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Critical UX: Challenging the Dogma of UX
Every field has them: those seemingly non-negotiable approaches that have been anointed by industry pioneers as “truth.” But when we look past the personally branded orthodoxies and competition for relevance, we can begin to see how some design “best practices” have done just as much harm as they have good. To recoup design’s potential for real and lasting change, we need to go back to basics and challenge the dogma of UX.
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This event was designed for you to:
Stretch your ethic of imagination, creativity, and curiosity
Have much-needed, overdue we-ain’t-afraid-to-go-there conversations
Attend a budget-friendly event with more innovative, practical takeaways than an over-priced conference
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Critical UX: Challenging the Dogma of UX
Panel #1: The Dogma of Inclusion
Within design, we’ve seen a movement towards including users from historically marginalized groups into the research and design process. But what are the conditions of this inclusion and how can it result in even more exclusionary design? This panel brings together design professionals resisting superficial inclusion by rooting their practice in the friction of their identities.
Possible Panel Discussion Questions
- How can inclusive practices become exclusionary?
- What does it mean to design through race, disability, or queerness?
- How can we recognize patterns of lived experience without stereotyping or homogenizing?
Meet the panelists
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Vivianne Castillo is the Founder of HmntyCntrd and brings 8+ years of psychology and research experience spanning multiple contexts, cultures, and industries and her work and opinions have been written about in Slate, Fortune, Huffington Post, Fast Company, ELLE Magazine. She has a strong track record influencing executives, educating others on trauma-informed care, & empowering others to challenge the status quo at Fortune 500 companies. She credits her previous experience as a human services professional, her multi-cultural upbringing, and her love for cognitive behavioral psychology as major influences on her approach to entrepreneurship, organizational design, and innovation.
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Behzod is the founder of Yet Another Studio, where he guides companies from their first research project to their first research hire and beyond. He is also a program partner at Reforge, where he built the User Insights for Product Decisions program, and a Venture Partner at El Cap. Previously, Behzod led Research Operations at Slack and was a Senior UX Researcher at Facebook, where he co-founded the Research Associates Program.
Rachael earned her Master of Social Work in 2010 with a focus on Advocacy, Leadership & Social Change and a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology focusing on Social Movements and Social Movement Organizations in 2000 — both from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Since the late 1990s, Rachael has built a lifelong service career in social justice work, the federal government, and higher education while working closely with values-aligned design teams worldwide. From 2019 - 2021, she completed coursework in UIUC’s Design for Responsible Innovation MFA program. Before taking a break in January 2022 to join the U.S. Digital Service team under the White House, her thesis was centered on Trauma Responsive Design: Addressing the Hidden Gaps in Design Research Methodologies and Practice. As a social worker-designer, Rachael engages in ongoing self-study and continuing education to maintain licensure and keep growing in her practice.
Panel #2: The Dogma of Universality
Heuristics. Standards. “Good design” not only requires we follow certain conventions rooted in Eurocentric thinking but also encourages us to continue building and maintaining tools of colonization. During this panel, we’ll grapple with what it means to decolonize design and how to translate that to material change beyond metaphor.
Possible Panel Discussion Questions
- What are the limits and possibilities of decolonizing design in capitalistic systems?
- Given the different histories of colonization, what are the various ways we can decolonize design?
- How can calls for decolonizing design lead to cultural appropriation?
Meet the panelists
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Frederick van Amstel (he/him/his) is moving to become Associate Professor of Graphic Design and Visual Communication at the University of Florida, US. While at UTFPR, Brazil, he cofounded the Design & Oppression network and its local hub, the Laboratory of Design against Oppression (LADO). From that position, he guest-edited two special issues of the Diseña Journal on Design, Oppression, and Liberation. His work can be seen at https://fredvanamstel.com
I play with books, cats, food, yarn, and dirt, not all at the same time. Software engineer. Society of People Interested in Boring Things.
Melanie Kahl believes how we design can be as transformative as what we design. She is a design strategy practitioner in the social sector who has championed creative and community-minded approaches to the design of programs, services, and places. Melanie loves planting the seeds of new programs and practices. She launched Meta’s first Community-in-Residence program, bringing community leaders and product teams closer together, and was an early leader at Dalberg Design. At Dalberg, she grew portfolios on gender, cities, and customer experience— bringing participatory approaches to HIV-prevention, safe abortion access, and resilient urban planning. Melanie’s work in community-based practice is informed by her study of Social Policy and Organizational Change at Northwestern and her early career designing schools. In 2023, she was awarded a Mira Fellowship to investigate what designers can learn from human development practitioners about holding change. She energizes her practice as an adjunct professor, avid pedestrian, and potluck enthusiast.
Panel #3: The Dogma of Individualism
Whether it’s designing for delight or usability, designers are primed to address the pain points of their users. But when we only focus on individual-level problems, we can fail to account for the complex and even contradictory needs of the communities, governments, and ecosystems we’re embedded in. For this panel, we’ll talk with researchers and designers working in the community organizing, civic government, and sustainability space to discuss what it takes to design for and disrupt our interdependent systems.
Possible Panel Discussion Questions
- What type of tools and methodologies can we use to forecast the long-term and macro-level impact of our designs?
- What are the different ways designers can (and should) relate to scale?
- How do we identify and harness the right inflection points to intervene in systems?
Meet the panelists
KA (them/they) is a co-design facilitator, teacher, and writer at Beyond Sticky Notes. They’ve been imagining and leading co-design projects in public health, domestic violence, transgender health, and child protection for 12+ years. KA’s work, their book, and Model of Care for Co-design (2020 & 2023) explore and offer ways to work together with more care, dignity and genuine appreciation of our differences.
With a systems thinking approach, and a diverse background in the arts, journalism, and tech, Tony Moaton is committed to using improvisation, divergent thinking processes and an affirmation-lead work ethos on any project, regardless of discipline. Tony is a trained facilitator and mediator with a social justice approach rooted in the concept of multipartiality. Due to an interest in better understanding the human condition, Tony is also a certified trauma-informed care practitioner and a Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies (CPACC). Tony holds a Graduate Certificate in Devised Performance from the University of the Arts and a BA in Western Performance and Social Transformation from Oberlin College.
Annika Hansteen-Izora is a product designer and writer that explores design futures rooted in queerness, care, and collectivity. Their multidisciplinary approach has led them to design experiences across disciplines, from anti-toxicity social media startup Somewhere Good, to third space Ethel's Club, to Fortune 500 companies and global artists. Deeply curious about the interweavings of design, tech, and nature, Annika is the founder of Creative Ecosystems, a digital garden and online directory for discovering communities dedicated to radical Black imagination.
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- Access to 3 recordings of thought-provoking panels with practical insights, key quotes, and transcripts
- Practical insights and takeaways
- Additional resources relevant to the topics discussed during the panels and more!
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