UX Australia Day 1
The Contemporary Practice of Design - a look at the potential for design over the coming decade

UXA2021 Steve Baty

Design Research 2022
Navigating the 'insights' economy

DR2022 Katy Tullington

Succeeding in Design 2022
Belonging in design.

SID2022 Michelle Ou

UX Australia 2022
Enterprise Service Design for Government: De-risking the design and delivery of digital services.

UX2022 Liz Adcock - Enterprise Service Design for Government

Do you squirm in your seat when asked to introduce yourself? Do you find networking awkward and embarrassing? In meetings, do you find yourself keeping quiet even though you have something to say? Does a quiet evening at home with a book sound more attractive to you than an evening socialising with people you’ve never met?    

If your answer to most of these questions is yes, congratulations: you are (probably) an introvert. As an introvert, you lose energy when engaging with people rather than gain. People engagement is not optional if you want to lead. So how do you lead as an introvert?

In this talk, Tim Yeo will share techniques he's used to manage his own introversion in order to lead as a designer. He'll also share power tips he's learned leading a fully remote global team during coronavirus isolation that play to an introvert's strengths.

UXA2022 Day 2

UXA2022 Tim Yeo - Design Leadership for Introverts

Defending design: writing to influence

UXA Day 2

UX2022 Matt Fenwick - Defending design: writing to influence

In a complex and uncertain world,  businesses have focused on the importance of 'telling a good story' to cut through the noise. 

But how can designers use storytelling to inform their day-to-day work? Not just when crafting presentations or communicating to clients, but within the DNA of our digital products.

In this talk, we'll take proven narrative structures and apply them to the new world of websites, apps and emerging technologies.

UXA2022 Day 2

UXA2022 Joel Perlgut -The Narrative Design of Everyday Things: Storytelling and Digital Products

Designing practices for hybrid and flexible teams requires a very clear understanding of what must be consistent and what can be flexible. In this presentation I will draw on some specific case studies and stories from my time as both a researcher and consultant in business process design and work practice. As researchers we talk about a desire to make our findings relevant to industry and as consultants, managers and leaders we talk about drawing on evidence. Over the last 7 years I have been wearing both of those hats simultaneously and it has had tremendous benefits for both my research and my consulting practice.

DL2022 Anita Gisch - Designing Business Systems to Support Flexible Work Practices...

How do we set our future design leaders up for success now and not leave until they become a design leader? Our talk will share how our trials and tribulations of challenging the norm of a leadership team, to ensure we stay true to our principles and break the mold for inclusion.

DL2022 Aron Tucker & Jane Nguyen - Reimagining leadership teams

One of the biggest challenges for design leaders today, is creating cultures of trust & authenticity that allows people to thrive. Feelings are the most under-utilised tool we all have to shape culture. Carolyn will explore through her own experiences, how acknowledging and utilising feelings has guided her & the team at Creatable to create more impactful experiences for our people and our users.

DL2022 CarolynPearce -  Leading with feelings

Traditional leadership styles are centred on Eurocentric concepts of authority figures influencing and guiding through the organisation to achieve their ends. SEVA leadership challenges this concept to create a new paradigm that integrates concepts of communal wellbeing, equality, and inclusiveness through service. Based on the Sikh concept of ‘Seva’ or ‘Sewa’,, there are three facets to SEVA Leadership: tan, man and dhan—physical, emotional and material service. ‘The SEVA Wheel’ is a simple, easy to apply design framework that offers a new perspective on how to embrace transformative, holistic, leadership for individuals, communities, and organisations to prosper.

DL2022 Cheri Flewell - Smith -  SEVA Leadership: A Decolonised Perspective

When we think of “users” we often confine their identities to how they’re interacting with our products and services. But how might we understand their mental models of the world and how those behaviors translate into the experiences we deliver? In this session, we’ll explore ethnographic and visual methods for continuous research, the role of language and metaphors in survey design, and actionable strategies to develop meaningful, adaptable products.

DL2022 Ibrahim Ayub - Leading with Empathy...

Design hiring is broken. And with The Great Resignation and Remote Jobs Boom, we’re in the most competitive recruiting market of our lifetimes.
A radically transparent approach earns designers’ trust, speeds up your hiring cycles, and helps all candidates perform their best

DL2022 Jonathan Colman - Transparent Recruiting...

Is money the only way to recruit and retain staff?

There are more factors than money that an employer can use for both retaining and hiring designers. Using Daniel Pink’s model of mastery, autonomy and purpose, I will go through ways to craft roles and packages that will appeal to the market.

DL2022 Mags Hanley - Is money the only way to...

We continue to see more and more organisations prioritise employee engagement and strengthening their Employee Value Proposition (EVP). Whilst there is no 'one size fits all' answer when it comes to building and scaling an empowered and engaged team - prioritising people over process is key to growth. Gain insights and a practical approach to apply with your teams in an ever-changing landscape.

DL2022 Michelle Cabanela - Building and scaling empowered and engaged teams

Many of us have taken for granted the ability of our teams to show up for work with energy, positivity and a willingness to jump into a room with several other humans for days at a time to swarm on a design challenge. 

This is not true anymore. Leading design teams in the context of ‘the new normal’ (hybrid teams, fully remote, new resilience challenges) requires us to really understand the principles of design thinking, while re-evaluating some of the practices.

In doing this, I have seen an opportunity for deeper empathy, more global collaboration, and found new ways to foster creativity to add to our toolkit of in-person methods.

DL2022 Naomi Schofield - Leading creative teams into the new normal

Lessons learnt from 20 years establishing and scaling Design-led Innovation at a team, organisation and country level.

DL2022 Nathan Baird - Establishing A Kick-Ass Design-Led Innovation Practice

As designer leaders, we want to be able to make wise decisions and we want to draw on wisdom to guide us as we lead our teams and design in organisations.

Fortunately we don’t have to wait until we are old and grey to access wisdom; it can be experienced through ways of thinking and acting. In this talk we will explore what wisdom is made up of (according to research )and how we as design leaders can use aspects of wisdom now.

DL2022 Sarah Stokes - Wise design leadership is closer ...

When were the concepts behind the double diamond invented?

When was the first 'how might we' question asked?

When did people start 'brainstorming'?

The answers are all in a 30 year period after the end of World War 2, when parallel intellectual movements centred around creating scientific methodologies for creativity and design thrived in America and the UK. Many of the ideas, principles, and design processes of that age are still with us today.

In this talk, we will do more than describe yet another design process model - we will explore the historical and cultural origins of the design and creativity methods that are still common in design, and interrogate how those origins could be embedding biased assumptions in the work we do today.

DL2022 Zoe Rose - ‘Scientific design methods’ and ‘applied creativity’: a lost history

The good, the bad and the complex: appreciating complexity through frontline UXR

During this presentation, I will delve into the challenges I faced while transitioning from researching consumer products to products used by expert users.

I will share how the typical research process gave me limited kind of work I could do and how opening up to rethinking research processes helped me see how far research can go.

DR2023 - Hossein Raspberry - The good, the bad and the complex...

Children are often seen but not heard in the design process. How can you look at them more as co-creators than consumers for your product or service? This talk will help you to understand working with child-centred design mindset in startup or company. As a design for children rights advocate Saloni will explain her own framework as she learnt and unlearnt listening to children’s voices and designing with them.

DR2023 Saloni Mhapsekar - Learning to listen, listening to learn

Anthropology’s, and by extension Ethnography’s remit is frequently defined as asking the question, 'what does it mean to be human'? But, what if humans were not at the centre of what we do? Solving global issues and promoting systemic change, means changing not just the inputs but also our point of view.

DR2023 Sophie Goodman & Bec Purser - Bin Chickens & Beavers

How to gain rich, valuable insights to help you truly understand your customers.

You might be comfortable designing based on data, but how rich and robust is that data? In this talk you’ll learn how to conduct meaningful research in a fast, easy and more effective way. It will explore ways to plan and run research, so you can gather unique, valuable and actionable insights. Come along to master the tools and methods you need to improve your design research practice so you can create rave-worthy experiences for your customers.

DR2023 Sarah Heimier - Elevate your design research

Exploring the aftermath of enforced behaviour change (from Covid-19) on younger people’s habits, identity and behaviour and understanding what it means for the ABC as we deliver audience informed digital experiences.

Over the last 2.5 years, people across Australia, and much of the world, endured a period of enforced behaviour change, that radically changed how we lived, socialised and worked. These changes intensified many people’s relationships with digital products and technology, with the ABC benefitting from this voracious appetite to be informed, educated and entertained. But as the regulations, norms and guidelines that dominated our lives during Covid-19 disappear, come and learn how this rare event impacted audiences' habits, behaviours, wellbeing and decisions and what it means for the ABC as we deliver audience informed digital experiences.

DR2023 Alex Crook - Exploring the aftermath of enforced behaviour change (from Covid-19)

Let me ask you this - 

How certain are you that the product, service, feature that you researched, is delivering positive outcomes for people in the real world? Is it working the way you said it would work? When did you last check?

Human-centred design practices enable evidence-led decision making. The assumed outcome of this practice is that we build everyday products and services that enhance people’s lives, support positive behaviours and contribute to communities in a meaningful way. But, without effective evaluation, we can’t be sure if what we designed is working the way we said it would.

In this presentation, learn how to measure what matters and understand if outcomes are being achieved.

DR2023 Laura Ryan & Brendan Reed - Design Research and the Evaluation Frontier

We use design research to improve products and services, but how often do we consider the user experience of participating in research? 

This presentation will explore how to embed accessibility and inclusion in design research practices so that everyone can feel welcome. In doing so, you’ll find richer insights and reach broader, underserved communities.

UXDR2023 Michelle Ou - Let’s make design research more inclusive

Democratization is something few of us would choose if we had alternatives. We would want budget and headcount to grow the UX Research department. A team stretched thin is told not only to let anybody do some or all of their jobs, but that they will need to train and oversee this work.

DR2023 Debbie Levitt - Don't Democratize UX Research - And Governance For Those Doing It

Design research is generally discussed in the context of gaining a better, deeper understanding of the needs, behaviours and motivations of individuals and groups. Typically, these people are viewed as being outside of, or separate from the organisation responsible, or interested in, responding to those needs. In his 2010 book on Innovation, Disrupt, Luke Williams speaks of the power of understanding tensions experienced by individuals as a means of sparking innovative ideas.

Organisational Tensions provide similar insight and serve a similar role when engaging in strategic design activities. Like individuals, organisations undergo tension as a result of internal and external forces; the misalignment between systems and needs; and the changing expectations of customers and staff in relation to the work of the organisation. This presentation will look at the ways in which organisational tensions can be identified; look at some examples of tensions; and look at a case study from the State Library of Victoria.

DR2023 Steve Baty - Organisational Tensions - important context to the customer journey

Scattered research write-ups, a heap of new employees, and everyone is WFH. When even the researchers are saying “hey, where’s that report about xyz we wrote last week?”, it’s time to get organised with a research repository - though we have no budget and no new tools. I’ll be sharing the story and pitfalls of how we built a repository on a shoestring, to raise awareness and improve access to research in the business, with minimal admin overhead (the real holy grail).

DR2023 Naomi Civins - More than a filing cabinet: building a flexible, useful research repository

We've all been there; a mixed methodology research assignment inclusive of behavioral, attitudinal, qualitative and quantitative packed full of customer insights ready to change the world... only for that Powerpoint to sit in an executives inbox for months on end, ignored or overlooked.

How might we bring the value back to research reporting? By bringing humans together to understand research outcomes in a workshop rather than a report, we make our insights relevant and valuable.

Strategy comes to the fore, and human connection and empathy direct to those that need to hear it... and take away what is most valuable; the change it needs to be.

DR2023 Robert Williams - Stop The Report! The Power of People.

The presentation will provide resources to make presenting research results more engaging. Incorporating infographics resources into presentations is an excellent way to generate an impactful narrative while presenting much information in an easy-to-absorb format.

DR2023 - Carla Sarli Story showing: The use of infographic resources to present research results.

Ever wondered how tech companies like Zendesk conducts research for to help determine future directions, particularly in new product areas like bots and automation.

In the realm of customer service, automation is often thought of as deflection. We don’t often think of opportunities for people to help themselves and having customer support specialists get really hands-on and unblock more complicated situations. 


This talk covers how we collaborated with a global team and customer base to drive the direction and the future of customer support. We will cover some of the challenges faced when researching green-field products and share how we handled:
* How to position and get buy-in with strategic research when the stakes are high & pressure to deliver is high
* Coming to an agreed outcome when there are opposing and diverse viewpoints from the stakeholders.
* Getting consensus on what is the most important thing to tackle next using an evidence based and data-driven approach.

DR2023 Fionna Yao & Anna Lee Anda - Beep Boop! Are bots better for consumers and the agents...

When tackling complex problems it can be difficult to know where to begin but usually we want to start with what will deliver the most value. Unfortunately value can be difficult to pinpoint often due to lack of data but this is where design research can shine.

In this session we will explore a structured approach to valuing opportunities, making it easier to calculate and communicate value to your stakeholders.

DR2023 Jessica Crisp - So What? Connecting Research to Value

Karina Hickey -  Putting together your UX research portfolio: how to make post-it notes sexy

User experience, service design, customer experience and related conferences. 

UX Australia

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