UX Professionals often feel burdened with the responsibility to protect, elevate and advocate for the humanity and needs of people who engage with the experiences they help design. They often work the closest with the complexity, messiness, and beauty of what it means to be human. And yet, this responsibility often causes professionals - without the language or frameworks to articulate why it's happening - to experience moments of anxiety, burnout, low motivation, apathy, fatigue, and other difficult challenges.
The ability to recognize and rise above the personal risks of this profession are a couple of the most critical skills rarely being taught, leading to an unsustainable career and potential harm to both the professional and others. Vivianne Castillo, a UX Researcher with a background in counseling & psychology, would like to change this and has crafted a unique workshop to teach these skills.
During this workshop, attendees will cover a range of topics, case studies, and techniques related to the unique challenges of self-care and self-awareness. Including:
- the personal risks of becoming a UX Professional;
- what to do when you find yourself experiencing compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma and the impact it can have on you, your work, and others;
- the role of fear, power, and privilege in design and ethics;
- why the pursuit of being emotionally, physically, mentally and spiritually is connected to our professional responsibility of being ethical;
- and more.
If you want to become a more holistically-grounded, self-aware, and empathic UX Professional who is able to practically apply new ways of working and thinking to both your professional and personal life, this workshop is for you.
Vivianne Castillo is User Experience Researcher with 7+ years of psychology and research experience spanning multiple contexts, cultures, and industries. Vivianne is also an international speaker whose work and opinions related to diversity & inclusion, ethics and the role of shame in UX have been written about in Slate and Fortune.
Prior to becoming a UX Researcher, Vivianne worked primarily in the arenas of human services and counseling, where she tackled issues like shame, empathy, vulnerability and compassion; she credits her previous experiences as a human services professional, multi-cultural upbringing, and her love for cognitive behavioral psychology as major influences on her approach to research and innovation. Vivianne currently works within the Office of Innovation at Salesforce where she leverages research to help C-suite executives across various industries and Fortune 500 companies strategically convey what is really meaningful to their internal and external customers and understand the human aspect of their business problems.