For the past few years, we student volunteers from design programs at UT Dallas and UNT have sketchnoted and live blogged  Big Design Conference talks. For many of these students, it is their first industry experience and professional conference. They really enjoy the interactions and experience, too. This year’s theme is designing for dignity, which... Read More

What is more important to you? a. Designing a delightful user experience b. Self-love, intimacy, peace, and freedom If your answer is the latter, join Preet Dalal in a session that’s half opinion talk, half interactive sticky-noting workshop, in which you’ll learn how to think beyond your career to meaningfully redesign your own life with... Read More

Design thinking and user research are increasingly standardized, predictable, and “deliverable” in their methodology. As designers, we reference precise Venn diagrams that show the intersection of users, organizations, and systems—we tell our clients that that sweet spot in the middle is where great products are built. Or we show them aspirational pyramids that exhibit experience-driven... Read More

Jan Ballard leads a discussion on o mentorship case study of an ongoing industry/academic program in Dallas–Fort Worth that brings professionals at Dialexa together with eager students in design, tech, business, and engineering to problem solve real-world projects in an eight-week, sprint-based experience. Students get experience, while professionals mentor young professionals. It is a way... Read More

We have told ourselves and each other for years that we should be happy with small victories — we worked with our teams to make the world a little more accessible. And yes, knowing that we made a difference is both motivating and professionally satisfying. But what happens when that isn’t enough? How can we... Read More

One of the UX Designer’s primary roles to not generate all the ideas, but to cultivate ideas from all of the various stakeholders in a project. Early on in my career, I thought I had to be the source of all the design ideas. I later learned that this was an incorrect assumption because great... Read More

This talk will highlight the UX work of the Queer Global team to design for dignity in the specific areas of accessibility and universal design, and design ethics, strategy, and integration. In this case study, we will how a globally diverse team of people collaborating across the globe to ensure a respectful, usable experience for... Read More

Designing for Dignity — effectively, consistently, and at scale — requires a full toolkit of experience standards, governance, and training. The problem? Developing such a toolkit consumes tons of time and energy. In practice, most teams end up putting “real work” first. Try our Adopt/Adapt method instead! Adopt existing free/open/public domain principles, methods, guides, and... Read More

Toxicity is so widespread in our online communities, it is hard to imagine a future without it. Multiplayer gaming is no different, but our research points to a solution: gamers are designers! For the love of the game and for self-preservation, many gamers bypass existing tools, and instead stitch together the safe spaces and friendly... Read More

During last year’s conference, I spoke about getting a seat at the table through UX measurement. The title of the talk was: “Seat at the table: can’t spell executive without UX” This year I’ll present a short summary of last year’s talk and will present the wins and challenges of having and maintaining a seat... Read More

Racism Untaught is focused on cultivating learning environments for people to further explore issues of race and racism, from the obvious to the invisible. Racism Untaught is a framework that was inspired by the need to incorporate design-led interventions into the design research process to assists participants in identifying racialized design and critically assess anti-racist... Read More

When going from zero to one with a new feature, product, or service, it is crucial to find out if your solution is useful before ensuring that it is usable. Designers can increase their influence and inspire stakeholder confidence by testing out the “what” before researching the “how.” In this talk, I will walk you... Read More

As designers, we take pride in what we do. Creating experiences to improve the lives of many despite the constraints of budgets, technology, and the like. Designers of marginalized backgrounds design & exist in an industry that begs to be reinvented while battling the constraints of the social system we know as the workplace. So,... Read More

There are more than 60 designers at DataArt, all of them distributed between Russia, Ukraine, Argentina, and other countries. Sometimes, we staff the project with several designers, who barely know each other, or come from various locations. Often it leads to the fact that opinionated and experienced people start arguing over UX decisions. How to... Read More

Asking “why” in design critiques invariably puts the designer into a defensive position: “Why did you do it this way?” or worse “Why _didn’t_ you do it that way?”. Rather than explaining their design, “why” questions force a designer to justify them. This can lead to tension and bruised egos, but rarely to better design.... Read More