UX Speakeasy - San Diego

➡️ To attend this event, you must purchase a ticket on Eventship – link here ⬅️

How can you thrive as a design leader in this era of rapid change?

The design industry is at a massive inflection point. As AI evolves the way we work, a critical question hangs over every design professional: How do we remain relevant and indispensable?

The truth is that our discipline is evolving, and with that evolution comes a new opportunity to become a new type of design practitioner.

Orange County User Experience and Rogue Collective are excited to bring you this exclusive, high-impact session with a design veteran of 25+ years. This isn’t a surface-level talk about writing better AI prompts. This is a battle-tested blueprint on how to protect the irreplaceable human elements of your craft, scale your influence, and secure your seat at the table.

What You’ll Learn
By attending this session, you will walk away with actionable strategies to...

• Protect Your Value in the AI Era: Learn exactly which "sacred human elements"—like deep empathy mapping, radical divergence, and storytelling—you must develop to continue to thrive.
• Speak the Language of the C-Suite: Learn how to translate design craft into the exact business metrics leadership cares about, moving design from a cost center to a critical driver of revenue and retention.
• Expand Your Influence Beyond Pixels: Learn the exact framework for running toward the scariest, most ambiguous cross-functional problems to build credibility across your entire organization.
• Ship better products, faster: Discover why high-trust, outcome-driven teams consistently ship better products with half the drama and twice the speed of traditional, command-and-control organizations.
• Own Your Career Trajectory: Stop waiting for leadership to define your path. Learn how to ruthlessly map your own growth, use rapid failure as fuel, and build a resilient career that outlasts any tech cycle.

About our speaker
With over 25 years of experience spanning Fortune 500 brands, tech giants, and innovative startups, Joseph Smiley is a seasoned leader at the intersection of design, technology, and business strategy. He has spent his career proving that design is a critical engine for corporate innovation and measurable business growth.
Joe’s extensive portfolio includes spearheading high-impact experience design initiatives for top-tier global brands. He has served as the Associate Director of Design for E-Commerce at Blizzard Entertainment and led Experience Design at E*TRADE. His strategic design leadership has also driven digital products and transformations for market leaders such as PwC, Marriott, AOL, Disney, FedEx, and Sysco Food.
A passionate advocate for human-centered design, Joe holds an MBA from the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business and is a seasoned entrepreneur. His unique blend of deep creative craft and sharp business acumen makes him the perfect guide to help modern designers navigate and lead in the AI era.

In his current role, he's the Founder and Chief Design Officer at Youvie – leveraging AI to reimagine family entertainment through the lens of active participation.