UX South Africa

UX South Africa
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Established 2014. UX Craft South Africa highlighting our local User Experience talent and community.

Episodes

  1. Aug 8

    Dr. Lizette Spangenberg | When AI Can't See You

    Some of the most damaging AI failures aren't caused by bad actors or broken systems. They happen when a system works exactly as it was designed to. In this talk, Dr Lizette Spangenberg unpacks what Eric Meyer called inadvertent algorithmic cruelty, the harm that surfaces when an algorithm does its job perfectly and nobody stopped to ask who it might hurt. Drawing on examples from Spotify Wrapped, Facebook's Year in Review, targeted advertising and healthcare AI, she shows how harm enters at three different layers of a product, data, logic and interface, and why UX teams usually only get involved at the last one. She then walks through a real case study: a face-scan health app that simply could not detect a colleague's face because of her skin tone. And she asks whether a disclaimer at the bottom of the screen is ever good enough. Whether you're a designer, researcher, product owner or BA, you'll leave with a sharper set of questions for evaluating any AI product: who does this work worst for, what happens when it's wrong, and what are we optimising for, at whose expense. Chapters 00:00 Unpacking the Title00:43 Algorithms, AI and Machine Learning04:04 Spotify Wrapped and the Pink Pilates Princess07:25 Targeted Ads After a Breakup08:43 When Your Photos App Remembers Too Much09:59 Year in Review and "Algorithmic Cruelty"12:24 They All Worked Exactly as Intended13:30 Where Harm Enters: Data, Logic, Interface14:46 The UX Gap in AI Projects15:23 Three Questions Every Team Should Ask17:07 The Black Mirror Test17:55 Case Study: Face Scan Health Apps20:08 When the System Can't See Your Face22:28 Are Disclaimers Good Enough?24:07 Accuracy vs Equity25:17 What Designers Are Responsible For27:09 The Ring Ad: When AI Sees Too Much28:57 Q&A: Where Does Responsibility Lie?31:48 Q&A: Is Anyone Getting Guardrails Right?34:15 Q&A: Biased Data and the Human Guardrail Resources Dr. Lizette Spangenberg on LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/lizette-spangenberg/X, bigly labshttps://dischemgroup.com/xbigly/UX South Africahttps://uxsouthafrica.com/UXSA Online Eventshttps://uxsouthafrica.com/events/uxsa-2026-july-online Subscribe for more talks from UX South Africa featuring leading voices in UX, product design, research, service design and AI.

    Dr. Lizette Spangenberg | When AI Can't See You

  2. Aug 8

    Joanna Pawluk | What Hearing Loss Taught Me About Service Design

    A yoga instructor in a village hall in Northamptonshire drew out every pose on a sheet of paper so that one person in her class could follow along. Twelve years later, Joanna Pawluk still remembers it. In this talk, Joanna traces a line from that piece of paper to the work she does today at Emirates, where she's mapping the end-to-end travel experience for customers who are deaf or hard of hearing. Along the way she makes a point most organisations miss: the people who experience the most friction become the best at hiding it. They build their own workarounds, they get from A to B, and the service looks like it's working fine. Drawing on her lived experience of hearing loss, desk research, social listening and workshops with frontline crew, Joanna shares how she built a service blueprint two metres long, and how she turned it into a reusable framework any team can apply. That framework flips the usual question. Instead of mapping every customer type, you ask one thing of every touchpoint: if a sense or an ability were removed here, would someone still get the same quality of service? Chapters 00:00 Introduction: A Personal Story01:01 Cape Town, 2009: Teaching With a Globe02:32 Designing Something They'd Remember03:33 Living Between the Hearing and Deaf Worlds05:21 A Yoga Class in a Village Hall06:09 Rosa's Piece of Paper07:29 She Followed a Design Process Without Knowing It09:42 Travel: The Hardest Service Design Challenge10:51 People Who Experience Friction Hide It Best11:45 How Do You Know When to Board?13:31 Starting the Project at Emirates14:50 The Research Behind It17:42 Why Social Listening Tools Miss the Visual19:33 A Spectrum of Need, Not a Persona21:29 A Service Blueprint Two Metres Long23:49 A Reusable Framework for Any Team25:31 Closing: Stop Making People Adapt26:43 Q&A: Where Organisations Overlook Accessibility28:10 Q&A: Which Industries Lead and Which Lag29:35 Q&A: The Biggest Opportunities Ahead Resources Joanna Pawluk on LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/joannampawluk/Emirateshttps://www.emirates.com/UX South Africahttps://uxsouthafrica.com/UXSA Online Eventshttps://uxsouthafrica.com/events/uxsa-2026-july-online Subscribe for more talks from UX South Africa featuring leading voices in UX, product design, research, service design and AI.

    Joanna Pawluk | What Hearing Loss Taught Me About Service Design

  3. Aug 8

    Ignatius Ferreira | Nobody Cares About Your UX Process

    Everyone in the room agreed. They thanked you for the work. The research was solid. And a few weeks later, nothing had changed. If that's familiar, this talk is for you. Across 11 years in healthcare, aviation, enterprise systems and consulting, Ignatius Ferreira watched excellent UX practitioners struggle to create impact while others moved things forward with ease. For years he put it down to design maturity, or stakeholders who just didn't get UX. Eventually he realised he'd been treating two very different skills as if they were one: understanding a problem, and creating the conditions for that problem to be solved. In this talk, Ignatius argues that we've become exceptionally intentional about understanding users, and almost entirely unintentional about understanding the organisations our work has to survive inside. He unpacks how to learn an organisation the way we learn a user — how trust forms, how priorities compete, and why some ideas move while others quietly disappear. Three lessons anchor the session: stop communicating like a UX designer, treat relationships as research rather than influence, and when someone pushes back, ask what they're trying to protect. Chapters 00:00 A Provocative Title01:24 The Model I Believed In02:24 Two Completely Different Skills03:28 The Assumption Hiding in the Model04:07 Everyone Agreed. Then Nothing Happened.05:07 Blaming the Organisation06:09 Nobody Was Trying to Stop Good UX07:34 What Was Missing From My Old Talk08:24 How Organisations Actually Behave09:46 Organisations Are Human Systems Too10:51 Day One: The Invisible Organisation11:48 Every Conversation Is a Piece of the Puzzle14:31 The Room Fills Up and You See a System15:28 Being Right Isn't Enough16:22 "What Would Have to Be True?"17:06 Agreement Is the Starting Line17:35 Clients Buy Confidence, Not Deliverables19:24 Lesson 1: Stop Communicating Like a UX Designer20:48 Lesson 2: Relationships Are How You Learn an Organisation21:53 Lesson 3: What Are They Trying to Protect?23:04 Closing: One Question24:24 Q&A: Building Influence Without Authority26:58 Q&A: South Africa vs the Middle East27:58 Q&A: Politics vs Healthy Organisational Dynamics30:28 Q&A: The Turning Point32:34 Q&A: Which Skill Mattered Most Resources Ignatius Ferreira on LinkedIn⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/ignatius-ferreira/⁠ Emirates⁠https://www.emirates.com/⁠ UX South Africa⁠https://uxsouthafrica.com/⁠ UXSA Online Events⁠https://uxsouthafrica.com/events/uxsa-2026-july-online⁠

    Ignatius Ferreira | Nobody Cares About Your UX Process

  4. Jul 29

    Shaeema Boer | How to Design AI People Can Trust

    As AI becomes part of more products and services, the challenge isn’t simply how to build with AI, it’s how to build AI that people can trust. In this talk, Shaeema Boer explores what responsible AI means from a product design perspective, drawing on emerging global AI frameworks and her experience designing AI-powered products at Accenture Song. Rather than treating responsible AI as a compliance exercise, she argues that it should be embedded into the way product teams think, collaborate and design from day one. Using three practical design principles, Transparency, Human Oversight and Accountability, Shaeema shows how teams can build AI experiences that keep people informed, in control and able to recover when things go wrong. Whether you’re a UX designer, product manager, engineer or design leader, this session provides practical guidance for creating AI experiences that earn user trust. Chapters 00:00 Why Responsible AI Matters00:40 Can We Add AI to This?02:44 Learning from Global AI Frameworks04:38 Three Principles for Responsible AI05:46 Designing for Transparency & Explainability09:22 Keeping Humans in Control11:40 Designing for Accountability & Recovery15:25 Responsible AI Is a Team Sport18:37 Q&A: Which Principle Matters Most?22:41 Q&A: How AI Has Changed Design Work25:42 Closing & Connect ⸻ Resources Shaeema Boer on LinkedIn Senior UX Architect @ Accenture Song UX South Africa Subscribe for more talks from UX South Africa featuring leading voices in UX, product design, research, service design and AI.

    Shaeema Boer | How to Design AI People Can Trust

  5. Jul 29

    Supreet Kumar | AI for UX Designers: Tools, Products & Practice

    AI isn’t just another design tool, it’s changing how we research, prototype, build products and collaborate as teams. In this session, Supreet Kumar explores AI through 3 practical lenses: AI as a design toolAI as the product we’re designingAI as a new way of workingDrawing on examples from companies including Klarna, IBM, IDEO and Adobe, Supreet shows where AI is already creating measurable value, where it introduces new risks, and why the role of designers is becoming more important—not less. Rather than focusing on hype, this talk provides practical guidance for designers, researchers and product teams looking to adopt AI intentionally and responsibly. Whether you’re just beginning to experiment with AI or helping your organisation integrate it into product development, this session offers frameworks you can apply immediately. Chapters 00:00 AI Is Already Changing Design02:04 AI as a Design Tool04:19 How AI Tools Are Evolving09:14 AI Success Stories14:42 When AI Goes Wrong17:20 The AI Adoption Curve20:08 AI Across the Design Process22:42 What Humans Still Do Best25:38 Designing AI Products28:14 The Six UX Challenges of AI32:30 Adapting Faster Than AI34:44 Q: Where Does AI Have the Biggest UX Impact? ⸻ Resources Supreet Kumar on LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/supreetkr/ Websitehttps://uxsouthafrica.com/ Upcoming Eventshttps://uxsouthafrica.com/events/uxsa-2026 Subscribe for more talks from UX South Africa featuring leading voices in UX, product design, research, service design and artificial intelligence. #UX #UXDesign #ArtificialIntelligence #ProductDesign #UXResearch #DesignSystems #HumanCenteredDesign #AI #UXSouthAfrica Music licensed through Soundstripe.Code: YZQDGTDEMORXFKPL

    Supreet Kumar | AI for UX Designers: Tools, Products & Practice

  6. Jul 28

    Jason Giles | Why AI Makes Design Judgment More Valuable

    AI has transformed how quickly we can design, prototype and ship products. But as execution becomes cheaper, one question becomes even more important: What makes human designers valuable? In this keynote, Jason Giles explores why the future of UX isn’t about competing with AI, it’s about strengthening the uniquely human skills that AI can’t replace: judgment, curiosity, critical thinking and evidence-based decision making. Drawing on more than 25 years of experience, Jason reflects on the rise of the internet, the dot-com crash, and today’s AI revolution to show why every major technological shift has increased, not diminished, the need for thoughtful design. Whether you’re a UX designer, researcher, product manager or engineering leader, this talk offers practical frameworks for navigating AI with confidence while building products people can genuinely trust. Chapters 00:00 Why AI Makes Judgment More Valuable 02:15 Why Curiosity Beats Expertise 04:24 The Skills That Didn’t Exist Yet 06:53 Finding Patterns in the Wild West 09:12 When Generalists Become Specialists 12:29 How Communities Navigate Change14:09 - AI Is Faster Than Our Confidence 18:58 Why AI Can’t Replace User Research 22:20 The Hidden Cost of AI Mistakes 25:47 From Human-in-the-Loop to Evidence-in-the-Loop 27:14 The Risk Gradient Framework 30:26 Escaping the Sea of Sameness 31:38 Designing Non-Deterministic Experiences 32:39 Humans Change Faster Than AI Learns 34:28 Judgment Is the New Competitive Advantage 36:00 Measuring Experience with QX Scores 36:51 Audience Q&A 37:50 Is AI the Next Industrial Revolution? 40:45 How Deep Should Designers Learn AI? 43:32 Building Stronger Design Communities 46:29 How to Stay Valuable in an AI World 51:52 Will AI Change What Products Become? ⸻ Connect with Jason Giles Jason's Linkedin Learn more about UX South Africa https://uxsouthafrica.com/ Upcoming Events Subscribe for more talks from UX South Africa featuring leading voices in UX, product design, research, service design and human-centred AI. #UX #UXDesign #ArtificialIntelligence #ProductDesign #UXResearch #DesignLeadership #HumanCenteredDesign #UserTesting #UXSouthAfrica

    Jason Giles | Why AI Makes Design Judgment More Valuable
  • 6 Episodes

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Established 2014. UX Craft South Africa highlighting our local User Experience talent and community.

Information

  • Creator
    UX South Africa
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    6
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © UX South Africa
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    UX South Africa