Meet the Speaker — Rebecca Deery
Rebecca Deery is the Senior Director of Experience Design at EPAM. Her session at WITS Spring 2022 Virtual Summit is “Scaling and Maturing Human-Centered Teams in Agile Programs”.
- Why is speaking at WITS important to you?
I enjoy sharing ideas and perspective with the tech community from my own challenges or experiences. I also like hearing from others if they’ve experience similar challenges with different solutions or outcomes so I can learn! I’m constantly evolving my practice to the trends in the industry.
- What or who inspires you?
My 11 year old daughter! Her fearlessness and curiosity constantly inspires me. I feel more confident as a mother and a professional by watching her interact, and how I can be a great role model in this industry to girls like her. I feel we drive each other in this sense.
- Most useful article you’ve read in the last month
https://uxdesign.cc/value-before-usability-7279c75f2cf5 Value Before Usability — Challenges how Product and UX interact, and was a timely reference point for my talk about human-centered agile practices.
- When you were a kid what was your dream job?
I was a kid in the late 1980’s and my first Apple Macintosh sealed the deal on my dream job. I wanted to work on or work with computers! While I didn’t know what that meant in terms of a career, it did open opportunities to learn to code, learn digital design, and find my way.
- Tell us something about your session
My perspective as a UX leader is not to change Agile, but to humanize its processes so user-centered design thinking isn’t an activity or a siloed team, but a way of behaving no matter what your role is. That thinking can save dev time and reduce assumptions or risks, as well as help agile teams scale for bigger challenges to come.
- What other sessions or speakers are you most excited to see?
My EPAM colleague Jen Dionisio is running a workshop on career building, which I have to give a shout out to. And I’m most curious about the session called Neurodivergent User Experience Design Practicum by Kate Gatto.
