer Interactive

A former teacher with a knack for advising, Wil has been helping companies develop brand marketing strategies since 1999. As the industry evolved, so has Wil’s approach. In recent years, Wil has been leading the charge in leveraging “Big Data” to break down silos between SEO, Paid Media, and traditional marketing—helping clients see the big picture by combining and analyzing data from various sources (even billboards). Wil’s data-driven approach to consulting helps clients and their teams make better, more strategic, cross-channel decisions and hit the ground running with honest, actionable insights to start generating results and revenue.

Wil likes helping people too. While data is at the forefront of Wil’s approach, so is wanting to help others grow and better themselves. Seeing the need for an agency that does good by its team, clients, and community, Wil started Seer Interactive in 2002 as a one-person operation out of his living room. Today, Seer is a remote-first company with offices in Philadelphia and San Diego that employs over 220 people. As Seer’s VP of Innovation, Wil develops strategies to help clients find opportunities where the typical tools do not. His methods have shaped the search industry worldwide, and he regularly speaks for marketing conferences all around the world. When he’s not working, you can catch Wil hanging out with his wife Nora, sons Rio and Niko, checking out the best craft beer spots he can find, or keeping up with his running goals.

For more, keep up with Wil on Twitter as @wilreynolds.

Fireside Chat

Wil has been helping Fortune 500 companies develop brand marketing strategies since 1999. Wil’s data-driven approach to consulting helps clients and their teams make better, more strategic, cross-channel decisions and hit the ground running with honest, actionable insights to start generating results and revenue. As Seer’s Vice President of Innovation, Wil develops strategies and innovations to help clients build traffic and make money. Over the past two decades, his methods have helped shape the search industry and he regularly speaks at marketing conferences worldwide.

Anne Hjortshoj

Senior Director of User Experience, CarGurus

Anne Hjortshoj is a product design leader with an accidental specialty in spinning up new teams. During her 20+ year career, she’s successfully led design and product teams in industries as disparate as automotive, cybersecurity, online education, financial services, politics, and advertising. Anne is currently Senior Director of UX at CarGurus, where she’s leading the team she founded three and a half years ago.

For more, keep up with Anne at annehj.com or on Twitter as @annesaurus.

Stage Zero: What to Know When Starting a Design Team from Scratch

Congratulations! You’ve accepted a job where you’ll have the great privilege of leading design at a company the way you’d like to lead it, by building a team the way you’d like to build it… for a company that has never worked with designers.

During this talk, I’ll share the lessons I’ve learned from my experience during the last decade of building three teams at three very different organizations. I’ll describe what to expect as far as ups and downs of the challenge you’ve just accepted, and will provide a playbook to help you and your team find success. Additionally, I’ll provide tips to help you select the right company to join in the first place.

Brad Nunnally

Senior Director of User Experience, IntelliBridge

Brad Nunnally is the Senior Director of User Experience at Intellibridge and a co-author of “Designing The Conversation: Techniques for Successful Facilitation” for New Riders (Voices That Matter) and “UX Research: Practical Techniques for Designing Better Products” for O’Reilly Media. During his career, Brad has worked with clients spanning almost every major industry, mostly focusing on healthcare, financial services, and government digital services.

Brad has enjoyed writing and speaking on topics that include user research, interactive prototyping, and how cognitive psychology applies to design. These days, he contemplates how the government can be redesigned to be more person centric and how organizations can build and mature design teams to meet the demands of how business and technology work today. When he is not thinking about the world of design, he spends time learning important life lessons from his children, playing too many video and tabletop games, and learning woodworking through a constant string of failures.

Growing Better Design Careers

One of the biggest challenges to retaining employees is the lack of value or growth they perceive in their current position. To solve this, design leaders need to provide a clear understanding and path for career advancement that is based on outcomes and objective skills. This means designing a system centered around a growth based mindset which:

1. Defines job descriptions that are skill and outcome based rather than based on subjective qualifications
2. Establishes a Career Progression Framework with team roles aligned around defined outcomes and professional growth based on individual needs and learning styles.

Pairing these two concepts together helps leaders that manage teams large or small, made up of specialist or generalists, or teams that are just getting started or have been established for some time. In the ever changing world of employee retention and workplace dynamics, design leaders can help position your teams for future growth and meet your designers where they are at to better layout what kind of future they want.

Liya James

Author, Innovation By Inclusion

Liya is a designer, inclusion advocate, and author. Over the past two decades, Liya’s product innovation work has touched millions of users through collaborations with brands like Apple, AT&T, Mercedes-Benz R&D, and IBM Design, and she’s had the privilege to work alongside disruptive startup founders and social entrepreneurs whose collective exits total several billion dollars. She continues hone her craft and search for better ways to make the world a better place through technology as co-founder and principal at Totally Human, where she and a diverse team of designers and strategists help companies identify and productize opportunities to do good and do well.

Liya is currently writing a book on Inclusive Innovation with Rosenfeld Media.

For more, keep up with Liya at liyajames.com.

Inclusive Design Leadership: Beyond Human-Centered

As technology increasingly becomes a conduit for meeting our basic needs—from finding love or taking care of our health to buying groceries and booking travel—it is becoming clear that technology is no longer neutral. How the technology works can be either a force that perpetuates cycles of exclusion and inequity, or it can carry the torch of equity and inclusion.

In this presentation, Liya will discuss living up to our mission as “user advocates” for all of our users, no matter their race, gender identity, age, or socioeconomic background. She will also explore strategies to embed inclusive mindsets into the design process and help organizations realize the full potential of human-centered design.

Natalie M. Dunbar

Senior UX Content Strategy Manager, Walmart

Natalie Marie Dunbar is a UX-focused content strategist with a unique blend of skills as a journalist, content writer, and user researcher. Taken together with her curiosity for technology and her passion for engaging consumers, Natalie excels in balancing the creation of delightful user experiences with strategic content that supports the needs of a business or organization.

Natalie has worked in various roles as a content writer and strategist for brands that include Anthem, Farmers Insurance, Kaiser Permanente, Walmart, and YP.com. She’s also produced original content for (US) federal agencies that include the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), Centers for Tobacco Prevention (CTP), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Veteran’s Administration (VA).

When she’s not herding content or writing books, Natalie teaches private yoga, sharing the benefits of Hatha Yoga as a peaceful yet powerful way to reconnect mind, body, and spirit. Her first book, From Solo to Scaled: Building a Sustainable Content Strategy Practice, is available from Rosenfeld Media.

For more, keep up with Natalie at nataliedunbarcontentstrategist.com or on Twitter as @TheLiterati.

Yoga & User Experience: What Accessible Yoga Can Teach Us About Creating Inclusive Spaces

The goal of yoga accessibility is to create physical practice spaces and experiences that are safe, diverse, equitable, and inclusive for all. But for some, such as those in larger or differently abled bodies, or those in marginalized communities, access to the foundational practices of yoga—breathwork, meditation, and asana—remains out of reach.

And so it is with digital spaces.

The work we do in digital information spaces is key to bringing digital experiences to life. How might we apply lessons learned from yoga accessibility to create safe digital spaces that are open to a diverse population, and that are equitable and inclusive for all?

In this session, we will cover:

• Holding space: Refocus your listening to identify and become present with a diverse user base.
• Inquiry: Ask three simple questions to help zero in on user needs, and to facilitate information wayfinding.
• Sequencing: Use structure and flow to build engaging experiences.
• Variations: Learn how modifications and variations invite belonging and prevent “othering.”
• Non-attachment: Release preconceived notions, prejudgement, and biases to move beyond diversity to normalization.

This talk will appeal to UX practitioners seeking creative ways to incorporate accessibility, diversity, equity, and inclusion in a unique and relatable way.

Emily Haines Lloyd

Writer & Pep Talker

A copywriter, magazine contributor, and novelist—Emily Haines Lloyd has been telling stories her entire life.

Emily writes about creativity, transformation, living well, and occasionally frozen fish (we’ve all got bills to pay.) She’s published a book of inspiring, real-talk poems called Pep Talk Poetry and has contributed to a variety of publications including Medium, Elephant Journal, and Detroit News.

Emily also facilitates workplace training on the power of positivity, as well as breathing and meditation sessions. Because even if you don’t believe in harnessing your chi, we can all agree that a deep breath and some stretches never hurt anyone.

You can follow Emily at @WriterEm on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter for daily reminders that you’re an unmitigated badass. Or visit emilyhaineslloyd.com for more information.