Rosenverse
The power to heal and harm

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.

The power to heal and harm

Gold
Thursday, March 13, 2025 • Advancing Research 2025
Share the love for this talk
The power to heal and harm
Speakers: Rachael Dietkus, LCSW
Link:

Summary

Research holds great potential to both heal and harm—both ourselves and the communities we engage with. This session will help you to understand these impacts, and learn best practices to reduce harm and foster healing ethically and responsibly.

Key Insights

  • Research is never neutral; it is embedded within power structures and influences who is seen and heard.

  • Design research lacks formal ethical guardrails, unlike professions like social work or medicine, creating vulnerabilities.

  • The culture of urgency and speed in research often leads to extractive, performative practices that minimize harm.

  • Moral injury in research arises from systemic ethical failure, creating profound conflicts between values and work demands.

  • Minimizing or sanitizing harm enables institutions to avoid accountability while perpetuating cycles of ethical breaches.

  • Researchers can reclaim agency by setting personal ethical boundaries, advocating for care, and building supportive communities.

  • The RK Institute’s two loops model illustrates how old unethical research systems decline while trauma-informed approaches emerge.

  • Trauma-responsive research centers five principles: safety, transparency, co-creation, empowerment, and hope.

  • Slowing down research is a radical form of resistance prioritizing dignity, trust, and sustainability over speed.

  • Accountability and ethical frameworks must be integrated into organizational cultures, not left to individual researchers.

Notable Quotes

"You can't be neutral on a moving train."

"In design, it's the BYOE model—bring your own ethics."

"Moral injury is not just about witnessing harm; it's the inner knowing that you might also be complicit in producing it."

"Minimizing harm protects institutions, not people."

"Slowing down is not inefficiency; it is a commitment to dignity and trust."

"Moving fast isn’t just breaking things, it’s actually breaking people."

"The pressure to produce insights quickly defines many organizations shaped by 'move fast and break things' culture."

"Discomfort should not be dismissed; it’s a signpost for necessary change."

"Research should prioritize participant and researcher well-being over institutional convenience."

"The power of a bold idea uttered publicly in defiance of dominant opinion cannot be easily measured."

Ask the Rosenbot
Erin Hauber
Design is Not the Frosting on the Scaled Agile Layer Cake
2019 • DesignOps Summit 2019
Gold
Margot Bloomstein
Fostering Trust in Your Brand and Beyond
2020 • Enterprise Community
Mac Smith
Measuring Up: Using Product Research for Organizational Impact
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Louis Rosenfeld
Coffee with Lou #3: What Makes for a Successful UX Conference Presentation?
2024 • Rosenfeld Community
Bria Alexander
Opening Remarks
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Roberta Dombrowski
Making Research a Team Sport
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Daniel Korczynski
Why AI Is Bad at Research (and how to make it actually useful)
2026 • Advancing Research 2026
Gold
Craig Villamor
Resilient Enterprise Design
2017 • Enterprise Experience 2017
Gold
Kristin Wisnewski
Measuring What Matters
2019 • DesignOps Summit 2019
Gold
Michael Polivka
Scaling Design through Relationship Maps
2017 • DesignOps Summit 2017
Gold
Johanna Kollmann
Insights-Driven Product Strategy: Get your Research to Count
2022 • Design in Product 2022
Gold
Iain McMaster
Design and Product: from Frenemy to Harmony
2023 • Design in Product 2023
Gold
Louis Rosenfeld
Opening Remarks
2023 • DesignOps Summit 2023
Gold
Ruzanna Rozman
Getting in Flow with Your Team
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2020
Gold
Farid Sabitov
Automatization for Large Enterprise Teams
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2020
Gold
Anna Poznyakov
Get The Most Out Of Stakeholder Collaboration—and Maximize Your Research Impact
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold

More Videos

Alexandra Schmidt

"Sometimes the solution perceives the problem in the eyes of users, especially in enterprise spaces."

Alexandra Schmidt

Enterprise UX Playbook

December 1, 2022

Jen Crim

"People here want to be here. They want the company to succeed and to see customers succeed."

Jen Crim Jess Quittner Saritha Kattekola Alex Karr Gurbani Pahwa

Culture, DIBS & Recruiting

June 11, 2021

Christian Crumlish

"Product manager is not the CEO of the product and I don’t think that’s a very helpful metaphor."

Christian Crumlish

AMA with Christian Crumlish, author of Product Management for UX People

March 24, 2022

Libby Maurer

"We turned design thinking on ourselves to tackle our own hiring challenges—applying tools meant for customers to our own processes."

Libby Maurer

Treating Diversity & Inclusion in Hiring as a Design Problem

December 5, 2019

Ali Jeffery

"We need to harness the power of citizens to make real change."

Ali Jeffery Sheri Chudow

How DesignOps Helped Enable Wall Street to Work Remotely

October 22, 2020

Daniel Gloyd

"Design research often acts like scientists with clipboards rather than humans in conversation."

Daniel Gloyd

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

February 12, 2026

Kristin Skinner

"Every student has unique strengths that should be recognized and nurtured."

Kristin Skinner

Five Years of DesignOps

September 29, 2021

Johanna Kollmann

"Confirmation bias is when we ignore or explain away data that doesn’t support what we already believe - Nina Belk."

Johanna Kollmann

Insights-Driven Product Strategy: Get your Research to Count

December 6, 2022

David Sternberg

"You don’t design interfaces anymore—you choreograph intentions."

David Sternberg

Uncovering the hidden forces shaping user behavior

July 17, 2025