Engaged: Designing for Behavior Change with author Amy Bucher

Amy Bucher is Chief Behavioral Officer at Lirio at Mad*Pow and author of our newest book, Engaged: Designing for Behavior Change. Amy has a PhD. in Psychology, so you’d be forgiven for assuming that she works in academia. Instead, she ended up at an agency where she focuses on healthcare and the many different motivational factors that are at play in the way people live their lives. In this episode, Amy and Lou Rosenfeld discuss the ethics of data collection, self-determination theory, fitness apps, her new book, and more.

Everything You Need to Know about the Civic Design 2022 Call for Presentations (Videoconference)

In the May Community call, we talk about all things conference presentation proposals! The Civic Design Call for Presentation (CFP) will be open for submissions until June 1 to present at the conference on November 16th – 18th, 2022.

Through the Looking Glass—The Outsider’s Perspective on the Enterprise with Dan Willis

Dan Willis is Director of Customer Experience at the General Services Administration’s Centers of Excellence, and the mastermind behind past Enterprise Experience conferences’ wildly-popular “Storytelling Sessions.” At this year’s Enterprise Experience conference, Dan will be leading Theme 3: “Through the Looking Glass – The Outsider’s Perspective on the Enterprise” on Wednesday, September 3. Considering Dan’s extensive government experience means he’s all too familiar with large, slow moving and bureaucratic enterprises. In this wide-ranging episode of the Rosenfeld Review, Dan shares anecdotes from his career and offers some sneak peeks into the six sessions he’ll be leading on day three of Enterprise Experience 2020.

Design is the Differentiator: Bringing New Design Innovations to a Very Antiquated and Very Large Industry

Technology and design are at the heart of the innovations Compass delivers to thousands of real estate agents. Compass Founder and CEO Robert Reffkin and Sr VP of Design & UXR Greg Petroff chat about the industry and the opportunity for design to make a difference.

• Learn how technology and design make Compass stand out and deliver digital innovations in a massive industry.
• Hear about the Compass culture of learning and collaboration that is at the core of high-performing design teams.
• See how design scales its efforts with the help of product and engineering partners and a powerful set of entrepreneurial principles.

It was the Best of Times. It was the Worst of Times.

In this provocative talk, Brendan encourages us to stop worrying about the future, recognize that we have what it takes to overcome any challenge, and work together to create a future that our field is worthy of.

He shares three stories to illustrate these points, taking inspiration from science fiction, Japanese samurai, and the enduring impression of his late Grandfather.

If you want to worry less about your career, see situations more clearly, and discover the most important question for DesignOps professionals to ask themselves today – don’t miss this presentation.

Design Management Models in the Face of Transformation

As a startup in hyper growth mode, the design teams at Signifyd immediately faced the unique challenges in meeting the demands of a fast-paced, agile environment which rarely looked the same everyday.

With growth, the pace of change continued, leading challenge of managing an organization in a constant state of transformation. How do you build and nourish teams to be both agile and hardy, having both flexible branches and strongly planted roots?

Sharing stories from across two design teams–the largely centralized Brand and Marketing team, and the mostly embedded Product team–Kincade and Ortiz-Reyes will illustrate how in just three years, those teams have transformed models through cross-pollination and shared best practices. Brand and Marketing’s centralized model has become more embedded, and Product’s embedded model now largely resembles a centralized model. The result? Signifyd’s design teams are among the most highly ranked in terms of employee satisfaction.

Join this session and gain valuable firsthand insights that will empower you to:

• Prepare your organization for transformation
• Implement and manage a participatory visualization of the org
• Understand and apply the psychology of change management

We Need to Talk with Joshua Graves

Tough conversations can feel like real-life horror stories—but they don’t have to. In We Need to Talk: A Survival Guide for Tough Conversations, Joshua Graves offers a practical, psychologically grounded toolkit for navigating conflict with clarity and courage. Drawing on insights from neuroscience, psychology, and his own lived experience, Graves explains why our brains react so strongly to tension and conflict—and what we can do about it.

Lou and Joshua discuss workplace power dynamics, emotional triggers, and avoidance patterns, showing how even a moment of pause can shift the outcome. Joshua’s advice? Slow down. Breathe. Ask questions that begin with what or how instead of why. And remember, you’re allowed to step away and come back—conflict doesn’t need to be resolved in the heat of the moment.

Whether you’re facing pay disputes, boundary violations, or breakdowns in trust, Joshua’s goal isn’t to script your response but to equip you with flexible, self-aware tools you can adapt to your own voice.

What You’ll Learn from this Episode:

• Why Joshua Graves, an artist with a love for spooky aesthetics, is an unexpected but deeply thoughtful guide to conflict.
• How his personal discomfort with confrontation led to years of research in psychology, neuroscience, and communication.
• Why our brains interpret digital conflict—like emails or Slack messages—as real threats, and what that means for how we respond.
• What it means to treat tough conversations like design problems, working within human constraints rather than against them.
• How slowing down and asking the right questions can transform emotionally charged moments into opportunities for clarity and connection.
• Why one-size-fits-all advice doesn’t work—and how Graves’ approach helps you develop your own voice in conflict.

Quick Reference Guide:
0:12 – Meet Joshua Graves
2:45 – The background of Joshua’s book, We Need to Talk
7:30 – Helpful rabbit holes when researching and writing We Need to Talk
10:00 – Advice for tough conversations
16:23 – Why you should use the Rosenverse
18:38 – What to do when someone is out of control
22:07 – “Conversations” to have with yourself
25:20 – Joshua’s gift for the audience

Rewriting the Rules through Organizational Development with Amanda Woolley

Listen wherever you get your favorite podcasts!
Apple podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio

“I’ve been asking myself the question, ‘Why are you doing that?’ since I was about four,” says Amanda Woolley. As an organizational development (OD) consultant and facilitator, she seems to have found the right profession. Amanda began her career with NHS England, eventually becoming the System Leadership Development Senior Manager before working as a consultant. Ironically, she initially rejected the notion that she was an “OD person,” not being entirely sure what the requirements were.

In Lou and Amanda’s discussion, she reflects on her journey into OD. She explains that OD focuses on helping teams step back and evaluate how they work together, addressing the complexities and “weirdness” that can emerge in workplace dynamics. They discuss the ideal environment for creating effective change in an organization, emphasizing the importance of neutrality, creativity, and ownership.

Amanda shares a personal story about being a caregiver at a young age for her ill mother. She reflects, “My best experiences in healthcare are when people have broken the rules.” Today, she brings stakeholders together so that procedures can be rewritten to make protocols efficient and effective for all involved—and she’ll bring her experience and OD perspective to her panel at Advancing Service Design 2024 (virtual, December 3-4).

What You’ll Learn from this Episode:

• The purpose of Organizational Development and who typically does it
• Common “weird” challenges organizations face
• When and why organizations should bring in consultants, like OD specialists, to provide a neutral perspective and facilitate better communication and problem-solving
• Amanda’s career path and the rich experiences that inform her work today

Quick Reference Guide:
0:14 – Meet Amanda
1:50 – Systems and organizational development share a focus on frameworks and language
5:08 – What is organizational development, and who does it?
6:24 – Being aware of what’s weird and doing something about it
9:43 – The triggers that expose the need for an organizational development specialist
14:21 – Creating space that invites change and creativity
17:15 – 5 things about the Rosenverse
19:53 – How Amanda’s experience with the National Health Services in the UK has influenced her work today
27:27 – Amanda’s gift for listeners

Theme 4: Enterprise Organizational Journey

We’ll blend panel-style discussion, improvisation, business wargaming, and more to explore the dynamics of cross-functional enterprise implementation teams. Our panel of experts—each representing a different facet of the software development lifecycle, including UX, Product, Development, Operations and Sales & Marketing—will be put into situations not of their own choosing that they must resolve in a series of meetings played out before the audience. Each member has their organization’s goals in mind, and their company’s goals in mind, but they don’t always know everybody else’s goals or concerns. Just like back at the office!

Participating in this session:

– Nafisa Bhojawala, UX Team Lead for Compute, Google Cloud Platform
– Kintan Brahmbhatt, Head of Product Management, Amazon Music
– David Gatto, Strategic Account Executive, Smartsheet
– Dave Sifry, CTO, MyVillage
– Wendy Spies, Director of Business Development for Data and AI

How Lessons Learned from Our Youngest Users Can Help Us Evolve our Practices

Every researcher wants to get the most out of a testing session but that’s easier said than done. It requires expert navigation of the nuances of different personalities, distinct power dynamics, and the varied abilities of each participant.

Dovetail’s Head of Design and Research, Lucy Denton sits down with Mila Kuznetsova, Senior Director of User Research and Product at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt to get a better insight into her experiments with methodologies and techniques as she’s navigated testing with a distinct participant group—children. In this session, we’ll hear from Mila about staying nimble, adjusting her approach to cater to the individual, and how we could bring the same level of understanding and grace to testing with adults. This session isn’t to be missed!