How can we be more resilient designers: From Business to Buttons 2022 Recap

After a year of countless digital online events and conferences, it was an incredible joy to go to From Business to Buttons conference in Stockholm. Besides a super exciting speaker line, great host David, countless tiny details by the InUse team, interactions with fully embodied humans, and lots of great learnings, it was an awkwardly real experience. In a good way.?

This year’s topic was about resilience and how we can turn uncertainties into opportunities, how to lead ourselves, and influence others. It resonated a lot with me, so I decided to share a few highlights that inspired me.

A pragmatic mindset makes a huge difference

Inspired by Andy’s Budd talk about Design’s Mid-Life Crisis, I noted a thought on pragmatism in design. Design is an endless series of trade-offs. Some are pure design trade-offs, but many are simply about different aspects of our job: engineering complexity, business goals, trust between us designers and product owners, and the list goes on. Therefore we continuously make imperfect choices with imperfect information among all these trade-offs. Andy suggested to stop complaining, finding excuses, and stop fixating on idealized processes, but rather adopt a more pragmatic mindset and be more proud of what you do and deliver.?

Deal with your ego as a designer?

Anna Kirah was definitely one of my key highlight speakers. Anna was the first-ever anthropologist to join Microsoft back in 1999. She shared many uncomfortable truths. First of all, our arrogance as designers can sometimes limit us instead of helping us. Our assumption is usually the mother of all our fuck ups. We have to unlearn a few things (e.g - our own biases, delivery patterns, strict scripts we tend to follow, the people we hire around us) to be good designers and reflect more instead. Reflect more and explore.?

We also have to realize that our titles do not define us, what we do is defines us. And no matter how important design perspective is in many cases, no one discipline is best and no one discipline alone will solve the challenges we are facing.?

P.S - Where is diversity in the 21st century? ?? Anna raised an important priority in the importance of diversity and more equal thinkers around us.

What are you doing with your power and privilege??

Another impactful talk that stuck in my mind was by Kat Zhou. Kat is a product designer at Spotify and has a strong passion for ethical design. I truly enjoyed Kat’s perspective on our responsibility as designers and the reminder that we all have the privilege (and burden) of wielding a lot more power than we ever had in the existence of our profession.?

By simply asking yourself “Whom am I uplifting with my designs” you are already one step ahead. We do need designers, and researchers in every step of our careers to push for more ethical decision-making. At a fundamental level, designing more ethically according to Kat means ideating solutions with three key concepts in mind: autonomy, transparency, and safety. Together these three qualities empower users and user trustworthy products. I will take a moment to reflect on these 3 principles more often from today on.

I also encourage all designers to check? Kat’s Ethical Design Resources online: lots of applicable tools and goodies to dig deeper into how to design more ethically.?

Embrace people that inspire you more often

And last but not least, I wish I could quote entire Jared Spool's session and transmit how he made the audience feel with his hand-drawn presentation, humor, and simply great insights! I was happy to meet one of my UX role models and say thank you personally for his wonderful contribution to the UX community.

Why don’t you write to someone you appreciate and say thank you more often??

Thank you InUse Team for a wonderful organization and my team at Electrolux for a learning day together!