Web Directions Design Leaders 2019

MelbourneApril 10 2019

For those who are leading design

8:00 am

Registration

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Serving barista coffee to get your heart started.

9:00 am

Design leadership and mental health: challenges, questions, and (some) answers

Maria Sereno, Design Lead Gippstech

Problems with mental health can have a huge negative impact on our work, especially when we're trying to create, design, or code. How do we function as excellent team leads when dealing with the additional challenges posed by mental illness in our teams?

I speak both as a design + front-end development lead, and as someone who deals with severe anxiety and depression on a daily basis. What useful questions can we ask to build better spaces for mental health in our industry - and what could some of these answers look like?

9:30 am

Design leadership for introverts

Timothy Yeo, Head of Design Prospa

Do you squirm in your seat when all eyes are on you? Do you find networking awkward and embarrassing? In meetings, do you find yourself keeping quiet even though you have something to say? Does a quiet evening at home with a book sound more attractive to you than an evening socialising with people you’ve never met?

If your answer to most of these questions is yes, congratulations: you are (probably) an introvert.

Introversion is not a choice; I believe it is something you are born with. However, it should not limit you, especially your ability to lead. Yet, as an introvert, you lose energy when engaging with people rather than gain. People engagement is not optional if you want to lead. So how do you lead as an introvert?

In this talk, I share techniques I’ve used to manage my own introversion in order to perform my role as a design leader.

10:00 am

How to be a Design Leader and Keep Designing

Andrew Green, Head of Design Canva

The traditional advice given to designers transitioning into leadership roles is that your craft skills will diminish as you manage more people.

However, for many designers, the prospect of dropping the craft creates anxiety and, in some cases, blocks them from moving into these roles.

For the last 10 years in product and design leadership roles, I’ve been toiling away at the notion — and would like to share practical ways that design leaders can lead but also not lose their craft.

10:30 am

Design Ethics: Integrating your values into the things you build

Josh Kinal, Lead Consultant, Experience Design ThoughtWorks

How can we be sure that the things we build fit with what we want to put into the world? Ethics is sometimes a tricky subject when put up against profit but design is the culmination of decisions we make when creating. Let's put the two together.

Often the best intentions can have terrible consequences. The worst villains believe they are entirely justified in their actions and are fighting for a greater good. Companies with no intention to be evil release services that unintentionally ruin things for millions of people and can cause ongoing damage years into the future.

This is about how to avoid that.

11:00 am

Morning Break

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Fully catered, with great coffee, and the chance to connect with your peers.

11:30 am

Strategists describe to make. Designers make to describe

Harriet Wakelam, Director Design Centre IAG

How do you design for a future so ambiguous that all things we take for granted turn out to be assumptions? What if cars drive themselves and people need insuring? How do you insure a home in a world where we are climate change nomads?

This talk explores how IAG is using Design as a prototype for a new kind of future practice. Where our opportunity of being a Design team inside an organisation offers the chance to leave the current design business model behind, using our craft to create tangible adaptable strategy, listen in new ways and make new types of choices?

I will explore some of the opportunities and challenges of leadership in this space, what we’ve learnt about design, and some of the more confronting (and exciting) opportunities it offers for our teams, our people and our organisations.

12:00 pm

Designing good experience for good experience designers

Saurabh Karwal, Experience Design Director Sitback Solutions

While stepping up from a lead experience designer to a director of experience design role, I noticed my team from 2 different perspectives. One being close to projects and the other being close to people, in this case, people being experience designers (mostly millennials)

I saw the team go through their daily routines juggling between different projects, clients, designs, researches etc. Rarely did I see or come across anyone taking time out to ‘THINK’. To think about why they are doing what they are doing, a bigger purpose, the future. I immediately knew that there was a need for change.

Often in the race to earn livelihood and working through deadlines, designers tend to forget about the super powers they have as well as the responsibilities that comes with it to shape the future. And then the career path becomes just like that of any other profession. I wonder what world we would be living in if the likes of Gaudi, Ghery, Jonathan Ivy, Paul Rand, Don Norman all were working only towards their projects and deadlines.

In this talk, I will cover the various aspects of how to create an environment, a better designed experience for those who design experiences for others and how it impacts their quality of outputs.

12:30 pm

Great design teams start with transparency

Amelia Crook, General Manager Cogent

The saying goes that money makes the world go around, but most designers value purpose and fulfillment over monetary compensation. How do we create diverse design teams that are both engaged and paid fairly, while also eliminating bias and inequality in the design industry?

This session explores how we've created more trusting and empowered teams through a completely transparent business model. From open salaries and equal profit share to involving staff in financial performance, we'll share the great (and not so great) aspects of this model. Get an understanding of how this approach can change team culture and grow engagement within a design team - or an entire company.

1:00 pm

TBA

Jina Anne, Design Systems Consultant Independent

TBA
1:30 pm

Lunch

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We've got something very special lined up for lunch. But you'll have to come to find out,

2:30 pm

Black Mirror Brainstorms–thinking the worst of your design

Jon Bell, Eva PenzeyMoog

We've seen all major social media platforms (and much more) abused and weaponised. Used to subvert democracies, foment ethnic hatred and violence.

But the misuse of digital products and services isn't just on the world stage. They open other vectors for intimate abuse, stalking, surveillance.

The naive days of expecting the best of the good intentions with which we design and build our products and services are over. But what then is to be done about it?

In security, penetration testing (or pen testing) is widely used to find security flaws and vulnerabilities in systems.

Dan Brown, with the concept of "Abusability Testing", and Aaron Z Lewis, with "Black Mirror Brainstorms" (named after the dystopian science fiction series) have proposed a similar idea for exploring flaws in systems that allow for abuse, and other negative outcomes with the aim of closing off these avenues for misuse.

In this final session of Design Leaders, we'll consider common ways in which the things we design can be misused, with insights from Eva Penzeymoog, and former lead design on Twitter's abuse team, Jon Bell, then conduct our own Black Mirror Brainstorm.

4:30 am

Wrapping up the day

Farewell,

Our venue

Design Leaders 2019 will be held in the ANZ Pavilion at the iconic Arts Centre Melbourne, right on the Yarra in Southbank.

ANZ Pavilion,
Arts Centre Melbourne,
100 St Kilda Road, Melbourne

Getting there:

With excellent public transport connections right outside, and Flinders Street Station right across the bridge, it's our best connected location yet.

Accommodation:

If you're coming from out of town, there are many hotel and serviced apartments style accomodation options in Southbank, and otherwise close by. We have for some time put our speakers up at the Mantra Southbank, and stay there ourselves.

Find the conference pass for you

Design + Leaders Pass

  • Design Conference

  • Design conference videos

  • Leaders conference

  • Leaders Videos

  • $1,695 Until April 5
  • $1,795 Standard

Leaders Silver Pass

  • Design Leaders conference

  • Design Leaders video

  •  
  •  
  • $795 Until April 5
  • $895 Standard

Leaders Classic Pass

  • Design Leaders conference

  •  
  •  
  •  
  • $695 Until April 5
  • $795 Standard

Design Leaders Conference 10 April

  • 1 day conference
  • Awesome conference coffee
  • Fully catered breaks
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Design Conference 11–12 April

  • 2 day conference.
  • Reception
  • Awesome conference coffee
  • Sensational catered breaks
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Design Conference Videos

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Design Leaders Conference Videos

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Find the conference pass for you

Design + Leaders Pass

  • Design Conference

  • Design conference videos

  • Design speakers dinner

  • Leaders conference

  • Leaders Videos

  • $1,695 Until April 5
  • $1,795 Standard

Register Now!

Leaders Silver Pass

  • Design Leaders conference

  • Design Leaders video

  •  
  •  
  • $795 Until April 5
  • $895 Standard

Register Now!

Leaders Classic Pass

  • Design Leaders conference

  •  
  •  
  •  
  • $695 Until April 5
  • $795 Standard

Register Now!

Season Passes

Choose a pass across 2, or all 3 of our major 2020 events, and get a Gold ticket which includes conference video, speaker dinner at each, and more.

You can even pay quarterly to manage cashflow. Just register then contact us and we'll set it all up.

Passes are for a single named attendee across all events, and are not transferable between attendees. For teams we have great group pricing, contact us for more.

Complete Season Pass

  • A Gold ticket to every one of our main 2020 conferences

  • Bonus Silver ticket to our Design Leaders and Code Leaders conferences

  • $3,495
    before Feb. 28

Three Conference Pass

  • A Gold ticket to all three of our main 2020 conferences

  • Bonus Silver ticket to a choice of Code Leaders or Design Leaders

  • $2,995
    before Feb. 28

Two Conference Pass

  • A Gold ticket to your choice of two of our main 2020 conferences

  •  

  • $2,195

Find the season pass for you

Complete Season Pass

  • A Gold ticket to every one of our main 2020 conferences

  • Bonus Silver ticket to our Design Leaders and Code Leaders conferences

  • $3,495
    before Feb. 28

Register Now!

  • A Gold ticket to all three of our main 2020 conferences

  • Bonus Silver ticket to a choice of Code Leaders or Design Leaders

  • $2,995
    before Feb. 28

Register Now!

Two Conference Pass

  • A Gold ticket to your choice of two of our main 2020 conferences

  •  

  • $1,995
    before Feb. 28

Register Now!

Praise for past Web Directions events

Phil Whitehouse
Web Directions is the must-attend event of the year for anyone serious about web development.

Phil Whitehouse,
Innovation Lead DigitasLBi

Ethan Marcotte
I’ve been admiring the Web Directions events for years, and was honored to be part… What a fantastic event!

Ethan Marcotte,
inventor "responsive Web design"

Dave Greiner
Out of any conference, Web Directions is far and away our favourite

Dave Greiner,
founder Campaign Monitor

Partners

At Web Directions we work closely with partners to help make our events even better. Sponsor our coffee, reception, recharge station, or other valued activities and start or grow your relationship with our highly qualified audience.

Contact us for more on how we work can work with you to help you be even more awesome.

Key Partners

Servian logo
Atlassian logo

Meetup Muster Partners

About Us

Co-founded and now run by John Allsopp, Web Directions has for nearly 20 years brought together leading developers, engineers, visual, IxD, UX and product designers, Art and Creative Directors, product managers indeed everyone involved in producing web and digital products to learn from one another, and the World's leading experts across this vast field.

We spend our lives thinking about what comes next, keeping up with trends in technology, practices and processes, and filtering the hype, to make sure you don't miss trends that matter, and don't waste time on hype that doesn't.

We promise attending one of our events will leave you significantly better versed in the challenges you face day to day, and in solutions for addressing them.

vignettes from our events, social, speakers and more. Includes Hannah Donovan skylarking.

John Allsopp

John Allsopp has been working on the Web for nearly 30 years. He's been responsible for innovative developer tools such as Style Master, X-Ray and many more. He's spoken at numerous conferences around the World and delivered dozens of workshops in that time as well.

His writing includes two books, including Developing With Web Standards and countless articles and tutorials in print and online publications.

His "A Dao of Web Design" published in 2000 is cited by Ethan Marcotte as a key influence in the development of Responsive Web Design, who's acclaimed article in 2010 begins by quoting John in detail, and by Jeremy Keith as "a manifesto for anyone working on the Web".

Code of Conduct

For over a decade, we've worked hard to create inclusive, fun, inspring and safe events for the Web Industry.

As part of our commitment to these values, we've adopted a code of conduct for all involved: ourselves, our speakers, our partners and our audience.

If you have any concern or feedback, please don't hesitate to contact us.