6 Lessons from Tell Your Story: an event on public speaking for women and non-binary folx in UX design
This week I attended a virtual event called Tell Your Story. It encouraged women and non-binary folx in the field of UX design to speak about their experiences and ideas.
This event was put on by:
- Women Talk Design, an organization that elevates women and gender non-binary speakers, empowers event organizers with resources to engage more diverse speakers, and offers training and support for new speakers
- Ladies that UX Boston, a monthly UX meetup featuring female and non-binary speakers
- UXPA Boston, a regional chapter of the User Experience Professionals Association
- Seattle Women in UX and Design, a monthly meetup to provide Seattle women and non-binary people an opportunity to network, learn, mentor and support each other in design, UX, and related fields
It started with a presentation, followed by a conversation with two experienced speakers, Alba Villamil and Azima Mansuri, and a breakout room session to discuss our own insights.
As a woman with a fear of public speaking, I found this event incredibly validating. Rather than focusing on the more technical side of UX and the infinite list of new technologies to learn (which is exciting but also overwhelming), it was refreshing to discuss something more personal and see how many other women and non-binary folx feel just like I do when it comes to public speaking.
Here are some of my main takeaways:
- I’m not alone in my concerns about public speaking.
Most talks at design conferences are given by cis-gendered men, and Tell Your Story shared a valuable list of why women and non-binary folx often don’t speak. Things like a lack of experience, fear of harassment, a desire to give others a chance to share their own stories, and more — along with cis-gendered men simply being asked to speak more often — contributed to the disparity between the number of men who speak and the number of women and non-binary people who speak.
In the chat of the Zoom call, people also shared many of the concerns that I myself have felt: the worry of being judged, the fear of saying the wrong thing, anxiety about being shut down or dismissed, and so on.
It was validating to hear similar concerns among my fellow designers.
2. Imposter syndrome is a limited and problematic way of understanding the issue.
The event highlighted Ruchika Tulshyan and Jodi-Ann Burey’s article “Stop Telling Women They Have Imposter Syndrome,” which discusses how imposter syndrome blames women for feeling incompetent while ignoring all of the ways that the industry reinforces this message in subtle (and not-so-subtle) ways, especially for women of color. It’s a great article that I definitely recommend checking out.
It brought to mind a story that a designer friend of mine, a woman of color, told me about one of her previous jobs. A man who wore a Patriots hoodie to work nearly every day told her that she, in her nice sweaters, wasn’t dressed professionally enough. From then on she felt hyper-aware of how her clothing was being perceived and worried that it would be deemed inappropriate.
It’s easy to ask women to constantly remind themselves that they deserve to be in a space. It’s harder but infinitely better to create spaces that don’t hold them to different standards, dismiss their concerns, and make them question whether they’re overthinking or overreacting.
As Tulshyan and Burey say in “Stop Telling Women They Have Imposter Syndrome,”
“The answer to overcoming imposter syndrome is not to fix individuals but to create an environment that fosters a variety of leadership styles and in which diverse racial, ethnic, and gender identities are seen as just as professional as the current model.”
3. You don’t need to be an expert to have a story to tell.
This was such a helpful reminder that so much of the information that we take for granted is new and potentially useful to someone else. I thought back to my own UX bootcamp journey and how much I looked to other people’s experiences for guidance.
No one has your exact perspective, and therefore you have something unique to offer the world regardless of how far into your career you are.
As Alana Washington, a Women Talk Design speaker said in one of her talks:
“…nobody has your unique worldview, nobody has exactly your way of thinking about the world and thus, nobody has heard the talk that you have yet to give.”
I also realized how many valuable lessons I’ve learned through repetition from a variety of people. I often hesitate to share things because I assume they’ve already been said (and said better) by someone else, but when I realized the value I’ve gotten out of hearing similar messages from multiple perspectives, it encouraged me to share my own thoughts more freely without worrying about it being something Entirely New and Original. (Sidenote: Entirely New and Original doesn’t exist; we’re all building off of each other’s ideas, and that’s okay).
4. Think about the audience you would like to speak to.
Picturing a specific audience made me feel less like I was talking to myself and more like I could actually provide something useful for others. It helped me stop worrying that speaking was a form of self-indulgence and allowed me to start embracing it as a way of connecting with others, sharing knowledge, and making others feel seen.
5. Uplift the voices of others.
It’s so important to uplift not only your own voice but also the voices of other women and non-binary folx. Especially as a cis-gendered white woman, I have the responsibility to amplify the voices of those around me — women of color, trans and non-binary folx, and so on.
The event encouraged us to ask other women and non-binary folx to speak if we’re interested in hearing what they have to say. We assume that the amazing people around us already know how amazing they are, but that’s often not the case, and our encouragement can help them share stories that might otherwise go untold.
These diverse perspectives are vital. They not only help us design more inclusive experiences but also help us transform UX design into a more inclusive field.
Plus it’s way more interesting to hear from a wide range of people than to sit there and listen to cis-gendered white men set all of the standards. (And if I have to listen to one more man use a casually sexist example for a concept, I’m going to scream.)
6. Embrace the nerves and the awkward.
The fear and anxiety before speaking events may never go away, and that’s okay. Do it anyway. Alba Villamil, one of the speakers at the event, pointed out that not everyone will like you, especially when you’re talking about sensitive topics like race and gender. That’s okay too. Do it anyway.
I almost chickened out of even going to the event because I was nervous about the awkwardness of breakout rooms, but I accepted my nerves and I did it anyway. I’m so glad that I did.
There were some awkward silences, but there were also wonderful moments of genuine connection. I bonded with one woman over a shared interest in the overlap between UX and writing processes. Another woman seemed relieved when I brought up the awkwardness of Zoom and accidentally talking over other people (it’s so hard to tell when someone else is about to talk through laggy video!). A third woman shared the relatable experience of feeling intense nerves the day before a presentation but then feeling fine once the presentation actually starts.
The breakout room was awkward and fun and valuable. It didn’t have to be perfect to be worth doing.
Final thoughts
There was something so reaffirming about making space for discussing emotions and fears without writing them off as self-indulgent or a waste of time, especially because the discussion also included external factors like marginalization.
UX design is all about empathy and understanding, which usually includes the emotional state of the user, and yet any time I bring up my own emotions in a professional setting I feel like it’s a sign of weakness. I worry that speaking up about my emotions and concerns reinforces the stereotype of women being overly emotional, sensitive, and weak, and I worry that all of the problems are within me rather than within the culture and its biased values.
This event encouraged me to embrace and share my own perspective and to encourage other women and non-binary folx to do the same.
It made me pause and dare to imagine a different professional world that doesn’t revolve around standards from a default white cis-gendered male perspective.
