Rosenverse

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.

Enterprise Storytelling Sessions

Gold
Monday, June 3, 2019 • Enterprise Experience 2019
Share the love for this talk
Enterprise Storytelling Sessions
Speakers: Dan Willis
Link:

Summary

A highlight of the conference every year, the Storytelling Sessions are a set of five-minute talks from enterprise professionals who share their challenges, opinions, failures and successes. Here are the storytellers for Enterprise Experience 2019: - Stephanie Albright, Experience Designer, a story about cleaning bathrooms - Spencer Icasiano, Product Designer II / UX Researcher, Care.com, a story about transitions - Malia Nagle, Director, UX Research, PayPal, a story about two apologies - Laura Nash, Senior UX Designer, Boston Consulting Group, a story about personas who think for themselves - Jenn Noinaj, UX Designer, U.S. Digital Service, a story about stereotypes - Ilona Posner, UX Consultant, a story about keyholes - Malini Rao, Senior Manager, UX, Kronos Inc., a story about a fight

Key Insights

  • Storytelling became widespread in conferences in the last five years to counter audience distraction and increase engagement.

  • Audience attention varies drastically during the day; storytelling aims to combat mid-day and end-of-day disengagement.

  • The concept of 'keyholes' illustrates how limited perspectives obscure important organizational context and cause unexpected conflicts.

  • Professional expertise, like UX skills, doesn’t always apply in personal or emotional domains such as parenting, which require empathy and time.

  • Moving abroad triggers emotional phases—excitement, frustration, acceptance, and adjustment—that teach resilience and growth.

  • Organizational resistance can impede UX progress, but persistence, collaboration, and design thinking can bridge gaps between user needs and business goals.

  • Apologizing openly and vulnerably can transform difficult relationships into productive partnerships in product teams.

  • Personas can become more effective by adopting qualities from role-playing character sheets: accountability, conflict, temporary states, and evolution.

  • Bringing authentic, even quirky personal interests into work can foster memorable and genuine connections.

  • Queerness as a concept symbolizes embracing change and rejecting binary thinking, a principle that strengthens personal identity and innovation in UX.

Notable Quotes

"The more specific a story gets, the more universal the themes are felt by everybody."

"Outside of our keyholes lies information we’re completely oblivious to that can come to haunt us."

"No matter how good I am at my job, it doesn’t make me a good parent. What makes a good parent is time, love, compassion, and a sense of humor."

"Pushing my boundaries and getting out of my comfort zone helped me learn what I was capable of."

"Make an uncredible experience credible. That was the directive from organizational resistance to UX."

"In a fight, there’s a winner and a loser. But for a product to be successful, it has to work both for users and business."

"It’s never too late to apologize. And don’t be afraid to say, I’m sorry."

"Personas need to push back. Conflict makes for better stories and better products."

"When I let my outside interest in, I suddenly had really memorable conversations with people."

"Queerness is change. The power to shape that change is within every one of us."

Ask the Rosenbot
Steve Chaparro
Bringing Into Alignment Brand, Culture and Space
2020 • DesignOps Community
Shreya Dhawan
Making service tangible: the fastest path to higher performance
2025 • Advancing Service Design 2025
Gold
Louis Rosenfeld
Welcome / Housekeeping
2023 • Enterprise UX 2023
Gold
Ignacio Martinez
Fair and Effective Designer Evaluation
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2024
Gold
Wyatt Hayman
Global Research Panels
2020 • DesignOps Community
Sam Proulx
Designing For Screen Readers: Understanding the Mental Models and Techniques of Real Users
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Patrizia Bertini
Pushing DesignOps’ Influence into New Global Markets
2022 • DesignOps Summit 2022
Gold
Nicole Wright
Democratizing Research at HoneyBook
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Lily Aduana
5 Reasons to Bring Your Recruiting in-House (and How To Do It)
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Sharbani Dhar
Breathing Room for Delight
2024 • Enterprise Experience 2020
Gold
Jen Briselli
Learning Is The Engine: Designing & Adapting in a World We Can’t Predict
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Louis Rosenfeld
Coffee with Lou #3: What Makes for a Successful UX Conference Presentation?
2024 • Rosenfeld Community
Jenny Price
From Tradition to Transformation: Unlocking Startup Agility in a Legacy Enterprise
2025 • DesignOps Summit 2025
Gold
Nalini P. Kotamraju
Two Jobs in One: Being a “Leader who is a Researcher” and a “Researcher who is a Leader"
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Nathan Curtis
Beyond the Toolkit: Spreading a System Across People & Products
2016 • Enterprise UX 2016
Gold
Victor M. Gonzalez
Practicing Learners and Learning Practitioners
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold

More Videos

Daniel Gloyd

"Patricia Moore’s aging research revealed how product design often excludes elderly users by living their constraints."

Daniel Gloyd

Designing From the Inside Out: How Method Acting Can Inspire Design Research

February 12, 2026

Deirdre Hirschtritt

"I just feel like you’re talking to robots in the system a lot. They don’t have any awareness of other people’s cultures or worldviews."

Deirdre Hirschtritt Cesar Paredes Marie Perrot

Research is Only as Good as the Relationships You Build

November 17, 2022

Benjamin Real

"We finally instead of using the compass and the map we finally were able to build a GPS."

Benjamin Real

Maturity Models: A Core Tool for Creating a DesignOps Strategy

October 1, 2021

Max Gadney

"It’s really important to understand your own mental bandwidth and not take on too much even if the project excites you."

Max Gadney Andrea Petrucci Joshua Stehr Hannah Wickes

Assessing UX jobs for impact in climate

August 14, 2024

Lada Gorlenko

"Rob Meetzel knows Ford as the back of his hand after nearly 30 years."

Lada Gorlenko

Theme 1: Intro

January 8, 2024

Feyikemi Akinwolemiwa

"If it feels uncomfortable, you’re probably doing something right."

Feyikemi Akinwolemiwa

Play to innovate: How curiosity and experimentation transform UX

March 11, 2026

Bria Alexander

"Lauren Cantor keeps all those links and other resources so we don’t have to be googling while listening."

Bria Alexander

Opening Remarks

March 29, 2023

Llewyn Paine

"Synthetic duplicates living on after data deletion raise ethical questions about users’ right to be forgotten."

Llewyn Paine

[Demo] Deploying AI doppelgangers to de-identify user research recordings

June 5, 2024

Bria Alexander

"When teams are connected to real strategic missions and own their key results, OKRs become positive."

Bria Alexander Benson Low Natalya Pemberton Stephanie Goldthorpe

OKRs—Helpful or Harmful?

January 20, 2022