Conference Program

Too often we withhold design efforts for “the best of times” – to make improvements or optimize already good systems. In this talk, Emily Danielson highlights the importance of design skills in “the worst of times.”

Drawing on experiences following Hurricane Katrina, the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, COVID-19 and Hurricane Ida, Danielson will illustrate the impact of applying design skills to recovery work, such as:

• Optimizing data collection to better triage the needs of flooded homeowners (and the data systems being used by the FBI to take down a corrupt contractor)
• The importance of service design and cultural competence in food distribution
• Contextual research for a mobile application on a shrimp boat at 2am

Those who attend can expect to leave with the confidence to act quickly in contributing their skills as designers following a disaster; the knowledge of how to advocate for design efforts in states of emergency; and an understanding of the value design can bring in times of chaos.

When global travel shut down, Viamo had a dilemma: how would they meet their users? For almost a decade, Viamo has worked with communities around the globe building products for people with limited access to technology. They operate in over 40 countries and their staff comprises workers based in 19 different time zones.

Learn how the Viamo team has become better designers, more equitable practitioners, and better positioned as a company by adopting a “Human Centered Design Approach”, skilling up their in-country teams, and working with a network of local design researchers.

Collaboration is key to opening the feedback loop and making innovative breakthroughs. But how do we unlock and reimagine versatile ideas in the room?

By putting people first and designing to connect individuals, collaboration design helps everyone feel like they’re included and contributing equally.
Join MURAL’s Emilia Åström, Learning Experience Lead, and Jim Kalbach, Chief Evangelist, to learn how your team can use this proven method — and MURAL — to strategize, innovate, and create your best solutions.

When the pandemic forced necessary lockdowns across the country, Canadians were discouraged from shopping in stores to avoid spreading COVID-19, the challenge of quickly and efficiently pivoting to ensure groceries could reach customers fell to retailers.

In this session, Tiffany Cheng reveals how Loblaw, a beloved national retailer in Canada, rapidly shifted its grocery delivery launch plans in response to increased competition and a global pandemic. Learn how Loblaw integrated speed and rigor, and adopted an approach of flexibility, short-term planning, and pivoting workflows to meet rapidly-changing conditions.

In 2017, The Home Depot announced a $1.2 billion supply chain investment with the goal of better meeting the changing needs of both do-it-yourself and professional customers. This commitment, which was originally intended to come to full fruition on a five-year timeline, got an unexpected speed boost in the form of the COVID-19 pandemic. Home Depot saw an unprecedented increase in the volume of deliveries and a need for expanded deliveries capabilities and flexibility.

This growth has not been without pain. Unlocking these capabilities necessitated transitioning away from siloed fulfillment channels to unified technological, operational, and communication experiences. Here, the THD Deliveries UX team saw an opportunity to deliver value at scale: dynamic supply chain configuration. This is the story of how Home Depot scaled their deliveries supply network administration to support an ever more dynamic and transparent deliveries network that serves their business and centers their customers’ and associates’ experiences.

As a creative director, Brandy has consistently been presented with designs and experiences that target a specific, typically abled audience. This talk will educate designers and the accessibility community on typical ways accessibility is forgotten in the design process and tactical, design-focused solutions that can be executed at scale.

You may be familiar with desktop screen readers like JAWS, and desktop voice control like Dragon Naturally speaking. You might know about WCAG, and popular automated testing tools for your websites. But what about mobile apps? How do accessibility techniques apply on the touch screen? As the entire world moves mobile first, your accessibility strategy needs to adapt. In this talk, we’ll introduce you to some of the changes that doing mobile-first accessibility correctly requires. We’ll cover some of the most popular assistive technologies on mobile, give you tips for automated and manual testing of your mobile apps, warn you of some of the pitfalls to watch for, and help you bring your mobile accessibility strategy to the next level.

Incorporating accessibility can be seen as a daunting task, especially for products that have already been released. Alexis Lucio, Senior Accessibility Lead at Splunk, will share her journey in making accessibility a first-class citizen within Splunk Design System. Topics include: how to advocate for accessibility, utilizing use cases to optimize design and dev, how to utilize user input, and ideas on how to collaborate with cross-functional partners.

For a rapidly-growing company like Wayfair, scaling in all functions and optimizing at both micro and macro levels, a constant state of change is normal. Wayfair’s hiring landscape has exploded in the past two years with new offices in CA, Austin, Toronto and Berlin, requiring new ways of working, across disciplines, timezone and borders to be effective. In order to ensure connections and best practices across disciplines (product design, user research, content strategy) and end-user teams, strategic ways of working must be put in place to successfully serve our customers, and each other.

We not only instituted ceremonies and best practices that have proven to successfully accelerate shared learnings in the last 2 years, we continually optimize those practices, as changes inevitably present themselves. In this talk, we’ll take a closer look at the practices in Wayfair’s Supplier space (also known as Partners), which has 50+ team members.

What happens when a global pandemic changes work as we know it? The IBM Patterns Design Education team had to pivot from an immersive, in-person program to an entirely virtual environment in a matter of weeks. That experience left a lasting impact, including recognition from the iF Design Awards!

In this session, Umphress will share ideas for making the most of the virtual working experience, including:

• Being intentional in choosing to conduct live vs asynchronous work sessions
• Utilizing a solid storytelling model to make challenging situations emotionally fulfilling (e.g.: using Enterprise Design Thinking or incorporating the cadence of “challenges and victories” in the Hero’s Journey)
• Embracing the opportunity to enrich programs with your organization’s experts in design, development, and product management

Not being in-person is no excuse to miss out on connecting. But, absent a hotel lobby bar and drink tickets – is it even “remotely” possible  to make that magic mix of connection, spontaneity and a bit of fun happen?

The answer to that question is… “Absolutely, Yes.”

Join us after the last session of the day on Thursday, June 9th to play Cozy Juicy Real – an engaging online board game where the purpose is anything but trivial: creating authentic and truly meaningful connections with your peers.

Remember those serendipitous conversations from in-person conferences? The ones that sparked randomly over a beer during happy hour, continued effortlessly  into a lively dinner, and led to important professional connections that lasted well after the conference had wrapped? Take those amazing moments, fuse them with your favorite board game and you’ve got your effortless virtual hallway conversation in the making. Without even noticing, you’ll get to know other people in the enterprise UX community on a personal level. 

So…how does it work?

Cozy Juicy Real is a classic, easy-to-learn board game, repurposed for 2022. It’s been played by thousands of people in more than 61 countries to bring us all (and the world) a little closer.

“I was skeptical at first, but fast-forward to last night and I’ve now attended my third Cozy Juicy Real game.”

-Dillon Chi, UX Researcher and Fellow, USA

Join to…

• Skip those painful moments of silence while everyone on Zoom stares blankly at their screen, waiting for someone to start a conversation.
• Learn tools to connect more deeply with friends, family and coworkers
• Connect more deeply with your peers in the Enterprise UX community
• Remember that behind it all – we’re all humans living a shared experience.

Online Video of how to play CozyJuicyReal

Note: This session is intended for Design at Scale 2022 attendees only. 

This session will run online on Thursday, June 9th 2:30 PM PT – 4::00 PM PT.

 Click here to register. 

This is an interactive session and spaces are limited.

About your Hosts

Jed and Sophia are group facilitators, coaches, board game designers and the creators of Cozy Juicy Real. More importantly, they’re two people who believe in the power of great conversations to bring us all a little closer. Cozy Juicy Real has been played by thousands of people in 61 countries – from students to start-ups and teams at some of the world’s most successful companies including Volvo, Zoom and Nike.

“Nights like this renew my faith in humanity”

-Reyna, USA

Designers are the driving force in today’s user research landscape. In this workshop, Prayag Narula, CEO & Co-Founder of Marvin, will discuss how good design is a competitive advantage that enhances the customer experience when you embed research into your process. Learn how design teams can use the tools and methodologies of trained researchers so the whole company benefits from a collaborative and repeatable approach to research.

Last July Silicon Valley Business Journal named B. Pagels-Minor, Senior Data Project Manager at Netflix, to its 40 Under 40 Class of 2021. To quote the article, “B. Pagels-Minor is a thought leader on product and culture development within technology companies. They are passionate about creating a culture of accountability and sustainable processes that allow teams to do the work well.”

Little did anyone know what was to come just a few months later. B. was thrust into the public eye for a stance they took on an issue that was important to them and others at their place of employment. A walk out ensued. So did termination.

B. joins us as a member of the greater UX community, and speaks to us about a topic that fits squarely into our day 3 theme: Design People—Caring for Individuals and Teams.

In this talk, B. Pagels-Minor will talk about their life, their experience at Netflix, and most importantly the things they’ve learned about the power of authenticity in both doing and enabling great work.

In 2018 Adel Du Toit was approached by her CIO with a request: Figure out how to measure the level of dissatisfaction that BCG’s internal employees were experiencing using the digital tools and services provided by the organization. Due to the data-driven nature of BCG, Du Toit knew she would have to provide quantitative data to support any recommendations. This is how the E-SAT program was born. Instead of measuring customer satisfaction, they measured employee satisfaction.

In the four years since that initial request from the CIO, BCG has consistently run the E-SAT program quarterly. And, by listening, acting and responding to feedback, the organization has seen an improvement on the E-SAT from 75% in 2019, to 85% in 2021.

During their December Annual Business review for all Agile Orgs, BCG’s CFO spotlighted their E-SAT program, declaring that he wanted every single Agile squad member to become “user obsessed”. Today BCG is using their E-SAT program to make strategic and investment decisions across our 13 Agile Tribes.

This pandemic was a season of healing for me,” was something Luz Bractcher never thought she’d say. Yet despite the devastation caused by shared global trauma, Luz discovered that the very life changes she faced as a result of lockdowns and physical distancing also allowed her an opportunity to address her mental, emotional, and creative health needs.

In this session, Luz shares her personal story of entering the pandemic in a state of burnout and how the season of isolation redefined the way she invited herself and her community into restful creativity.

As the risks of COVID diminish, and we tentatively reintegrate into the real world, this presentation focuses on 3 things to explore moving forward:

• Prioritizing rest as a way to resist hustle culture and toxic capitalism
• How our definition of “enough” directly impacts our approach to mental and emotional health in the workforce
• How to encourage creative play into your work as a way to cultivate connection.

There’s something shifting in our field. Increasingly, design professionals are drawn to work in domains that truly help humanity, rather than building another ‘Uber for X’, to make the rich richer. While this is an expected response to recent world events, the reality of doing such impactful work is full of obstacles.

Spanton will draw on 12+ years of UX design in healthcare to share some experiences and strategies, helping you anticipate and navigate predictable obstacles, so that you can apply your skills toward solving meaningful problems and realizing your goal of a truly impactful career.

The talk will cover:

• 5 common obstacles
• 3 coping mechanisms
• 1 big bag of hope and determination to create lasting meaningful impact

The metaverse, virtual reality, Web 3.0, distributed infrastructure, the Internet of Things, wearable computing, and AI: all these things are going to change the face of accessibility over the next 10 years. In this talk, Samuel Proulx, Fable’s Accessibility Evangelist, will give you an overview of what the current landscape looks like at the frontier of accessibility and assistive technology. Where’s the research taking us? What might be coming down the pipe?

We’re on wave three of the great resignation. Job opportunities abound for designers of all stripes, and loyalty is at an all time low as we reassess our changing professional needs and ambitions in this new world. Liam Thurston leads a team of 55 designers and researchers at Loblaw Digital, building commerce, loyalty, and healthcare products for all Canadians.

Thurston’s team weathered the great resignation with resilience and thrived in the face of change; it left them even stronger.

In this talk, Thurston will teach you practical tools and processes for creating a Design Practice North Star, skills matrix, and an inclusive set of cultural rituals to build trust and create safety for your team, especially within a large organization. If you’re looking to level up your leadership practice in order to acquire and retain incredible talent who generate outstanding outcomes, this talk is for you!

Details to come.