Our core principles lie in creating a better future for ourselves and our industry.

Before we begin the work of transforming the status quo of what it means for UX professionals to be human-centered in our work, our industry, and our personal lives, we must first cover skills and practices that will help us engage in deeper conversations, new opportunities, and new growth.

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Cultural humility is rooted in a deep awareness and respect toward individuals of other cultures. But to do this, we face the challenges of our own cultural biases and prejudices, as well as the fact that we cannot possibly know everything about other cultures.

What we can do, though, is approach learning about the experiences as a lifelong goal and process that helps us grow personally and professionally. We’ll cover topics like emotional resistance (e.g. anxiety, defensiveness, anger, guilt, remorse, etc), how to handle emotional responses to self-revelations and accountability, the impact shame and guilt has on our growth journeys, and more.

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Though the study, analysis, and discourse on anti-Black racism has pervaded Black academic, intellectual, and activist spaces, it wasn’t until the summer of 2020 that the public commenced to take notice and learn about what we understand as not only a theoretical framework, but also a distinct, unique, and particular kind of dehumanization and brutalization that Black folk experience. In this module, Dr. Danielle Hodge asks and attends to the following questions: (1) What is anti-Black racism and why is it crucial to our understanding of white supremacy? (2) How does anti-Black racism inform our everyday practices and manifest in our interpersonal and institutional interactions? (3) How does anti-Black racism allow for conversations about intersecting oppressions and other forms of domination? (4) How does our attention to anti-Black racism begin to challenge the underlying premise of white supremacy? And (5) How does valuing Blackness challenge anti-Black racism and white supremacy?

As the design industry has evolved, so have our ethical challenges. How do we ensure that our tools and processes don’t expose users to more harm than good? How do we balance stakeholder needs with our desire to produce more inclusive, equitable designs? How do we hold ourselves accountable for past and current work? We’ll explore resources you can use to develop your own professional ethical stance with context and systems in mind.

UX professionals commonly engage with the topic of "enough,” whether it’s self-oriented as in “Am I having good enough?” or project-oriented as in “Will this have enough impact?” These questions can be worth engaging in because we should be reflective and critical of ourselves and our practice. However they can be problematic when they are driven by fear and a scarcity mindset. In this module, we acknowledge the impact that fear and a scarcity mindset can have on us and our practices and identify ways that we can overcome these feelings to adopt an abundance mindset. We will discuss ways that an abundance mindset enables you, your team,and your organization to be more human-centered, and share strategies for cultivating this mindset in your own practice.