Rosenverse
Enterprise Storytelling Sessions

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
Kate Towsey
ResearchOps AMA with Kate Towsey & Jake Burghardt
2025 • Advancing Research Community
Magdalena Zadara
Zero Hour: How to Get Far Quickly When Starting Your Digital Service Unit Late
2022 • Civic Design 2022
Gold
Caroline Jarrett
Have fun with statistics?
2024 • Rosenfeld Community
Saara Kamppari-Miller
DesignOps for Inclusive Design and Accessibility
2022 • DesignOps Community
Louis Rosenfeld
GenAI for UXers: A Rosenbot Demo and Discussion
2025 • DesignOps Summit 2025
Gold
Taylor Klassman
Shaping the Next Era of UX Research: Collaborative Forum
2025 • Advancing Research 2025
Gold
Jemma Ahmed
Bridge Building across Research Disciplines
2021 • Advancing Research Community
Emilia Åström
Unlock Your Team’s Intelligence with Collaboration Design
2022 • Design at Scale 2022
Gold
Bria Alexander
Charting the future of DesignOps: A community workshop
2024 • DesignOps Community
Maria Giudice
Becoming a Changemaker by Leading with Design
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Hana Nagel
Turning Research Ripples into Waves
2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018
Gold
Josh Clark
Sentient Design: Crafting Intelligent Interfaces with AI
2026 • Designing with AI 2026
Conference
Edward Cupps
The Principal Path: Journeying from Management to Individual Contributor
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Surya Vanka
Unleashing Swarm Creativity to Solve Enterprise Challenges
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Kayla Farrell
What It's Like To Be a User Researcher at Compass
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Megan Blocker
A Selectively Scrappy Approach to ResearchOps
2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018
Gold

More Videos

Joe Elmendorf

"High-fidelity maps often squash discussion. Rough maps invite it."

Joe Elmendorf

Shitty Maps: A Trojan Horse for Sensemaking

July 9, 2026

Kevin M. Hoffman

"Content is created all over and inconsistently; leadership needs to see content as the fuel driving the experience."

Kevin M. Hoffman

Theme 2: Enterprise Team Journey

June 3, 2019

Rittika Basu

"It’s good practice to offer one-on-one interactions with older adults due to their learning preferences."

Rittika Basu

Age and Interfaces: Equipping Older Adults with Technological Tools

February 23, 2023

George Aye

"Every major brand has a dark side brought to you by design on purpose, 40 hours a week."

George Aye

That Quiet Little Voice: When Design and Ethics Collide

November 16, 2022

Andreas Huebner

"We used virtual sketching where users could move components into spaces representing their actual workflows on the platform."

Andreas Huebner Amy Takata Craig Brookes

What Is It Like To Be Part of The UX Team at Compass?

March 11, 2021

Kaitlin Tasker

"Findings from marginalized groups aren’t just relevant to them but often improve the experience for many more people."

Kaitlin Tasker

Fast and Fearless Inclusive Research

March 27, 2023

Steve Portigal

"If we believe we're the only champions of human experience, then we’re not doing the right job."

Steve Portigal Alba Villamil Sam Ladner

The Future of Research: Bridging the Gaps

July 29, 2021

Bilan Hashi

"Whose story gets told, the participant or the researcher, is also a question of knowledge production."

Bilan Hashi

The Tension Between Story Collecting and Story Telling in Research

March 10, 2021

Jemma Ahmed

"Our job is to make sure the people making decisions actually listen."

Jemma Ahmed

Theme 1 Intro

March 10, 2026