Conquer Your Fear: my talk at UX Tartu 2019
August 08, 2019
A few months ago, I gave a talk at UX Tartu 2019 with the title “Conquer Your Fear.” I’m quite satisfied with how it came together, given I haven’t spoken or practiced regularly.
The recording is missing a key piece of the discussion towards the beginning where you hear a cut: why talk about fear? Why is this relevant to design? I’ve come to believe that for many of us in creative and technical industries, it is our own fear, uncertainty and doubts, rather than any external factors or circumstances, that are preventing us from being more successful, happier, satisfied, or whatever else you are after. Fear is a core part of human nature and we will not get rid of it, but what we can do is recognize, understand and contain it. Hence, you “conquer” it, rather than “eliminate” or “kill”.
Video recording below (19 minutes). It’s not super high quality and you don’t see the slides fully, but the audio is quite OK and you can grab the slides PDF to follow along.
The one thing I will say about this talk is how it got much better through testing. I am thankful to my Pipedrive design colleagues who saw the first (way poorer) version of this material and provided helpful comments. As a result, I replaced or through out about 30% of the material, and the remaining part also got much more tight. Such talks are like any other product and get better with iterations and testing.