UX Australia 2026 — Day 2, Session 3

Every UX-er knows the feeling: You've landed in a new project, a new role, or a new organisation, and the brief is vague, the stakeholders have assumptions baked in, and nobody seems to agree on what the actual problem is. The instinct is to trust the process - but what if the process is the problem? This talk flips the script on how we navigate ambiguity, offering eight practical, immediately applicable tools for getting comfortable in the grey zone of not-knowing. Drawing on experience design, cognitive science, and the humbling realities of working in complex organisations, you'll leave with a concrete framework for naming your unknowns, challenging your assumptions, and making better decisions even when the path ahead isn't clear. Whether you're a seasoned practitioner or fresh in your career, comfort with uncertainty isn't a personality trait - it's a skill. And this talk will help you build it.

Attributes and conversations about UX and Product Design leadership often centre on scale and efficiency: growing headcount, enabling company growth, introducing streamlined practices and systems, refining operating models, and driving transformation. Across 25+ years of leading design in startups, agencies, enterprises, and government, I’ve done all of that. I’ve taken on those roles believing I could create meaningful, lasting impact — leaving each organisation stronger than when I joined. But in environments shaped by restructures, mergers and acquisitions, pivots, and strategy resets, many of those visible markers of leadership prove to be fragile and short-lived.

Over time, I’ve come to realise that only one aspect of leadership truly endures beyond tenure. In this talk, I’ll reflect on both the successes and missteps from my journey as a design leader and share what I believe is the one ingredient that outlasts growth strategies, frameworks, and org charts — and what leaders should focus on if they want their impact to genuinely travel beyond them.

All of the most important decisions about a project or company's customers, value, requirements, performance, intent, and impact are made before it's ever given to designers and engineers. That puts developers at a disadvantage of improving outcomes, making change, and accomplishing their goals. In order to have the impact you want to have, you need to move up the decision chain and become involved with strategy.

Designers, in particular, have all of the skills and perspectives needed to become superior strategist, whether they stay at the development level or move into an organization's leadership. However, in order to be effective, they must learn why the traditional approach to strategy is the problem and what new approaches will replace it and give them the influence they desire. This talk will cover what is wrong with strategy, how to fix it, and how to upskill into more impactful (and, often lucrative) careers.