Quotes from recent talks

"We need to figure out how to assess design projects and designers better because employers need to make choices, but design resists simple scoring."

"Creating different formats of the vision for different stakeholders improves resonance and adoption."

"The value of what we do is only really valuable if it’s recognized by others."

"If you get 10 people to follow, that’s a good sign your business has traction."

"Paradigm shifts depend on how a problem is described and who controls the narratives and beliefs."

"Processed language is like processed food; it damages our mind as processed food damages our body."

"I had to learn to speak contractor — shorter, simpler, in-viewport text without scrolling."

"The integration of AI into clinical workflows is creating urgent demand for sharper UX thinking, not less."

"Sometimes limitations mean you can’t fully co-create, but transparency about where you are on the engagement continuum matters."

"The Rosenbot’s helping you craft a learning program, maybe even a syllabus, complete with weekly goals, lessons, readings, exercises."

"The Rosenbot chatbot is trained on all Rosenfeld content and is amazingly useful for answering your questions."

"We never train AI models on your data, and all AI features are strictly opt-in."

"Personally, if I was gonna go into some aspect of UX research, I would jump in with both feet into research repositories."

"AI tools should augment human research, not replace moderated sessions, at least not yet."

"The hardest part is acting on feedback, which requires integrating tools and aligning multiple teams like research, product, marketing, and customer success."

"High-quality participants are the fuel that makes the whole research operation engine run smoothly."

"Deliberate documentation can be the decider between something being useful in the future or not."

"The job market is forcing UX researchers to evolve quickly, becoming strategic thinkers and system creators."

"In a world of AI where things are speeding up, it's more important than ever to position ourselves as teams that can actually change things."

"The moments when things 'click' often come during shower thoughts or while doing dishes — those reflective pauses matter."

"Simulated users is pure enshittification. It’s not worth the paper it’s printed on."

"Each coded line is a data point, which enables statistical power even with small numbers of respondents."

"The new product approach lets researchers proofread, edit, and decide which insights should be tracked."

"When clients join us in the field and experience research deeply, they often become advocates who come back for more."

"Using AI to scan large archives of research is a game changer for meta-analyses, even if it’s imperfect."

"How might we democratize empathy at scale within our organizations?"

"AI is not about replacing in-depth interviews but expanding access to rich data and insights."

"Google’s sign-up has a progress bar which is really helpful so participants know how far they are along."

"We could either become an internal service desk that's always at capacity or find a lever that multiplies our impact."

"We are co-creating with the product organization to make sure everything fits seamlessly rather than being separate."

"Research should start with the idea that everyone in the organization becomes an expert in who our users are."

"Anchor yourself in what you know to be right and true."

"The hardest job I ever had was redesigning an organization, not just a system."

"Human in the loop means constantly interacting with AI, documenting your thoughts and assuring quality."

"Follow-up questions missed opportunities to probe deeper or were confusing, and participants had to repeat themselves."

"No amount of clearer presentation or communications is going to solve this; it’s a cooperation problem."

"Suggested questions give you a sense of what the heck can I do here, which is really important in empty text box AI interfaces."

"You can think of design and development as a rocket escaping Earth's gravity well — process overhead is the fuel you need to jettison."

"If we don't do hard thinking and critical collaboration when building agents, we’ll end up with armies of unused agents."

"The tools are meeting people where they’re already going: ChatGPT or Gemini, rather than forcing new platforms."

"You can't just expect insights to solve themselves if people don't know about them."

"I was so desensitized to the stress and urgency that it just became my baseline for living life."

"Patricia Moore’s aging research revealed how product design often excludes elderly users by living their constraints."

"Design is the communication of intent—understanding exactly what you want and specifying it clearly is the hardest part."

"Many of us have followed zigzag paths to get where we are today, and that’s one of the wonderful qualities of the UX field."

"Deceptive patterns in cookie banners give users false choices that make it harder to reject tracking."

"The universe will absolutely provide if it’s the right thing for you."

"Pro-social gaming is about designing for positive social interactions that contribute to thriving communities."

"A major error in many services is users creating multiple accounts because they can’t find or reuse existing ones."

"I sold my Seattle house and downsized in Spokane to manage financial pressures during this transition."

"AI is not a tool. AI has agency. AI makes decisions that impact people's lives."

"Emergence is properties of a whole system not expressed in properties of parts. Water is liquid but hydrogen and oxygen atoms are not."

"Art and visuals help represent what people cannot see, but only with strategic intention and understanding."

"Amazon deploys new code into production into the hands of customers once every second."

"I spent 40% of my day verifying what the system already knows."

"It should be as easy to run research as brushing your teeth."

"Disability isn’t a fixed group — aging, illness, injury can put anyone into a disabled state."

"Service design stops being just a support function; it becomes the strategic driver that transforms organizational performance."

"Service design and enterprise design are not just for digital or government—they're applicable to complex organizational change and B2B market entry."

"Service design has a critical role in mapping human and agent interactions in an AI and automation world."

"Europe has leaned more into public sector service design work, which impacts the kinds of metrics and approaches seen in the book."

"Small specific interventions travel further than big programs within organizations."

"Our work as service designers is to help people see their own complex system more clearly, learn from conditions, and take the next right steps."

"Service designers can help the organization untangle complexity across layers so they collaborate effectively."

"If accessibility is buried three levels deep in a checklist, it’s going to get missed."

"Investors front load the cost they expect to win at all costs."

"Increasing coordinated collaboration increased our service capacity by 200%."

"We are all more service design facilitators, bringing the right people together to create the right outcomes."

"About 70 sites have been removed from the Low Carbon Showcase after regressing in sustainability."

"Many designers don't understand corporate realities and thus have an idealistic view that clashes with organizational constraints."

"Designers use deception all the time, but the moral dividing line between acceptable and harmful deception is fuzzy."

"The Leadership Functions chart helps reflect on where you spend time, what you enjoy, and where you feel confident."

"True success means designing teams for resilience so they’re ready for whatever season comes."

"Using tools like 11 Labs, we instantly generated voices with emotion and appropriate cadence for characters."

"We need to dramatically change the hats, the walls, and the workflow of how we work together in design and development."

"Everything is really a system. Even punk rock had systems to enable it."

"You want to ask an LLM to evaluate the fuzzy stuff because there’s no black and white output."

"There is a large and growing capability overhang in these models we haven’t discovered yet."

"UX research is a team sport and our research process is cross-functional and non-negotiable."

"Unintended consequences conversations are productive because organizations want to avoid becoming negative headlines."

"AI helped me produce nearly 80 posts in a year; without AI, that pace would be impossible."

"How can I guide my community to design the form and behavior of light on the edge of becoming this?"

"Psychological safety is the foundation of successful design critiques."

"Moderated one-on-ones let teams probe deeply without needing massive, complicated studies."

"What if we are optimizing ourselves into relevance?"

"In order to lead change, you turn change itself into the product."

"If the choice is adapting or dying, what would it look like if we adapted?"

"Balancing defining best practices with enabling experimentation improves the breadth and quality of work."

"This is not just a shift of different tools; it’s the way we build products now."

"Designers should not be left to figure things out alone as we grow faster."

"Defining what good looks like for an AI answer is the real work, much more than engineering complexity."

"Having standards and human approval is necessary so AI-driven work hits the story, brand, and quality requirements."

"It’s often large B2B enterprise products that really warrant the most from some robust design ops practices."

"It can cost up to 200 times more to remediate and retrofit a solution as opposed to designing it correctly in the first place."

"The system is live now analyzing audience-submitted tasks and producing results in minutes."

"There’s no future without craft—craft is the foundation for all the operational work that follows."

"Map tours are my favorite thing—taking a new hire on a guided walk of the entire community."

"When discovery is missing, teams might move fast, but often in the wrong direction."

"AI is just a better version of the tools you’re already using to refine ideas and express thoughts."

"We approached feedback loops like a system equal parts structure and skill. They have to reinforce one another."