Quotes from recent talks

"AI is fluent without standing; it never says this will not work, it never pushes back on the company."

"Avoid generic built-in evals, because then you're not defining quality for your specific situation."

"When anyone can make anything very fast and cheap, the role of UX is evolving."

"Many predictable harms in social media, gig economy, and Web3 were foreseen but not prevented because design lacked the needed power."

"Spending more time upfront asking questions and planning before using AI agents to update code improves outcomes."

"The biggest improvement was confidence — walking into a room with senior stakeholders prepared to ask sharper questions."

"Don’t type with AI, talk to it like a brilliant colleague who knows nothing about your project yet—give it everything."

"Communicating with precision and nuance to get good AI outputs is not second nature; it really takes practice."

"Dev plus AI ships directly to production with no one with taste in between."

"This interface could field any request, no matter how it was formatted, and adapt its entire form in its response."

"It’s not that our subscribers aren’t smart, they just don’t always feel smart."

"We’re focusing on observable behaviors and outcomes, not specific tools or time saved, to measure AI fluency."

"This is the biggest change I've seen in my 30-year career making digital products."

"Risk in health and in these communities is not static because it could depend on environmental conditions or social factors."

"If you're presenting a concept, you're endorsing it. You need to be able to say why."

"The answer wasn’t a better tool, it was better collaboration."

"Process and discipline got thrown out the window, but we really need new processes that incorporate these new AI tools."

"Automate the hell out of structured data, but stay involved in messy, rich data."

"We’ve got to get louder. We outnumber the haters, but we’ve got to be louder."

"The corporate work is actually starting to decline after peaking because it’s a form of extraction that may be collapsing."

"I just wanted to make things better for people through spaces and experiences."

"What if everyone was accepted? We could rise almost anyone to proficiency if the curriculum and pedagogy are strong enough."

"Move thoughtfully and purposefully is better than move fast and break things, especially in large companies with millions of users."

"We spend a lot of time measuring every little aspect, but how can we trust that our results show the value of our effort?"

"It’s easier to sell if the team is talking about the tool — popularity inside counts."

"The US has the highest maternal mortality rate among high-income nations in the world."

"Why in user experience do we have the word user? Isn’t it going away from love?"

"I do all the things, except for the physical installation. From customer sign-up to happy heat pump running."

"The hardest part is knowing what needs to change but not having the influence to change it."

"Sometimes limitations mean you can’t fully co-create, but transparency about where you are on the engagement continuum matters."

"You can see how this is an absolutely fantastic way to get any UX question answered quickly at any time of day without bothering your instructor or your boss."

"You can now stream our entire collection of over 70 books in EPUB format with your Gold subscription."

"Research’s role may shift to orchestrators of AI-synthesized insights and gap analyses rather than just primary data collectors."

"Simplicity can be a differentiator, as shown by Tally, which gained traction as a free, easy form builder."

"The best sources for tool info are other researchers in communities like LinkedIn and Slack, not really any independent compendiums."

"There is a huge space for improvement in AI features for UX research if these have any future."

"We made it mandatory to have a one-pager summary for every research project to make insights easy to manage."

"We are asked to produce more and more work with fewer people and smaller teams."

"Adding a senior researcher, Izzy, in field meant we could have more, smaller research tracks and better support for research newbies."

"Using AI to scan large archives of research is a game changer for meta-analyses, even if it’s imperfect."

"Low-fidelity prototypes let us keep fundamental changes flexible as long as possible."

"If rules and stats update in real time, you could know when saturation is reached as data streams in."

"Unlike social media, which I think should not exist, AI should exist but with caution."

"The moments when things 'click' often come during shower thoughts or while doing dishes — those reflective pauses matter."

"What good are the insights if we can’t get them where they need to go, when they need to go there, and make sure they get used?"

"Research is about answering questions that drive decisions, and that part should be democratized as much as possible."

"It’s not about play at work being silly; it’s about weaving it in seamlessly so it just feels right."

"We’re not just translators between different ways of thinking, but architects of shared reasoning processes."

"If I really just needed only quantitative data from a survey, then I would not go the AI moderated route."

"There's no way to deny it: every industry needs to adapt to AI, but nobody really knows how yet."

"You come from the future. Now go build it."

"Anchor yourself in what you know to be right and true."

"Insights are not the end; they must lead to decisions and improved user outcomes."

"We created monsters by stitching together many disjointed research tools that don’t scale well."

"The most successful way to ask about job function is a single-select question, not an open field."

"We do research not just to generate insights but to embed empathy across the organization."

"Our bet was that distributing ownership would create more advocates and free bandwidth for strategic work."

"The evolution in AI UIs is ongoing and rapid, and we’re still figuring out what the final form of AI-native applications looks like."

"The old way is over. It's over."

"Before for me, AI was just a tool, but now these agents are running in the background and are mostly invisible, changing everything."

"The future is researchers painting the larger picture while PMs and designers focus on deep, tactical user insights."

"Turning every study plan into a kind of report with new and existing insights is a mindset shift that can build a durable asset."

"Transitions can be long. I wished I had known that the identity shift is harder than the skill shift."

"Hugh Dubberly argues we should stop describing design as problem solving and instead see it as engaged conversation."

"Open standards rock. Proprietary monopolies keep you from making stuff and limit creativity."

"Right now, tech hiring is down because interest rates are high and headcount is expensive, not because the skills aren’t needed."

"I got invited to be an expert witness on an FTC legal case about deceptive designs, which changed my career."

"Meditation isn’t about stopping thinking, it’s about becoming aware of thinking."

"With great power comes great responsibility; we shouldn’t abandon using motivation techniques, or others will use them poorly."

"Linking data quality efforts to AI initiatives can help secure attention and budget for necessary improvements."

"My law professor outlined the modern legal process as UX: listening, researching, co-creating solutions with clients."

"AI is not a tool. AI has agency. AI makes decisions that impact people's lives."

"Emergence is properties of a whole system not expressed in properties of parts. Water is liquid but hydrogen and oxygen atoms are not."

"We need elegant guardrails to keep the business safe, keep participants safe, and make democratization ethical."

"Service experiences are only as inclusive as their weakest checkpoint."

"We were reinventing the wheel every time we entered a new market, which was incredibly slow and inefficient."

"Service design and enterprise design are not just for digital or government—they're applicable to complex organizational change and B2B market entry."

"Co-creation is where the meat of transformation happens; designers facilitate those who hold knowledge and make decisions."

"Service design’s role isn’t to humanize AI, it’s to humanize the organization around it."

"Making the invisible visible makes things move forward and create alignments."

"Amazon deploys new code into production into the hands of customers once every second."

"You have to socialize service design within organizations considering their dominant logic — whether engineering, clinical, or commercial."

"Small specific interventions travel further than big programs within organizations."

"Wiley Coyote is the master of iteration but he never really gets much closer to his goal because he fails to learn."

"If we make creating inclusive experiences our goal, legal compliance will naturally follow."

"We must build our service vision not just for the ideal, but for how to handle things when they go wrong."

"Finance is not just a system; finance is a performance."

"Our partnership is like cat and dog—sharing a body but having distinct identities and personalities."

"We are all more service design facilitators, bringing the right people together to create the right outcomes."

"When I started out, I knew nothing about digital sustainability."

"Design teams reporting through engineering tend to have the worst quality scores."

"There is no value in outsourcing the thinking of philosophy to AI; doing the thinking yourself is the point."

"When we first thought about this topic, we quickly realized we needed to point the finger at ourselves because we've exhibited some of these behaviors."

"The queen is not a decision-maker, she’s just there to reproduce."

"What if we trained Midjourney on our own style? That felt more ethical and right for our project."

"You can’t just be a designer adapting UX workflows assuming everybody else’s workflow stays the same; everything is changing with AI."

"Campfires are tribal, engaged knowledge spaces, libraries are corporate buildings, organized and curated."

"Evals are everywhere, right? Everybody's talking about evals. It is like one of the key things in developing useful AI products."

"There is a large and growing capability overhang in these models we haven’t discovered yet."

"Slowing down is hard in a capitalist economy that values speed, but patience and self-care are necessary."