Rosenverse

This video is only accessible to Gold members. Log in or register for a free Gold Trial Account to watch.

Log in Register

Most conference talks are accessible to Gold members, while community videos are generally available to all logged-in members.

Doing Work That Matters: A Look Beyond The Idealistic Notion of 'Doing Meaningful Work'
Gold
Friday, June 10, 2022 • Design at Scale 2022
Share the love for this talk
Doing Work That Matters: A Look Beyond The Idealistic Notion of 'Doing Meaningful Work'
Speakers: Barb Spanton
Link:

Summary

There’s something shifting in our field. Increasingly, design professionals are drawn to work in domains that truly help humanity, rather than building another ‘Uber for X’, to make the rich richer. While this is an expected response to recent world events, the reality of doing such impactful work is full of obstacles. Spanton will draw on 12+ years of UX design in healthcare to share some experiences and strategies, helping you anticipate and navigate predictable obstacles, so that you can apply your skills toward solving meaningful problems and realizing your goal of a truly impactful career. The talk will cover: 5 common obstacles 3 coping mechanisms 1 big bag of hope and determination to create lasting meaningful impact

Key Insights

  • Working in meaningful impact domains often involves heavy regulatory constraints that are more complex and far-reaching than initially apparent.

  • Medical product standards, like Australia’s on-screen medication guidelines, are thoughtfully designed to prevent fatal errors and serve as crucial safety tools.

  • The mantra “don’t kill grandma” encapsulates the ethical imperative behind regulated healthcare design: preserving life and safety above innovation speed.

  • Large-scale impactful products are inherently complex, making quick fixes or simple solutions rare and slow to ship.

  • Scope decisions in complex projects, such as Canada's COVID exposure app, can unintentionally exclude vulnerable populations, undermining intended impact.

  • Meaningful work in sensitive domains demands utmost respect for users’ dignity, privacy, and emotional state, influencing every design detail.

  • The familiar startup motto “move fast and break things” is often inappropriate and harmful in healthcare and other sensitive fields.

  • Seeking smaller, quicker projects that avoid most obstacles can boost team morale and sustain motivation for longer, slower initiatives.

  • Direct connection with end users, such as site visits to cancer centers, revitalizes teams with empathy and real-world insight.

  • Anchoring work in a core meaningful purpose—whether a corporate vision, a symbolic detail like a Periwinkle carpet, or the ethical mantra—provides resilience amid challenges.

Notable Quotes

"I still kind of pause in my tracks when I see our corporate vision: a world without fear of cancer."

"Don’t kill grandma is our mantra reminding us the stakes of the tiny design details we face every day."

"Regulations aren’t obstacles to dismiss but tools to respect and embrace that help us protect grandma."

"Quick fixes rarely exist in these domains because beneath every problem are layers of complexity."

"The scoping of Canada’s COVID app protected people with new phones, but left vulnerable populations unserved."

"Working in healthcare means every tiny moment in a patient’s experience can either uphold or erode their dignity and sense of control."

"Move fast and break things doesn’t work when you’re designing for cancer patients or disaster victims."

"Shipping smaller, less complex side projects helps build team morale and energizes us for the big slow work."

"Site visits with users don’t just give actionable insight; they give us raw, humbling inspiration to keep going."

"You need to find your own mattress—a grounding purpose or phrase—that you can rely on when progress feels hopeless."

Ask the Rosenbot
Jilanna Wilson
Distributed Design Operations Management
2019 • DesignOps Summit 2019
Gold
Milan Guenther
A Shared Language for Co-Creating Ambitious Endeavours
2023 • Enterprise UX 2023
Gold
Bria Alexander
OKRs—Helpful or Harmful?
2022 • DesignOps Community
Sean Baker
Weaving Knowledge Management into the Fabric of Our Design Practice
2025 • DesignOps Summit 2025
Gold
Kyle Godbey
Non-linear service design for complex adaptive systems
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Prabhas Pokharel
Order and Chaos: New Ways of Collaborating on Synthesis and Storytelling
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Deanna Washington
Connecting the Ops: Plenary Panel and Closing Circle
2022 • DesignOps Summit 2022
Gold
Erin Weigel
Failure Friday #6: 90% of Everything I Do is Either Broken or Pointless
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Steve Portigal
Looking Back…to Look Ahead
2024 • Advancing Research 2024
Gold
Roberta Dombrowski
Making Research a Team Sport
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Sam Proulx
SUS: A System Unusable for Twenty Percent of the Population
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Jess Greco
Claiming your power: Practical tools for amplifying your unique voice
2025 • Advancing Research 2025
Gold
George Abraham
Design Systems To-Go: Indigo.Design Overview and Exploring the Developer Workflow (Part 3)
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Ben Davies
Expert Panel: The Principles of Research Repository Design
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Chris Geison
What is Research Strategy?
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Matt Webb
Context Window: Five Futures for AI
2025 • Designing with AI 2025
Gold

More Videos

Adam Cutler

"The IBM design language is about system unity instead of uniformity, so designers aren’t cookie cutters."

Adam Cutler

People + Places + Practices = Outcomes

June 8, 2016

Crystal Philcox

"Building coalitions with people who share your goals and have power is critical to navigating high-risk innovation environments."

Crystal Philcox

The Many Faces of Operations

November 6, 2017

Ovetta Sampson

"Machine learning models can unlearn behaviors, but we need robust feedback loops to detect when they go awry."

Ovetta Sampson

Managing the Human Engagement Risks of AI

June 10, 2025

Jennifer Kong

"Our AI tool doesn’t learn from ongoing use due to regulatory constraints, which led to user frustration when performance didn’t improve."

Jennifer Kong

Journeying toward AI-assisted documentation in healthcare

June 5, 2024

Irina Tikhonova

"Granicus is like Lego blocks — you can create any type of engagement and experience you want."

Irina Tikhonova Kari Dietrich

Small Wins, Big Impact: Leveraging and Elevating User Engagement

December 9, 2021

Meghan Hellstern

"Regenerative design is about healing and nourishing instead of exploiting and destroying."

Meghan Hellstern Joanne Dong

The Next 100 Years of Civic Design: How Might We Better Rise to Meet the Challenges of Today and Tomorrow?

December 10, 2021

Michelle Morrison

"You are never too busy to send a handwritten note. It deepens relationships, creates trust, and enriches the cultural fabric."

Michelle Morrison

Culture Design

May 21, 2020

Sarah Fathallah

"Not all data and insights should be shared uncritically, especially when working with vulnerable populations."

Sarah Fathallah Alba Villamil

Beyond insights: Rethinking the role of researchers as stewards of organizational wisdom

March 13, 2025

Meredith Black

"Fika is our weekly tradition where designers share projects inspired from Pins over coffee and dessert."

Meredith Black

Scaling Design Culture

November 6, 2017