That Quiet Little Voice: When Design and Ethics Collide

The design industry’s relationship to the field of business has long been established and continues to become further entangled each year. But designers aren’t just satisfied with only disrupting the business sector—they’re keen to disrupt the social sector too. Unfortunately, the weaknesses baked into the discipline of design (that have been present from the start) are readily exposed when designers enter complex social issues and treat them like any other human-centered innovation challenge. The lack of a moral framework, let alone a set of ethical guidelines, put designers at great risk of doing more harm than good.

Double Your Mileage: Use Your Research Strategically

Now that you’ve collected that great design research, integrated qualitative with quantitative, and put it to work into making products and services better, it’s time to get double the mileage (influence) from those same insights and use them toward corporate strategy. The missing element from the traditional business strategy process is the critical insights that come from (mainly, qualitative) user research. Our peers use qualitative market research that misidentifies business opportunities (and solutions) because they have an incomplete frame. With the right tools, processes, and framing, your research can influence decisions of WHAT products and services get green-lit.

How to Identify and Increase your “Experience Quotient”

Even in enterprises with mature design practices, true design execution requires UX leaders to speak and understand the language of business—finance and strategy—and to communicate the impact that superior experiences have on overall business strategy.

This talk will demonstrate how models and concepts used by leading management consulting firms help enterprises develop successful design-driven strategies that increase customer value and adoption.

Scaling the Human Center

How do you keep human needs balanced with those of a business, especially when the business is the largest power and gas company in the country? Gretchen Anderson is the Head of Design at PG&E, and she talks about how she’s scaling what she’s learned across an enterprise-level organization.

Peace is waged with sticky notes: Mapping Real-World Experiences

Framing a user experience map is tricky, as we have to determine what to show from research, as well as what to leave out. How do we determine the best approach to structure and organize our maps and will design have a greater impact beyond a commercial setting? That’s what Jim Kalbach, author of Mapping Experiences, pondered when an organization dedicated to countering violent extremism approached him to facilitate a journey mapping workshop.

In this talk, Jim shares his story of applying design thinking techniques and experience mapping to a very real-world problem: hate. He will explore the parallels between dealing with people caught up in business organizational silos and those emerging from violent extremist factions. Each group, whether in a business setting or not, will have their own language, tools, methods and perspectives. Jim will share his approach to communicating through design with these tricky questions to both C-Level executives to ex-violent extremists.

How to Drive a Design Project When you Don’t Have a Design Team

In enterprise organizations, product development work, and therefore, design work, typically happens within a specific business unit or organization. Dedicated and embedded squads means there is a close and tight feedback loop between team members.

But what happens when your company kicks off an initiative that spans across business units? How do you resource and run a design project with no dedicated designers? This case study will cover how we set out a vision, structured communications, built up an ad-hoc design team, shipped our first cross-organization product and all the lessons we learned along the way.

Theme 1: Red Tape and Brick-and-Mortar: Transforming Century-Old Industries

What is it like to lead change in a century-old company, where the hierarchies are deep, UX is twice removed from the main business, and red tape is a norm? What is it like to push for design transformation at the scale of a nation? 

Theme 1 brings five stories of successful UX Leadership in three industries that are a tough nut to crack: manufacturing, transportation, and government. From Canadian National Rail to Australian Post, from Ford to Department of Defense and Medicare services – these case studies will teach you how to engage and influence the toughest stakeholders.

The Roots of Inclusion with Victor Udoewa

We hear a lot about diversity, equity, and inclusion, but you probably haven’t heard it like this. Nigerian-born Victor Udoewa, service design lead at the Centers for Disease Control’s Office of Public Health Data, Surveillance, and Technology, brings a beautiful perspective that challenges current research methodologies.

Victor introduces the notion of the pluriverse, emphasizing that people inhabit different worlds with unique ways of being and knowing. He draws attention to the diverse perspectives that shape people’s beliefs and understanding, emphasizing the importance of acknowledging and bridging these gaps.

He also uses a tree as a metaphor, in which the roots are ways of being, the trunk ways of knowing, and the branches and leaves are methodologies and methods. The metaphor suggests that inclusive research should not just focus on the green parts of the tree but what’s underneath the surface, getting to the very roots of being.

Recognizing the limitations of mainstream research toolkits and critiquing methodologies grounded in Western ways of being, Victor proposes that truly inclusive research goes far beyond having diverse teams study diverse audiences.

This episode is just a taste of Victor’s talk at the upcoming in-person Advancing Research Conference, “Beyond Methods and Diversity: The Roots of Inclusion.”

What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
– The Pluriverse Concept: The idea that the world comprises multiple realities, ways of being, and existences
– Standpoint Theory: The idea that individuals at the bottom of a social hierarchy possess a knowledge that is inaccessible to those at higher levels
– Victor’s Tree Metaphor: Roots symbolize ways of being, the trunk represents ways of knowing, and branches and leaves denote methodologies and methods
– Radical Participatory Research: Allowing research to emerge organically from the ways of being of the community involved

Quick Reference Guide:
[00:10] Meet Victor Udoewa
[02:16] About Victor’s talk at Advancing Research
[04:26] The pluriverse and asymmetry of knowledge
[11:20] Social hierarchy, ways of being, and methodology
[12:52] The tree metaphor – getting to the roots
[22:20] Research starting with a way of being
[26:47] Cultural individualism on research
[33:02] Victor’s gift for listeners

Boon Yew Chew on Systems Thinking as a Relational Tool

Boon Yew Chew is senior principal UX designer at Elsevier and an IxDA local leader and board alumn. He will be a speaker at the upcoming 2023 Enterprise UX Conference on June 6th and 7th, delivering a session on “Making Sense of Systems – and Using Systems to Make Sense of the Enterprise.”

Systems thinking can seem abstract and theoretical, but Boon reveals some unexpected ways that systems thinking can have a profound impact on individuals and relationships within organizations. Who knew that systems thinking could be an emotional intelligence tool?

Lou and Boon begin today’s episode by discussing the history of systems thinking and how it developed in the ‘40s and ‘50s, mostly within scientific communities, and grew into other fields and disciplines. It offered a new way of thinking about how things develop and change over time.

Boon goes on to describe his path into systems thinking and how, with its holistic, big-picture perspective, there is little room for blaming individuals when problems are viewed through a systems thinking lens. A system can give context to the behavior or clashes within an organization and alleviate frustration. Believe it or not, systems thinking can be a relationally lubricating tool.

Systems thinking can help us answer the following:
• Where do I fit?
• Where do the people I’m serving, working with, developing with, and creating for fit within the system?
• How is the organization I’m part of itself part of a bigger system?

A summary of Boon’s insights:
• Systems thinking helps us understand context, empathize, and understand other people and the context they work in
• Systems thinking provides a visual language that other people can learn from
• Language can help reveal not just problems, but how problems relate to each other even when they may not seem connected
• Systems thinking is a tool that can help with prioritization

What you’ll learn from this episode
The history of systems thinking, especially how it first developed within scientific communities
The differences between systems and design thinking
How systems thinking can reduce finger-pointing and relational conflict
Why it’s best to embrace messy differences as part of the process
How to bring systems thinking into the workplace without confusing or alienating others

Quick Reference Guide
[0:00:12] Introduction of Boon Yew Chew
[0:02:31] System thinking versus design thinking
[0:04:44] The history of systems thinking
[0:08:51] Being trained in one framework and finding it incomplete in the real world
[0:10:32] Boon explains how he navigated towards systems thinking
[0:16:12] When you feel like your goals are clashing with those of others in the organization
[0:19:08] On labels, understanding, reducing friction, and acceptance
[0:22:16] Enterprise UX 2023 is back!
[0:24:19] Boon’s Enterprise UX talk is titled “Making Sense of Systems and Using Systems to Make Sense of the Enterprise.” Applied aspects of how UX people are using systems thinking in enterprises
[0:27:17] Boon “eats his own dog food” and does “double work”
[0:27:52] An example of what success might look like
[0:31:45] A summary of how Boon uses systems thinking
[0:35:29] Boon’s gift for listeners

Co-Creating Operating Models for Design Teams with Daniel Orbach

The best operating models for design orgs are mission-driven, evolving, and team-developed. Those criteria might seem daunting, but Daniel Orbach, Lou’s guest and a speaker at the DesignOps Summit (taking place virtually September 23-25), explains how he facilitates a dynamic culture of co-creating with his team at JP Morgan Chase. Daniel outlines his framework, one where the whole team is involved. It’s a dynamic, fluid process that builds teamwork, creates buy-in, and establishes a framework of periodic review, which encourages continual evolution.

Lou and Daniel discuss the impact of rituals and mission statements on both teams and individuals. They also explore the impact of a team’s operating models on the broader organization and how interactions with various teams can foster shared understanding within the broader context of the organization.

What You’ll Learn from this Episode:

• How mission statements can inspire and drive operating models
• The power of organic rituals and the unusual, unifying ritual of Daniel’s team at JP Morgan Chase
• How cross-pollinating between teams can create a shared vocabulary and increase understanding

Quick Reference Guide:
2:36 – Introduction of Daniel
3:14 – Co-creating operating models with a team
4:33 – On mission and operating models
7:19 – Quarterly impact retrospectives
9:16 – Rituals and mission
12:55 – Co-creating operating models
15:34 – Why you need the Rosenverse
18:39 – Operating models’ effects on broader organizations
21:00 – Shared vocabulary
23:07 – Cross-pollinating in organizations to facilitate shared understanding
25:05 – Operating models and the individual
28:09 – Daniel’s gift for the audience