UX Akron

Are We Having Fun Yet? Strategies for a Design Career with Rodney Echols

Tuesday, May 19th at 7:00 PM to 8:15 PM ET.
This is an online event.

2025 didn't kill the design career... but the situation does feel so much more challenging. Burnout, constant adaptation, and quiet exhaustion have become part of the job.

This session explores how designers can build resilience, practice shifts in mindset, and practice making work lovable, sustainable, and even enjoyable work again. Expect clarity, energy, and ideas you can actually use Monday morning!

About our speaker: Rodney Echols

A curious, creative entrepreneur and certified Design Thinking facilitator, Rodney also holds a certification as a remote meeting humor professional from the same instructor who teaches humor psychology at Stanford University's post-graduate program.

Rodney also founded a project called workgameperk.com as an outlet for his work-life neglect during the pandemic. A very busy minded UX and product designer, the project has kept him busy as thought leader for wellbeing for creatives. Some highlights include the "Wellmade Podcast" - a series setting boundaries for self-care, he created digital projects (such as the biggest Self-care activity list on the internet, the BRIGHT framework for boredom, and "Do you know Joey": methods for joy at work) remote workshops. Now the project focuses on combining his longtime dream of being on a TV game show with his love for gamification and virtual events.

Bypassing the Research Bottleneck: A Guide to Internal-First Discovery with Soha Pourpirali

Tuesday, June 30th at 6:00 PM to 7:15 PM ET.
This is an online event.

The primary goal of a research function is to generate high-quality knowledge, yet traditional research cycles frequently struggle to keep pace with the accelerating timelines of modern product development. When critical decisions must be made in weeks rather than months, researchers must move beyond habitual processes and evolve into "investigative synthesizers" who can find truth within their own organizations.

In this session, Soha Pourpirali (Senior UX Researcher) shares a step-by-step playbook for an internal-first discovery framework. Drawing from a real-world case study where a three-week deadline required a complete map of enterprise product gaps, she demonstrates how to treat customer-facing teams, such as Success, Support, and Sales, as longitudinal archives of user experience.

About our speaker: Soha Pourpirali

Soha is a Senior UX Researcher at Docusign, where she works at the intersection of B2B complexity and human behavior. With seven years of experience and a background in Cognitive Psychology, Soha spent her career understanding how people interact with technology. But more recently, she's found her niche in the "messy middle" of generative work.

Soha is currently focused on developing unconventional frameworks for rapid knowledge-generation, proving that high-speed product cycles don’t have to come at the expense of research rigor. She takes pride in being a bridge between the lived experience of customer-facing teams and the strategic vision of product leaders.

Living in the Pacific Northwest, Soha balances professional life with a love for the outdoors and heavy lifting: "If I’m not at my desk, I’m likely on a walk, at the gym, or being the "cool aunt" to my favorite two-year-old."