On Friday, I premiered on the big stage at Big Design Dallas. My topic was “Cognitive Biases: How to keep them out of UX Research and Design.” This topic us very near and dear to my heart because we all suffer from cognitive biases. You don’t have to hold a psychology degree to know that. The focus of this talk was how to recognize biases in yourself and others. Also what you can do ti fight of the symptoms cognitive biases. Finally, I told my crowd how they can “turn their frown upside down” and how to use cognitive biases for good in your UX designs.
Jen Blatz on stage at Big Design talking about Cognitive Biases.
For my first international/national conference speaking gig, I think it went really well. Sure there were a few minor mistakes that only (hopefully) the speaker noticed. My whole goal was to get the crowd interested and engaged in the topic. And I did that by balancing funny images, real-world stories and relatable content.
The crowd laughed, participated and learned something new form the talk “Cognitive Biases: Keep them out of your design and research.”
Passing the time between conference tracks by chatting with the one and only Alan Cooper.
I recently attended the annual BigD conference right here in Dallas. We are really lucky to have such a wonderful conference right here in Dallas. It seems like Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York always seem to get the love of big conferences. So Brian Sullivan, a UX institution here in Dallas, set up our own local conference.
BigD has been held in Dallas now for 10 years, y’all. Like the locals would say. ha!
This year was a milestone year of BigD. The conference celebrated 10 years in existence. Yay! We had some great presenters and attendees this year including:
Alan Cooper
Jared Spool
Steve Portigal
Christian Crumlish
Along with several local UX “celebrities”
Th best part of me for this conference to to meet up with old friends and meet new ones. BigD is a great opportunity to meet other UX talent from the Dallas community and beyond. A lot of people do not have the time or interests to participate in local Meetup events. So this is a nice way to meet other UX folks and to expand my network. Plus, like I sad before, it’s a good opportunity to reconnect with old colleagues and coworkers. Oh, and it’s always fun to get a big of swag.
