Summary
Brea welcomed the audience to Design at Scale 2022, setting the tone by acknowledging the intense challenges design professionals have faced over recent years, including repeated crises and ongoing struggles to gain recognition and proper investment. She highlighted common frustrations such as being undervalued, brought in too late, or excluded from strategic decisions. Brea positioned the event as a source of hope and empowerment, focusing on cultivating strong design practices, fostering connection among team members, and enhancing design maturity for the benefit of individuals, companies, and customers alike. Her message encouraged attendees to engage fully, explore new ideas, and return energized to lead cultural change within their organizations.
Key Insights
-
•
Design professionals often feel undervalued and overlooked in organizational decision-making.
-
•
Repeated crises have intensified fatigue within the design community.
-
•
Designers seek more meaningful day-to-day work experiences and purposeful impact.
-
•
Strengthening design maturity supports better company and customer outcomes.
-
•
Early involvement of design in projects is crucial for its success and influence.
-
•
Empowerment and positivity can counteract uncertainty during times of crisis.
-
•
Building a culture of connection increases design team satisfaction and effectiveness.
-
•
Investing properly in design is essential to achieving business success.
-
•
Design leaders can drive change in organizational culture to value design more.
-
•
Conferences like Design at Scale serve as antidotes to professional fatigue by offering hope and practical strategies.
Notable Quotes
"Many of us in this field are tired of not having our value understood."
"We are tired of fighting for that seat at the table."
"We want to feel valued and find satisfaction in our daily work."
"Today is about empowerment and positivity at scale."
"Our theme today is design practices in times of crisis."
"Designers want a sense of connection with their coworkers."
"We can lead the change in culture we want for ourselves and our team."
"The talks will give you ideas for raising design maturity and supporting people."
"The past couple of years have been intense with one crisis after another."
"My hope for you is to come away re-energized and ready to lead change."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Newness isn’t necessarily a new methodology—it can be a new way of looking at something familiar."
Louis Rosenfeld Jemma Ahmed Christian Crumlish Uday Gajendar Chris GeisonCoffee with Lou #3: What Makes for a Successful UX Conference Presentation?
May 2, 2024
"Emojis and GIFs have become effective tools for remote teams to add expression and prevent miscommunication."
Jilanna WilsonDistributed Design Operations Management
October 23, 2019
"Hallucinations are a kind of AI creativity—dreaming, invention, fiction—all forms of hallucination."
Matt WebbContext Window: Five Futures for AI
June 11, 2025
"Retrofitting accessibility at a later date is difficult, costly, and demoralizing."
Sam ProulxAccessibility: An Opportunity to Innovate
September 8, 2022
"Preventative care UX challenges, like why men won’t come in, are deeply rooted and not solved by prettier buttons."
Theresa NeilDesigning for Wellness: Specializing in Healthcare
May 22, 2024
"Evals define a shared definition of good with tests to measure it, and that is the secret sauce for building great AI products."
Peter Van DijckHands-on AI #2: Understanding evals: LLM as a Judge
October 15, 2025
"The heroes framework helps show the specific contribution design ops makes through measurable impact categories."
Rachel Posman John Calhoun"Ask Me Anything" with Rachel Posman and John Calhoun, Authors of the Upcoming Rosenfeld Book, The Design Conductors
September 25, 2024
"Companies parachuting in to 'study' marginalized groups often do more harm than good when they don't build local capacity."
Tricia WangThe most popular design thinking strategy is BS
January 27, 2022
"Hiring people you want to design for is a powerful way of shifting power and valuing lived experience."
Sarah Auslander Betsy Ramaccia Gordon RossInsights Panel
November 18, 2022
