Using words, scribbles, and pixels Farai has spent the last 14 years helping design and build products and teams in the UK, South Africa and Canada.

Today, he makes a living designing interactions and leading a team as a UX Manager at Shopify in Ottawa.

In South Africa, Farai designed banking a...

As a design leader, you will experience many highs and lows. Audrey joined us for a timely conversation about the human-centered approach she has learned to take with one of the lowest moments for any leader—having to lead an organization through a layoff.

Audrey is the Head of Design at Lyft wh...

When product teams aren’t working together, siloes between teams lead to fragmented user experiences. In contrast, a design system team is positioned to stitch together siloes and unify experiences across the organization. After occupying this unique role for nearly a decade within multiple organ...

In 2022, all leaders have a responsibility and a role to play in the movement toward equity and justice. In this talk, Dianne candidly shares some of the experiences and lessons that have shaped who she is as a design leader and how she shows up for teams and communities.
This talk is an invitati...

Courtney is an early leader in Design Operations at Facebook. With over 20 years of people-centered problem solving, Courtney is passionate about designing and building effective teams. As a former designer, Courtney founded the Design Program Management discipline at Facebook in 2013 to help ope...

Leveling Up — Creating Fair & Achievable Career Paths for your Team

As designers, we aren't always in full control of the outcomes of our work. Sometimes we find ourselves on successful projects with fantastic engineers and product managers. Other times, we deal with more complex situations invo...

How can we design leaders make great decisions? One good way is to draw on our richest resource: our team.

Our team’s members benefit from being included in the decision making process. They typically feel more motivated, engaged and empowered as a result. This can encourage them to stay with yo...

Design teams are rife with burnout, low morale and inefficiencies. These unhealthy and unsustainable practices lead to negative cultures and high turnover. From hiring and setting up your team to how you handle conflict, running a design team is a marathon, not a sprint. In this talk, Eric discus...

Building team culture & XFN partnerships in a remote world

With the impact of COVID-19, remote work model is something a lot of us switched to over the last 2+ years and in many cases is here to stay. Building a team culture, connections, collaboration, and a sense of belonging in a remote world...

Jens is a German managing several of Google’s product insight and design teams from London — not from the mothership in California. In this talk, he reflects on how this outside perspective enabled him to build a strong global culture of user empathy - and to redefine the role of ux research alon...

Most people stumble into the right conditions for high personal growth once or twice in their career. When this happens, the magic is undeniable: you are deeply challenged, but you feel your brain expand and your abilities grow – and that fulfillment enables you to face adversity and achieve new ...

Hiring and onboarding new employees to your team is all too often treated as an afterthought, or best case, as an at-the-moment-thought. Employees deserve a well-thought out experience that includes them from the very beginning–from the creation of the position description—to that time after they...

85% of employees experience conflict at work. 25% have seen conflict result in sickness or absence. Are you one of them?

In this session, Whitney helps you identify instances in which we let blame and shame get in the way of effective leadership and collaboration. She demonstrates how to apply N...