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
"We as designers are expert pattern finders and observers of human behavior, which is key in this work."
Jim KalbachPeace is waged with sticky notes: Mapping Real-World Experiences
June 14, 2018
"Public data has a life of its own; it is sometimes one thing, sometimes another, depending on context and display."
Bryce Benton[Demo] AI-powered UX enhancement: Aligning GitHub documentation with USWDS at Austin Public Library
June 4, 2024
"Building a distribution list of user-centered design success stories created a groundswell with 1,200 subscribers hungry for more."
Ted Booth Sam Ladner Fredrik Matheson Russ UngerDiscussion
June 8, 2016
"We made a 250-person testbed grow to 1200 people in under a week just through one email campaign."
Megan BlockerA Selectively Scrappy Approach to ResearchOps
November 8, 2018
"Large language models cluster text using semantic relationships rather than shared vocabulary like traditional QDA."
Vitorio MilianoDon’t call it AI: Turn words into numbers with quantitative ethnography
March 11, 2026
"Our design system and components are public on developer.servicenow.com to encourage customer reuse and consistency."
George Hinchliffe Joy LiuDelivering Amazing Experiences
June 10, 2021
"SAFe often turns UX into just digital or visual designers, which is wasteful and marginalizes valuable skills."
Christian CrumlishAMA with Christian Crumlish, author of Product Management for UX People
March 24, 2022
"Resilience is being able to maintain self needs and effectiveness at moments of change, tough demands, and adversity."
Ariba JahanTeam Resiliency Through a Pandemic
January 8, 2024
"Accessibility needs are a spectrum, not binary."
Sam ProulxTo Boldly Go: The New Frontiers of Accessibility
June 10, 2022
