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.

Enterprise Storytelling Sessions

Gold
Monday, June 3, 2019 • Enterprise Experience 2019
Share the love for this talk
Enterprise Storytelling Sessions
Speakers: Dan Willis
Link:

Summary

A highlight of the conference every year, the Storytelling Sessions are a set of five-minute talks from enterprise professionals who share their challenges, opinions, failures and successes. Here are the storytellers for Enterprise Experience 2019: - Stephanie Albright, Experience Designer, a story about cleaning bathrooms - Spencer Icasiano, Product Designer II / UX Researcher, Care.com, a story about transitions - Malia Nagle, Director, UX Research, PayPal, a story about two apologies - Laura Nash, Senior UX Designer, Boston Consulting Group, a story about personas who think for themselves - Jenn Noinaj, UX Designer, U.S. Digital Service, a story about stereotypes - Ilona Posner, UX Consultant, a story about keyholes - Malini Rao, Senior Manager, UX, Kronos Inc., a story about a fight

Key Insights

  • Storytelling became widespread in conferences in the last five years to counter audience distraction and increase engagement.

  • Audience attention varies drastically during the day; storytelling aims to combat mid-day and end-of-day disengagement.

  • The concept of 'keyholes' illustrates how limited perspectives obscure important organizational context and cause unexpected conflicts.

  • Professional expertise, like UX skills, doesn’t always apply in personal or emotional domains such as parenting, which require empathy and time.

  • Moving abroad triggers emotional phases—excitement, frustration, acceptance, and adjustment—that teach resilience and growth.

  • Organizational resistance can impede UX progress, but persistence, collaboration, and design thinking can bridge gaps between user needs and business goals.

  • Apologizing openly and vulnerably can transform difficult relationships into productive partnerships in product teams.

  • Personas can become more effective by adopting qualities from role-playing character sheets: accountability, conflict, temporary states, and evolution.

  • Bringing authentic, even quirky personal interests into work can foster memorable and genuine connections.

  • Queerness as a concept symbolizes embracing change and rejecting binary thinking, a principle that strengthens personal identity and innovation in UX.

Notable Quotes

"The more specific a story gets, the more universal the themes are felt by everybody."

"Outside of our keyholes lies information we’re completely oblivious to that can come to haunt us."

"No matter how good I am at my job, it doesn’t make me a good parent. What makes a good parent is time, love, compassion, and a sense of humor."

"Pushing my boundaries and getting out of my comfort zone helped me learn what I was capable of."

"Make an uncredible experience credible. That was the directive from organizational resistance to UX."

"In a fight, there’s a winner and a loser. But for a product to be successful, it has to work both for users and business."

"It’s never too late to apologize. And don’t be afraid to say, I’m sorry."

"Personas need to push back. Conflict makes for better stories and better products."

"When I let my outside interest in, I suddenly had really memorable conversations with people."

"Queerness is change. The power to shape that change is within every one of us."

Ask the Rosenbot
Scott Plewes
Why Isn't Your UX Approach Going Viral?: A Mathematical Model
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Alex Hurworth
Designing a Contact Tracing App for Universal Access
2020 • DesignOps Summit 2020
Gold
Chloe Amos-Edkins
A Cultural Approach: Research in the Context of Glocalisation
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Kit Unger
Theme 2: Introduction
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Nova Wehman-Brown
We've Never Done This Before
2019 • Enterprise Experience 2019
Gold
Gretchen Anderson
Scaling the Human Center
2017 • Enterprise Experience 2017
Gold
Sam Proulx
SUS: A System Unusable for Twenty Percent of the Population
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Lena Shenkarenko
Collaborative Wireframing for Creating Team Alignment and Shipping Better Products
2020 • DesignOps Summit 2020
Gold
Gina Mendolia
Coordinated collaboration: a Service Design & DesignOps love story
2025 • Advancing Service Design 2025
Gold
Jules Monza
Use These Words and Count These Things
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2024
Gold
Husani Oakley
Bias Towards Action: Building Teams that Build Work
2018 • Enterprise Experience 2018
Gold
Jemma Ahmed
Theme Three Intro
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Amy Paris
Delivering Equity: Government Services for All Ages, Languages, Sexual Orientations, and Gender Identities
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Sam Ladner
Methodologies: Beyond the interview [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]
2024 • Advancing Research Community
Cheryl Platz
Collaborative Creativity through Improv
2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018
Gold
Chris Geison
What is Research Strategy?: A Panel of Research Leaders Discuss this Emergent Question
2021 • Advancing Research Community

More Videos

Caroline Vize

"Nearly 70% of organizations use mixed-method research approaches, mainly focused on usability testing and validation."

Caroline Vize

The State of UX: Five Lessons from 2021 to Accelerate Digital Experience in 2022

March 9, 2022

Kara Kane

"Scaling training happened by finding people in the community who could run sessions independently."

Kara Kane

Communities of Practice for Civic Design

April 7, 2022

Jon Fukuda

"User research is really only part of the information schema that we’re talking about."

Jon Fukuda Ellie Krysl

Design Planning and Management Support

October 3, 2023

Mark Templeton

"Culture plus empathy equals pride—and pride powers the most successful organizations."

Mark Templeton

Creating a Legacy: the ultimate experience

June 9, 2017

Jim Kalbach

"Experience mapping brought a new understanding that helped us draw former extremists into peace efforts."

Jim Kalbach

Peace is waged with sticky notes: Mapping Real-World Experiences

June 14, 2018

Scott Stephens

"Even as a designer, I was able to learn how to build formulas and automations — the tools are quite accessible."

Scott Stephens

The Next Generation in DesignOps Toolsets

July 28, 2022

Cheryl Platz

"Low status looks like slumping, shuffling feet, and avoiding eye contact but seeking approval."

Cheryl Platz

Collaborative Creativity through Improv

November 7, 2018

Jen Briselli

"Psychological safety may not be something you can actively engineer; it emerges from conditions that make learning possible."

Jen Briselli

Learning Is The Engine: Designing & Adapting in a World We Can’t Predict

April 16, 2025

Mac Smith

"If you can follow the simple steps of preparing, aligning, and delivering, you can shift the focus and impact of your team."

Mac Smith

Measuring Up: Using Product Research for Organizational Impact

March 12, 2021