Recorded January 21, 2022, as part of the UX Speaker Series in the University of Washington's Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering.

Building Organizations That Learn

If you want to build products that serve a global audience, you need to regularly challenge the biases that you hold as an organization and engage with the people you are trying to serve. Many organizations centralize and silo the responsibility of "learning" to a single team or group, which limits the organization's ability to adapt to the world appropriately. In this talk, Behzod draws on his experiences as a consultant, advisor, and research leader at companies like Facebook and Slack to reinforce the idea that resilient organizations cultivate intentional practices of learning that enable everyone to participate in meaningful ways. He traces these practices back to his time in HCDE and shares ideas that current students can bring to the organizations they contribute to.

Behzod Sirjani (HCDE MS ’12) is the founder of Yet Another Studio, where he works with organizations of all sizes to build intentional, responsible, and sustainable practices of learning. He is also an Executive-in-Residence at Reforge, where he built and leads the "User Insights for Product Decisions" program and a Partner at HmntyCntrd, where he works with organizations to build more trauma-informed and equity-centered workplaces. Prior to the Studio, Behzod led Research Operations at Slack and was a Senior UX Researcher at Facebook, where he co-founded the Research Associates Program.