Years Ahead 26, Service Design Weekend · University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI · Organizer & panel moderator
Throughline Conference — Design as Repair
Systems don’t usually fail all at once. They leak, jam, get stuck — and when that happens, it’s not designers or senior leaders who respond, it’s the people embedded in those systems, doing the work that keeps things running. Drawing on years inside federal and local government delivery, this talk argues the designer’s job should focus on maintenance, not just shiny UIs and dashboards — for anyone tired of being told to innovate when what we actually need is to tag what’s broken and start fixing it.
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA · Guest lecturer
Cascadia Open Source Conference — Beyond Civic Tech: Public Mechanics Starts at Home · Keynote
Civic tech often overpromises and underdelivers, focusing on apps or dashboards instead of the systems that quietly keep public life running. Public mechanics is a framework for seeing the rules, workarounds, and repair practices that hold services together after the launch moment has passed. This keynote explores why the “last mile” of delivery is always political, how resilient processes safeguard against misuse, and why the unglamorous work of maintenance is what makes systems durable and worthy of public trust.
Hype Studies Conference, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain — Hype and Its Impact on the City · Workshop
A workshop on hype and the city — on how technology has stretched culture’s half-life, and what gets crowded out when nostalgia becomes the dominant cultural operating system.
IxDA Oslo, Norway — Design as Repair
Seattle Design Festival, Seattle, WA — Beyond the Comment Box: Rethinking Feedback as Civic Infrastructure
Netlify, Virtual — AI Agents and the Web: How Developers Can Build Smarter with Agent Experience · Webinar
Code for America Summit — You can carry on where 18F left off · Panel moderator, with Sam Couch, Komal Rasheed & Lindsay Young
Bloomberg Industry Summit — Leading From Where You Are
AI Portland, Portland, OR — Enhancing Narratives Using AI
Portland UX Book Club, ADX, Portland, OR — Writing Is Designing · Host, live podcast with Andy Welfle
US Forest Service ACIO Trailhead Summit — Service Delivery & Innovation · Keynote
University of Michigan, Taubman College, Ann Arbor, MI — Sprinkle Some AI On It: Service Design, Consequences & How Tech Disrupts Everyday Life
Portland State University, Portland, OR — Graphic Design · Guest lecture
George Fox University, Newberg, OR — Service Design · Art talk
ConveyUX, Seattle, WA — The Designer’s Share of the Problem
Outcome Conference, Chandigarh, India — The Designer’s Share of the Problem
Rosenfeld Media Civic Design Conference — Design, Consequences & Everyday Life
Federal Customer Experience Leadership Symposium
Cloudflare Design Growth Week — Service Design
Federation of Tax Associates Tech Conference — Service Design · Keynote
IxDA Oslo, Sentralen, Oslo, Norway — The Designer’s Share of the Problem
Amidst a global pandemic, designers of all stripes are forced to confront the world we’ve helped shape. We can marvel at how much progress has been made in a relatively short time to connect the world, while noticing the impacts of those changes on everyday life. Do designers deserve a share of the blame for consequences of design? If so, what can be done about it? In this talk, we’ll think aloud about how to reimagine the ways we create products, practices, systems and services.
Design Week Colorado Springs, Colorado Springs, CO — Consequence Design
PDX UX Writers Meetup, Portland, OR — Consequence Design in UX Writing
Service Design Network Global Conference — The Consequences in Service Design
Digital.gov Monthly, Virtual — Avoiding Deceptive Design Patterns
U.S. Web Design System Monthly Call, Virtual — Consequence Design
An Event Apart, Human-Centered Design · Virtual — The Researcher’s Role in Consequence Design
Indy Design Week, Virtual — Hostile Design of Digital Experiences
UX Australia Design Research, Australia — The Researcher’s Role in Reducing Hostile Design
How does hostile design negatively impact users in a society where we’re “always online”? In this talk, we’ll explore what hostile design is, the common terms, and the ways user researchers can make the case for eliminating them from sites.
Donut.js, Portland, OR — What Finnish Baseball Taught Me About Game Design
ACM SIGDOC, Portland, OR — Hostile Design of Digital Experiences
Strive UX Research Conference (UXRConf), Toronto, Canada — Involving Stakeholders in Design Research
Code for America Summit · Panel
Portland Design Week, Portland, OR · Panel
Donut.js, Portland, OR — Defense Against Dark Patterns: Let’s Talk about Anti-UX
Indy Design Week, Indianapolis, IN — Improving the Product Toolbox
DrupalCon, Nashville, TN — Migrating a Small City to Drupal · With Charles Brandt
Carnegie Conference, Orlando, FL — Thinking Like a Designer
Gather Content, Virtual — Conducting a Stakeholder Audit
Confab Higher Ed — Tackling Content Migration & Maintenance
Confab Intensive, Denver, CO — Content Migration
Design & Content Conference, Vancouver, Canada — Discovery & Microinteractions: Improving the Product Toolbox
Pixel Up!, Cape Town, South Africa — Content & Design: Ways to Ruin the Product Experience
University of Illinois Web Conference, Champaign, IL — Tackling Content Migration & Maintenance
Web Conference at Penn State, University Park, PA — What’s Your Superhero Strategy: How Web Governance Can Save Your World
Confab Central, Minneapolis, MN — A Clown Car of Nonsense: Choosing a Better Vehicle to Steer Content Governance
Wayne State University Regional Web Conference, Detroit, MI — The Kids Are Alright: Millennials in the Workplace
American Marketing Association Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education — Integrating a Web Team Into Your Marketing Department
Aggregate Conference, Louisville, KY · Conference director
Hannon Hill Webinar Series, Virtual — The College Website Is a Potluck
Confab for Nonprofits — The Lone Ranger: Managing the Ups and Downs of One-Person Offices and Small Teams
Web Conference at Penn State, University Park, PA — Saving the World One Tumblr at a Time
SUNYCUAD Conference — Sunnier Days Ahead: Storytelling & Social Media Across Silos
University of Michigan Regional Web Conference, Ann Arbor, MI — Who Owns the Website? Making the Case for Digital Leadership
HighEdWeb Pittsburgh Regional Conference, Pittsburgh, PA — Death to Governance… Embrace the Chaos · With Tonya Oaks Smith
Confab Higher Ed — Armies of One: Managing the Ups and Downs of One-Person Offices and Small Teams
Udacity Webinar Series, Virtual — Sharing the Sandbox: IT & Marketing · With Alaina Wiens
HighEdWeb Michigan Regional Conference, Michigan — Unboxing Yourself: Reaching Out for Professional Growth
National Association of Government Webmasters Conference — Future Web Trends · Panel
Want me to speak? Reach me at ron@ronbronson.com.