Design for Impact by Erin Weigel

We've all seen the countless articles about LLMs (I refuse to use "AI") and their supposed "fight" with UX design. Instead, let's turn our UX skills inward. How are we approaching this technology? How is it impacting us? How does it actually work?The hype is blinding us, forcing us into two camps: fiercely pro or staunchly con. The whole point of UX aims to clarify confusion. Let's just back up and take a look and find a more nuanced path.

As AI agents begin to act independently on behalf of users, the fundamentals of customer experience design are shifting.Drawing from work with enterprise design teams and emerging cases, this talk explores how to design experiences when AI becomes an active participant in the customer journey.For designers and leaders looking to understand and shape this transformation.

Experimentation can be intimidating to non-data science folk. But Erin wants to get everyone excited about A/B testing.In this talk, Erin shares the Conversion Design process. It centers A/B testing as a way to gather high-quality evidence to make highly informed decisions to improve your digital product design.She also introduces the Good Experimental Design toolkit. These easy-to-follow templates usher teams through the logic needed to design trustworthy experiments that you can learn from so you can make things better—not just different.

Expanding into international markets isn't just about translating content or adjusting payment systems. Local cultures, political contexts, technological landscapes and social norms all shape how people perceive and interact with products or services.In this talk, Chui Chui Tan will challenge traditional perspectives on cultural awareness in UX. She will show why it's time for UX professionals to rethink how cultural factors impact global design, and how to translate that understanding into meaningful actions.Through case studies and lessons from real-world international product launches, this talk will prompt attendees to reassess their approach to global UX, offering new frameworks for embedding cultural insights into every stage of product and business development.

I used to be skeptical of AI-powered tools and nervous about the sweeping changes they promise for our industry. But after interviewing over 25 AI research tool founders, testing nearly 100 AI-empowered solutions, and publishing our “AI vs Humans” study comparing traditional UX research with a human-plus-AI approach, I now see the transformative potential these tools offer.In this talk, I reveal how advanced AI will reshape the way UX professionals work. Discover how AI moderation can dramatically accelerate and scale research, how synthetic users provide new avenues for creative experimentation, and how near-limitless insights generate empowers smarter, more informed design decisions.

Every design organisation should continuously run initiatives that improve the circumstances for designers and increase the chances of good design happening. In other words: they should have a DesignOps practice.In this talk, Peter will walk attendees through examples of DesignOps initiatives and how they were executed, as well as introduce his process to maintain a DesignOps roadmap, all based on experiences at Miro, ServiceNow, IKEA, and other organisations.

Most of us are familiar with accessibility requirements around color, support for screen readers, and basics for content structure. But what about more nuanced issues that impact users with cognitive and motor disabilities? In this talk, Devon will discuss ways to keep users with disabilities safe and included on the modern web with clear workflows, options for reduced motion, and interfaces that are user-friendly, not user-hostile.

Designing for AI in 2025 is similar to designing computer interfaces in the late 80s and early 90s, where designers need some knowledge of the medium to craft the right experiences since our tools are currently insufficient.This talk will share how Klaviyo's AI team has been crafted to balance high-data literacy with designers that have more creative inspiration that gives our customers a feeling of magic.I'll cover how I hire for and help train data literacy in the designers so they can work in close partnership with data scientists & engineers.

Sure, AI could help you write that tricky UX copy. But does it make the product work better for users?The right UX text can speed up onboarding, increase engagement, and reduce support costs.In this talk, Torrey provides practical UX text patterns to help you design faster, with better outcomes, and without spending AI tokens.

Your Multi-All-The-Things organization supports multiple products, brands, platforms, and modes. Your design system unlocks desperately-needed efficiency & consistency, which is great! But each product has its own unique design needs, so how can we provide the benefits of shared systems without forcing everything to look exactly the same?The answer is design tokens! In this talk, you'll learn how design tokens help organizations strike the balance between consistency/efficiency and expression/innovation. Brad will share important design tokens concepts, architecture, and hard-earned best practices to help you successfully create and maintain a robust design token system to serve your Multi-All-The-Things organization.