"Sustainability consciousness is good for business, it’s a win-win for planet and profit."

"Research ops is the most punk thing you can do in the experience design space."

"Design is a rhetorical statement, an argument for living your life a certain way."

"Showing up is half the battle, whether it’s a call or organizing a meetup."

"Connection strengthens self-worth, compassion, and reduces anxiety, depression, and heart disease."

"Wizard of Oz testing involves having someone pretend to be the voice of a screen reader to get early feedback."

"Choose your language carefully; sometimes not using 'sustainability' gets better traction."

"If you haven’t planned for evaluation, you end up eyeballing the results, which absolutely does not work."

"If you’re fearful or skeptical of AI, that makes sense, but now is the moment to get involved and shape the future."

"The worst thing that could happen is we get cake — this encourages boldness."

"Trauma-informed design is good design plus a little more to really serve all users."

"Inline tools stay in the user's context the whole time and are invisible when you don’t need them."

"In design sprints, we set the mindset upfront to be pessimistic about ideas to gain confidence through testing."

"Threat actors often understand Alice and Charlie better than we do and use that to their advantage."

"If you’re in tech, you are in social change, whether you realize it or not."

"Users won’t change habits easily, so we have to design without getting in their way but offer options."

"Defensive design helps us set expectations and channel behavior to work with the system's strengths and limitations."

"If organizations base offerings by demographics, they risk leaving some groups unsupported; thinking styles helps fix those cracks."

"Engineers don’t like writing more code, so extra work for experimentation can meet resistance unless they see clear learning outcomes."

"Mapping the data journey through technical infrastructure is like mapping a user journey—be curious and ask questions."

"Participation must be accessible, sustainable, and irresistible."

"Uganda is Africa’s largest refugee host nation with over 1.5 million refugees, mostly children, yet this crisis remains underreported."

"I invite designers to be method makers rather than method users, critically examining how tools embed systemic logics."

"Sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is not act and remove energy from a harmful dynamic."

"A human-centered approach is intrinsic to Nava’s DNA and factored into procurement and project planning from the start."

"Testing with a screen reader for QA is fine, but user research must be done with experienced assistive tech users."

"The average salary in the Netherlands might be quite high compared to Europe or the US, but you have to dig deeper to see if seniority is skewing the data."

"Instead of positioning journeys and maps as definitive, we say these are just snapshots of a moment in time."

"There’s pressure for efficiency and simplification that often borders on oversimplification."

"When you design for the edges, you get the middle for free."

"Language matters, so does money, and how you connect to business determines your funding."

"The biweekly cadence is feasible and helps members block out time to engage seriously and consistently."

"Mirroring content by repeating back what people say helps them understand their own thoughts more clearly."

"Better software comes from individuals and interactions over processes and tools."

"Sometimes you have to make something wrong on purpose to learn and improve it with others’ help."

"Participating in key meetings not led by design is the secret sauce to build influence."

"It wasn’t obvious the difference between AI generating category ideas and validating categories until we tried both."

"You can accumulate conflict debt by kicking issues down the road, and it compounds like financial debt."

"Measurements are always a conversation; they should not be a covenant imposed on you, especially when you’re trying something new."

"We have to recognize we’re not the only source of truth; many teams hold critical knowledge about users."

"When in doubt, make pictures. Drawing takes control of the conversation and makes it concrete."

"It’s okay to be vulnerable as a facilitator. It’s okay to say I don’t know so we can have a conversation."

"If data comes from different areas of the organization, they want to learn more and meaningfully participate."

"Design ops isn’t just a support role, it is a strategic partner. - Rachel Poman"

"Ad hoc projects are fire drills that often interrupt higher value work, so rerouting them can save headaches and increase efficiency."

"Innovation means solving one single thing and parking the rest in the lot."

"Talking about outcomes first is a powerful technique for people who have had bad experiences in discussions about good and bad practice."

"We are back and we are right on time. Eight o'clock on the dot."

"If you spend so much time tracking, you’re actually not doing the work—that’s too much overhead."

"We innovate by adding the people element to metrics and reports, measuring happiness as success."

"What does it mean to be a design ops person? We need to keep that question alive."

"Today’s about celebrating the big and small innovations that make us more effective and intentional in our design ops roles."

"We haven’t considered adjustments for accessibility yet, but it’s an important future area."

"We want you to feel included and take full advantage of the amazing content and effort the speakers put in."

"The problem isn’t ever fully defined. The numbers give you the what, but they don’t give you the why."

"Silent leaders prefer action over words and advocate in more intimate settings."

"Operations have to be constantly improving, like product development — this process is cyclical, not linear."

"Healthy teams are the foundation of a healthy organization."

"I seriously encourage all of you to create a portfolio of ‘You made my job easier’ messages—it’s a great pick me up."

"Keeping large content repositories organized is an ongoing challenge that often gets deprioritized."

"UX research repositories were trying to do what librarians and archivists have been doing for hundreds of years."

"Everyone benefits from thinking about accessibility and inclusion at any point in time in research or design work."

"All members of senior leadership at Brex participate in continuous discovery at least every month to build customer empathy."

"Get involved hands-on with AI technologies rather than judging based on media narratives."

"Our single mandate in design ops is to give designers more design time and remove distractions."

"Don’t try to be what you think the company wants you to be; be your authentic self."

"Our working memories can only hold three to five item chunks at a time despite the data downpour."

"Resilience doesn’t come from enduring or tolerating suffering. It comes from healing it and changing the conditions that cause it."

"The chief of staff role can act as the whip, the quarterback, or the forward, each with different focus areas supporting design leaders."

"Resilience is not just an individual trait but a collective practice grounded in our journeys."

"We have to go slow to go fast—highlight problems first, then iteratively evolve the process to solve them."

"Sharing real user voices alongside insights helps stakeholders connect emotionally and internalize research findings better."

"This is a gift to yourself. Three days you get to really dig in with other design ops peers."

"Denying the body is not an antidote to the suffering of the world. When we protect our rest, we protect our dreaming."

"Build teams with neurodiversity so different working styles can thrive, not just clusters of extroverts."

"Make it easy and efficient for people to practice inclusive design so each team doesn't have to figure it out on their own."

"Building a strong case for procurement that highlights trade-offs and savings helped get buy-in quickly."

"Feedback is data; sometimes there are outliers, so it’s important to understand if feedback reflects the majority."

"Nothing about us without us - people with disabilities must be involved in AI design to avoid bias."

"Nothing is inherently better because it was produced via human or machine learning; we must interrogate the goal first."

"Climate Designers is a hub for creative professionals committed to using their talents for climate action."

"The biggest mistake beginners make is confusing research questions with direct interview questions."

"Keeping a log of inspiration from disparate sources helps when you're pressed for time and need fresh ideas."

"Ask about the company’s financial runway; it guides how much time you have to make an impact."

"The biggest weapon I bring to work is helping people regulate their emotions so they can listen."

"The future of design roles will shift as agents handle tedious tasks, freeing humans to focus on challenging problems."

"Design systems in automotive are some of the coolest I’ve seen because they have to align both the marketing and the in-vehicle user experience."

"Decades worth of agricultural data had to be thrown out because they lacked control groups and statistical rigor."

"All data has bias, problems, and limitations; there is no perfectly clean data, only varying degrees of quality."

"If Gutenberg came back, he'd be comfortable in that studio—now that's the studio."

"Just educating people isn’t enough to change behaviors; immediate tangible benefits motivate more effectively."

"Prioritization work is a political process, and politics are hard to do in technology."

"Most work that most people do there ends up being thrown away."

"Your priorities don’t tell you what to do; your judgment points you in the direction of how to allocate resources and make decisions."

"People really connect with other people, even through screens — genuine recommendations matter."

"Evaluations need both end users and experts because an answer that makes a user happy can be objectively wrong."

"Individuals tend to confuse prioritization with personal productivity or time management."

"Always design a thing by thinking of its next larger context — a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment."

"One of my tags was an acronym called TAOI — the architecture of information — but GPT wouldn’t know what to do with it."

"Moderately good AI can add real value, like voicemail transcription that doesn't have to be perfect to be useful."