The 20th Anniversary of World Usability Day is coming up Thursday, November 13, 2025! Join us in Akron to hear from a variety of speakers about this year’s theme: Emerging Technologies and Human Experience.
Date: Thursday November 13, 2025 🎉
Location: BluTique Hotel, 1 S Main St, Akron, OH 44308
Event hours: 9:30 am to 4:00 pm
🙋🏾♀️ Reach out to volunteer!
Looking to get involved? We’d love your help with organizing, promoting, or operations during the event!
Agenda
9:30 – 10:00: Registration & Breakfast
10:15 – 11:15: Designing with your Customers: Using Co-Creation and Continuous Discovery to Design and Build an Internal Tool – Shelby Muter
11:15 – 11:45: Trust-Centered Service Design for Complex, Risky Systems – Christina Burnett
11:45 – 12:00: Break
12:00 – 12:30: Using Ancient Wisdom to Solve Modern Problems: How Stoic Philosophy Can Help Designers – Stephen Morrissey
12:30 – 1:45: Lunch
1:45 – 2:00: Announcements & Giveaways
2:00 – 2:30: An Exploration of Assistive Technology, AI and UX – Erin Byrne
2:30 – 3:30: Designing an Employer Portal: Best Practices and Lessons Learned – Tarun Seth
About The Presentations
Christina Burnett on Trust-Centered Service Design for Complex, Risky Systems
Users won’t adopt something they don’t trust. Emerging technologies like AI promise powerful efficiencies, but designing for trust and sustainable user adoption can be harder than the technology itself.
This talk will share a framework for designing credibility across complex, high-stakes systems. I’ll draw upon real-world lessons from critical government systems and show how ignoring trust leads to user rejection, even when the technology meets all the requirements, and how you can design for both innovation and user acceptance.
Erin Byrne on An Exploration of Assistive Technology, AI and UX
Erin will talk about her long experience with assistive technology and how it has made positive and lasting impacts in her life, both personally and professionally. She will also discuss how her exploration of AI tools have improved certain aspects of accessibility in general.
Technology topics include:
– Screen Readers, (JAWS and Voiceover for IOS)
– Braille notetakers like the Braille Sense 6.
– Rayban Metaglasses
– AI tools
Speaking as a person who is blind, there are more opportunities and possibilities today for individuals like me because of these technologies.
Stephen Morrissey on Using Ancient Wisdom to Solve Modern Problems: How Stoic Philosophy Can Help Designers
Lessons from over 2,000 years ago may seem obsolete. Yet, if that knowledge has stood the test of time, why dismiss it? Stoic philosophy was studied by notable figures such as George Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, Tom Brady, and Steve Jobs.
So how can designers and researchers benefit from these teachings? I will delve into several key concepts taught by the Stoics and discuss how they can help us flourish in these uncertain times.
Shelby Muter on Designing with your Customers: Using Co-Creation and Continuous Discovery to Design and Build an Internal Tool
Shelby will share a case study highlighting her and the team’s approach to embracing co-creation and continuous discovery to design, build, and implement an internal dashboard from scratch.
Takeaways:
– Case study showcasing how a small but impactful team embraced a continuous discovery and co-creation mindset and approach.
– Framework and tips on how to facilitate your own continuous discovery sessions with multidisciplinary teams right away.
– Advice for designers on how to leave their ego behind and open themselves up to co-designing with diverse roles and non-design teams.
Tarun Seth on Designing an Employer Portal: Best Practices and Lessons Learned
In this talk, we’ll explore what it means to be a true Swiss Knife in today’s dynamic UX landscape—versatile, resilient, and ready for anything. While specialization has its place, survival and growth often demand adaptability.
Through the lens of real-world challenges, we’ll discuss how cultivating a broad skill set—spanning UX, development, AI, and beyond—can empower you to thrive in uncertain environments.
You’ll be encouraged to embrace risk, build a strong support system, and develop a persona that’s both deeply skilled and widely capable. Because when you can only carry one tool into the unknown, you want to be the one that can do it all!
