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
"You have a strategy either by design or by default; most often, that default is doing whatever is most politically expedient or urgent."
Chris GeisonWhat is Research Strategy?
March 11, 2021
"I thought I could single handedly bring design thinking to MailChimp. Turns out it took 1,000 people."
Jacqui Frey Alison RandSetting the Table for Dynamic Change
October 24, 2019
"Sensemaking is your superpower as a researcher to amplify your impact beyond user experience mechanics."
Robin BeersNavigating organizational systems: Rethinking researcher’s role in driving change
March 13, 2025
"The harms of technology typically fall on non-users and worse-off groups in society."
Cennydd BowlesResponsible Design in Reality
June 9, 2021
"Don’t be ideal. Do better. Start by making a public goal to create accountability and internal conversations."
Saara Kamppari-MillerInclusive Design is DesignOps
September 29, 2021
"Take your cross-functional partners out to lunch. Build relationships because people don’t resist change; they resist what they don’t know."
Greg PetroffSoftware as Material—A Redux
June 6, 2023
"We literally want to advance this field by creating space for really good professional conversations to happen."
Bria Alexander Louis RosenfeldOpening Remarks Day 1
March 25, 2024
"Prioritizing across a complex ecosystem of business owners requires deep alignment between product and UX or the product never moves forward."
Laureen Kattan Julie KimCentering Patients and Clinicians in a Complex Government Ecosystem
November 29, 2023
"Lack of research before or after the workshop can be recovered from but at some cost to the concept’s validity."
Anne MamaghaniHow Your Organization's Generative Workshops Are Probably Going Wrong and How to Get Them Right
March 28, 2023
