I am often hired as a speaker because
- I love to challenge generally accepted truths.
- I am motivated by making a lasting impression and really helping people gain new insights.
- I put great effort into creating unique visuals for the presentation – always shared with the audience.
- I know what I’m talking about, with more than 20 years of experience working professionally with digital media and design.
Bio
Per Axbom is a designer, coach and visual explainer working out of Stockholm, Sweden. He has dabbled in usability, accessibility and UX since the mid-nineties. His passion for interviews, sketches and prototypes allow him to understand vividly and explain comprehensibly. His passion for listening helps people get unstuck and move forward in work and life.
Over the years, Per has consulted for over 50 organizations, startups as well as leading international corporations. The past three years he has worked as the UX lead for Sweden’s national platform for online behavioral therapy.
Regularly contributing to the UX community through blog posts and podcasts, Per is very keen on promoting the concept of design ethics and is working on a book to help designers embrace ethics thinking.
Most recent Speakerdeck
Photos
Pick and choose amongst my photos on Flickr.
Examples of talk descriptions
The Hidden Persuaders of the Digital Age
Sixty years ago, in 1957, Vance Packard published The Hidden Persuaders, a classic examination of how our thoughts and feelings are manipulated by business, media and politicians, The Hidden Persuaders was the first book to expose the hidden world of “motivation research”.
Today many of the same techniques that Packard warned about are being used without hesitation to persuade users of digital products to subscribe, click, scroll, buy, invite and more. The same people who claim a user-centric mindset have no worries using learnings from psychology to obviously steer users towards desired behaviors.
Displacing user insights, psychological insights are creating a playbook for profit without regard for long-term relationships. This is not because people or businesses are evil; while the intent may still be benevolent many outcomes are becoming glaringly damaging. As designers we need to recognize this and commit to addressing the mistakes being made.
In this talk I will give examples of growing problem areas and and describe how designers need to take more responsibility for the well-being and autonomy of users, as well as some practical ways this could play out. There is a cost to doing the right thing, but there are also rarely measured human costs that we are already paying dearly for. By showcasing these costs of the different paths available to us we can boost the incentive to include more conscious, moral decision-making in the design process.
The Invisible Problem with Fairy Tale Experiences
Adopting techniques from behavioral sciences we are, as UX practitioners, becoming ever better at nudging users to perform the tasks we want them to perform. But when we remove all barriers and deliver the fairy-tale experience of requiring minimal brain capacity to move forward, we are in fact abandoning our promise of allowing users to make the best choice.
In this talk, where fairy-tale and reality intertwine, I will help you catch yourself and remember why you became passionate about UX in the first place.
The AceAwe Experience Model
A simple, strategic tool for articulating, planning and reaching consensus on UX-related issues throughout a customer journey. I have been using the AceAwe model for over two years in client projects and it has proven successful as a guide and aid in pinpointing weaknesses and prioritizing work. I will demonstrate how it can help your everyday work and help you visualize the importance of UX in all phases of a product lifecycle.
Eliminate design
The all-too-common approach of jumping head-first into sketching wireframes makes us fail the user and lose sight of solving true user problems. The screen should not be singled out as the primary medium for human-centered design, and it is the role of the UX lead to ensure that it isn’t. I will argue for the benefits of removing design and show how we can, and must, shift thinking from designing interfaces to solving real user problems with the least amount of friction and pain.
Popular blog posts
These can also be presented as talks.
