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
"The key is of course trust, but in my house the magic word is please."
Dorelle RabinowitzThe Magic Word is Trust
June 15, 2018
"AI follow-up questions led to frustrated participants because it asked highly obvious questions and ignored detailed context."
Erin Weigel Petra RajkovTesting and Experimentation Tools
March 12, 2026
"We’re not celebrating failure. Failure sucks. We’re celebrating the attempt and boldness."
Dan WardFailure Friday #1 with Dan Ward
February 7, 2025
"Design leadership responsibilities aren’t just for leaders; many overlap with design ops and individual designers."
Jason MesutShaping design, designers and teams
November 8, 2018
"Service design is very up-and-coming, but there’s still a long way to go in thinking about the entire user journey."
Kit Unger Jackie Ho Veevi Rosenstein Vasileios XanthopoulosTheme 2: Discussion
January 8, 2024
"The biggest bottleneck is the bureaucracy, like the Paperwork Reduction Act, we have to creatively navigate that."
Michael LandEstablishing Design Operations in Government
February 18, 2021
"What if we had AI teammates who were on every call and could help moderate, recap, and track time? That future is likely."
Bria Alexander Laura Gatewood Corey Long Daniel Orbach Laine Prokay Deanna SmithThe Big Question about Resilience: A panel discussion
September 23, 2024
"All behavior your component is capable of, including responsive and interaction states, will work inside UXPin."
Jack BeharHow to Build Prototypes that Behave like an End-Product
December 6, 2022
"The power to say no has been a blessing in disguise, helping us refocus on high priority work after layoffs."
Maggie DieringerCreating Consistency Through Constant Change
January 8, 2024