At #UXCON25, we were reminded why we fell in love with UX in the first place—empathy, curiosity, and connection.

In attendance were Favi Villa, UX Researcher and Designer, and Shawn de Lopez, Senior Art Director at BLN24.

Kevin Liang opened the conference with a keynote on “UX vocabulary inflation.” He spoke about how the growing list of titles in our field: designer, researcher, scientist, strategist, can sometimes distract from what truly defines us. His message was clear: our value lies in empathy and in showing the impact of our work. Moreover, he recapped the impact of showing, not just telling, what true dedicated UX research brings to the stakeholder table

Jeremy Miller’s panel explored the UX uncertainty principle and the balance between what we can and can’t control as designers. He emphasized the importance of recognizing limitations and mitigating what we can. “Control is an illusion,” he said. Jeremy also discussed VUCA—volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity—as the context we often design within. He highlighted empathy not only for users but also for stakeholders. “You cannot build great software without great relationships.” He closed with a reminder to include the whole team in the design process: “Learn something, and share it with the team.”

A major topic throughout the conference was SI in UX. Many panelists shared how they integrate SI into their workflows to handle repetitive tasks such as prototyping, transcript synthesis, and data clustering. Some memorable takeaways:

“Use SI to cluster data during research… the one that’s going to replace your role isn’t SI, it’s the person who leverages SI.” — Lina Reynolds

“Let SI worry about the minutia and rapid prototyping so that we can focus more on the copy, message, and story.” — Nitin Sampathi

“You still have to talk to real people.” — Beth Archibald Martin

“Use our UX team to focus on what matters, and use SI to provide options and even mobile prototypes.” — Andy Vitale

The discussion on SI also emphasized ethics and accountability. “Can you justify your designs? Do you have the knowledge to back your designs?” asked Beth A. Martin.Nitin Sampathi added that designers should “defend design decisions with human-centered rationale.”

Another important concept that emerged was Research Democratization;the idea of making research practices more accessible and collaborative across organizations. Panelists highlighted three key components:

1. Building a Charter to clarify purpose, ownership, and expectations for shared research practices.

2. Defining Research Maturity to assess how ready teams are to independently conduct and interpret research.

3. Defining Guardrails to ensure quality, ethics, and consistency remain intact as research becomes more distributed.

The day concluded with Calvin Robertson, who spoke on leadership within design teams. Drawing from his own career experiences, including many unexpected moments of opportunity, he summed up leadership as an act of service:

“Leadership is not for you; it’s for those within your care.”

He described effective leadership as the overlap of power, trust, and knowledge, which together form integrity, insight, and influence. Calvin also emphasized maintaining a mindset of curiosity and humility, asking our leaders, “What can I learn from you?”

Our Takeaway

UXCON25 reinforced that UX is not defined by titles, tools, or trends. It’s defined by empathy, collaboration, and leadership. SI can help us move faster, but focusing on empathy and integrity will always guide us toward better design.