Theme 2: Discussion
Summary
Join today’s speakers for Q&A and discussion of the day’s topics.
Key Insights
-
•
User-centricity in enterprises often lags due to internal mindset treating users as colleagues rather than customers.
-
•
Proving UX return on investment remains a major challenge, limiting stakeholder buy-in.
-
•
IT teams often receive predefined solutions instead of problems to solve, limiting their impact.
-
•
Design is frequently misunderstood as just UI or visual design, constraining designers’ roles.
-
•
Designers struggle balancing pixel-perfect UI detail with broader product and business contributions.
-
•
Customer obsession culture sometimes narrows teams’ focus on single personas, missing broader impacts.
-
•
End-to-end service design thinking remains underdeveloped, with teams siloed by product stage or function.
-
•
Dedicated researchers are critical for properly synthesizing insights and building organizational knowledge.
-
•
Operating a UX team as a business with clear value propositions and mutual commitments fosters stronger partnerships.
-
•
Growth boards encourage outcome-focused metrics, cross-disciplinary alignment, and executive engagement, but require foundational collaboration steps and can be resource-intensive.
Notable Quotes
"Sometimes it might be seen as something that is not necessary because our end users are practically colleagues, not actually paying customers."
"We’re often given solutions to build instead of problems to solve, so we’re completely outside of providing what IT is hired for."
"Designers want to get out of the UI design box but still cling to pixel perfection that may not matter to users."
"Teams only think about a specific customer obsession persona and lose sight of upstream or downstream effects and other personas."
"Service design is very up-and-coming, but there’s still a long way to go in thinking about the entire user journey."
"Designers often come out of schools without ever doing competitive analysis or considering existing design patterns."
"Designers focus on shipping and don’t have bandwidth for documenting learnings or synthesizing knowledge across products."
"You have to present UX value from the stakeholder’s perspective: what will John the developer get from doing this?"
"Growth boards are a more advanced tool that require breaking down walls between disciplines and focusing on outcome-driven metrics."
"If growth board content overlaps with quarterly business reviews, don’t do both; instead, inject an outcome mindset into existing meetings."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"We’ve got Tim Gilligan, Meredith Blackbrand, and Bria Alexander on a panel about the future of design ops."
Alana WashingtonTheme 3 Intro
October 1, 2021
"We started to see children and teenagers as users, not just audiences."
Sofía Delsordo Kassim VeraPublic Policy for Jalisco's Designers to Make Design Matter
December 8, 2021
"There was zero UX experts at the IRS, not even a job description for that role."
Crystal PhilcoxThe Many Faces of Operations
November 6, 2017
"It is very difficult for somebody who has never used assistive technology to have the same experience as someone who uses it daily for everything."
Sam ProulxDesigning For Screen Readers: Understanding the Mental Models and Techniques of Real Users
December 10, 2021
"Data entry is the enemy; automation is the key to making research repositories successful."
Sofia QuinteroThe Product Philosophy Behind EnjoyHQ
March 10, 2021
"In order to lead change, you turn change itself into the product."
Doug PowellDesignOps and the Next Frontier: Leading Through Unpredictable Change
September 11, 2025
"The product leadership really doesn’t see the value in research and they’re thinking about shutting the research team down."
Johanna KollmannInsights-Driven Product Strategy: Get your Research to Count
December 6, 2022
"Humanizing AI means creating governance frameworks that involve a broad array of research competencies for democratizing safe and effective AI."
Joel BranchHumanizing AI: Filling the Gaps with Multi-faceted Research
March 11, 2021
"Creativity, accountability, and authenticity are going to be the new markers of humanity."
Katie JohnsonDisrupting generative AI products with just-in-time consumer insights
June 4, 2024
