Asking the Right Questions: Life, Hope and Moving Forward During the Pandemic
Summary
Details to come.
Key Insights
-
•
Starting meetings or classes with a simple warm-up increases attentiveness and presence.
-
•
Remote teaching often results in students keeping cameras off, impacting engagement, but this can be navigated with inclusive strategies.
-
•
Peloton taught the speaker practical leadership lessons including compassion, collaboration, and community support.
-
•
Consistency is critical in leadership and personal growth, exemplified by the speaker's 73-week exercise streak.
-
•
Inclusive leadership requires acknowledging where people are physically and emotionally, offering alternatives accordingly.
-
•
Organizations must consistently provide education and enforce policies addressing discrimination, considering intersectional identities.
-
•
Leadership must listen actively and avoid placing the burden of diversity work solely on marginalized groups.
-
•
Recognizing external stressors such as global events is essential to empathetic leadership and inclusive workplaces.
-
•
Language matters; everyday expressions can unintentionally exclude or offend marginalized communities.
-
•
Inclusion and accessibility should be embedded into every designer's responsibilities, not isolated to specialists.
Notable Quotes
"I had you all do a warm-up before we started to help everyone be present and calm."
"Sometimes working with a bunch of boxes and letters on Zoom was the reality of remote classes."
"Be compassionate with yourself and others. Not everyone likes high fives, and that's okay."
"Collaboration is key. I'm never alone in a Peloton class, even at 4:30 in the morning."
"Consistency is key. I'm on a 73-week streak right now, and that's pretty badass."
"Identity is not monolithic; policies should address layered experiences."
"It is not the responsibility of marginalized groups to do all the educating about their experiences."
"Listen is a skill that is not emphasized enough in leadership."
"Watch your language; terms like 'that's so lame' can be exclusionary or offensive."
"Inclusion and accessibility need to be part of every designer's role, even if today it is one person's job."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"In 2020, UX hiring grew 20% as digital experiences became critical during the pandemic."
Dana Bishop2022: The Year UX Demonstrates its Business Impact
March 11, 2022
"Empowerment is problematic because when we empower others, we reinforce the hierarchy we seek to subvert."
Victor UdoewaRadical Participatory Design: Decolonizing Participatory Design Processes
December 10, 2021
"Disability is less about a person and more about a person’s interaction with the environment and processes."
Samuel ProulxFrom Standards to Innovation: Why Inclusive Design Wins
November 19, 2025
"It didn’t matter how good the design was nor how good the strategy was if the organization delivering the design wasn’t set up to do it well."
Peter MerholzThe Mysterious Case of the Missing UX Career Path
August 25, 2022
"Dedicated staffing gives designers deep vertical mastery but limits horizontal experience."
Alicia MootyDesign Staffing Models
September 30, 2021
"It’s impossible for any single researcher or manager to identify all cross-functional impact opportunities alone."
Fatimah RichmondThe Future of ReOps as a Strategic Function: A Roadmap for Getting There
March 25, 2024
"The future is researchers painting the larger picture while PMs and designers focus on deep, tactical user insights."
Mike OrenImproving Democratized Research with CustomGPTs and Gems
February 25, 2026
"User research is interdisciplinary; only two thirds of people who do research describe their job as primarily research."
JP Allen Holly HoldenNavigating the UX Tools Landscape
October 1, 2021
"Ecosystems have reinforcing loops that can be out of control, like algae in a fish tank, and balancing loops that maintain equilibrium."
Erin Hoffman-JohnThis Game is Never Done: Design Leadership Techniques from the Video Game World
November 6, 2017
