Rosenverse
Turning UX Passion into Real Product Influence

This video is only accessible to Gold members. Log in or register for a free Gold Trial Account to watch.

Log in Register

Most conference talks are accessible to Gold members, while community videos are generally available to all logged-in members.

Turning UX Passion into Real Product Influence

Gold
Wednesday, June 7, 2023 • Enterprise UX 2023
Share the love for this talk
Turning UX Passion into Real Product Influence
Speakers: Ovetta Sampson
Link:

Summary

You’ve seen it happen repeatedly throughout your career. As a UX researcher you’ve taken the time to develop key insights, as a UX designer you’ve conceptualized and tested several hypotheses. As a design strategist you’ve created a vision for a new or existing product and yet; product roadmaps remain eerily empty of your team’s UX contriubutions. How do you take what you know and have learned at this summit and put it into practice at your companies? How do you get your stakeholders on board to not only listen but implement your recommendations? What strategies do you need to make engineering friends and influence product managers? This talk will showcase various tactics you can use to help turn the passionate UX work you do into real product roadmap influence.

Key Insights

  • UX influence is a marathon, not a sprint; breaking long-term visions into quarterly milestones preserves sanity and builds stakeholder alignment.

  • Moving from abstract thoughts to concrete artifacts accelerates stakeholder understanding and shifts conversations from debate to production.

  • Adopting the language and mental models of stakeholders improves communication and acceptance of UX initiatives.

  • Treating stakeholders like research participants by listening without judgment enhances collaboration and empathy in UX influence.

  • Design and research must be operationalized within organizations through incremental, visible wins rather than grand sweeping changes.

  • Risk mitigation, not zero-sum battles, reframes UX influence to preserve peace and encourage joint ownership of decisions.

  • Embedding engineers and product partners early as technical governance prevents handoff friction and fosters equity collaboration.

  • Storytelling matters most when delivered in multiple formats tailored to audience mental models, not just one narrative style.

  • Personal motivation in UX stems from a clear mission beyond business metrics, such as advancing equity and improving real lives.

  • Successful UX leaders move away from the lone hero archetype to a Justice League model, leveraging collective superpowers for impact.

Notable Quotes

"If you don't think you can go to battle day in and day out, UX might not be for you because that's what it is."

"My job is to convince people to create something that doesn't exist or hasn't been discovered yet."

"Don't get exhausted with communicating what we do, rather just show what we do."

"Breaking up a holistic vision into quarterly milestones and celebrating those wins keeps stakeholders engaged and preserves your sanity."

"Moving from thoughts to things is one of the key tools in UX influence."

"Our goal is not to be right, but to make others less wrong and give confidence in design direction."

"Think of UX influence as risk mitigation, not a zero-sum game."

"Treat your stakeholders like research participants — listen openly and without judgment."

"Your superpower may be great, but it's better together. Think Justice League, not Wolverine."

"I stay motivated because my assignment is to get human-centered design products shipped into people’s hands to improve their lives."

Ask the Rosenbot
Dolly Parikh
Exit Interview #7: Journey of a Social Entrepreneur
2026 • Rosenfeld Community
Vanessa Varin
Feedback: The Other F-Word
2025 • DesignOps Summit 2025
Gold
Frank Duran
Partnership Playbook: Lessons Learned in Effective Partnership
2024 • Enterprise Experience 2020
Gold
Samuel Proulx
Designing for Disability, Innovating for Everyone
2025 • Advancing Research 2025
Gold
Sahibzada Mayed
Cultivating Design Ecologies of Care, Community, and Collaboration
2023 • DesignOps Summit 2023
Gold
Laurent Christoph
Scale the impact of DesignOps in 3D: Diligence, Decision, Discipline
2025 • DesignOps Community
Daniel Gloyd
Designing From the Inside Out: How Method Acting Can Inspire Design Research
2026 • Rosenfeld Community
Christian Rohrer
Insight Types That Influence Enterprise Decision Makers
2015 • Enterprise UX 2015
Gold
Harry Max
Failure Friday #5: Lessons from a SaaS Design Failure
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Bilan Hashi
The Tension Between Story Collecting and Story Telling in Research
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Alicia D. Johnson
Disasters and the 21st Century
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Patrizia Bertini
Pushing DesignOps’ Influence into New Global Markets
2022 • DesignOps Summit 2022
Gold
John Cutler
Oxbows, Rivers, and Estuaries: How to navigate the currents of change (without burning out)
2024 • Advancing Service Design 2024
Gold
Peter Boersma
How to Define and Maintain a DesignOps Roadmap
2023 • DesignOps Summit 2023
Gold
Savannah Carlin
Don't botch the bot: Designing interactions for AI
2024 • Designing with AI 2024
Gold
Ellie Krysl
Planned Right. Managed Right. Designed Right.
2023 • Enterprise UX 2023
Gold

More Videos

Carl Turner

"When projects are late or delayed it’s often due to organizational and cultural issues rather than conduct of the project team."

Carl Turner

You Can Do This: Understand and Solve Organizational Problems to Jumpstart a Dead Project

March 28, 2023

Karen Pascoe

"If you have somebody on your team for three years, for five years, that’s amazing from a longevity perspective given enterprise legacy and complexity."

Karen Pascoe

Developing Experience Teams and Talent in the Enterprise

June 8, 2016

Jilanna Wilson

"Sending small care packages to remote team members goes a long way in showing we care and building connection."

Jilanna Wilson

Distributed Design Operations Management

October 23, 2019

Shawna Hein

"The collaboration cycle requires following standards for accessibility, content, design system usage, and IA or you don’t launch your product."

Shawna Hein Kevin Hoffman

Create a Cohesive Civic Design Practice Across Agency, Vendors, and Contracts

November 17, 2022

Barb Spanton

"You need to find your own mattress—a grounding purpose or phrase—that you can rely on when progress feels hopeless."

Barb Spanton

Doing Work That Matters: A Look Beyond The Idealistic Notion of 'Doing Meaningful Work'

June 10, 2022

Briana Thomas

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

Briana Thomas

The Quiet Force: Uncovering Hidden Leadership in High-Impact Design Teams

September 24, 2024

Gina Mendolia

"Provoking and reframing perspective helps teams get unstuck by thinking in new and surprising ways."

Gina Mendolia

Therapists, Coaches, and Grandmas: Techniques for Service Design in Complex Systems

December 3, 2024

Lija Hogan

"Now everyone’s an edge case, so research needs to focus on those edge cases, not just the average user."

Lija Hogan Milan Mijatovic Sam Proulx Louis Rosenfeld

Three Years Out: Perspectives on the Near-Term Future of User Research

March 15, 2024

John Calhoun

"DPM loneliness and siloing happen because of wearing too many hats and inheriting mismatched responsibilities."

John Calhoun Rachel Posman

Two Sides of the DesignOps Coin: Teams Ops and Product Ops

January 8, 2024