UX Maturity Struggles - Expert panel
Join us for an exciting and insightful panel (for the Danes, inspired by 'Mads og Monopolet') where 4 extremely senior panelists discuss real-life challenges Danish UX professionals are experiencing in their work-life.
Are you facing roadblocks in your UX career due to your organization’s UX maturity level? Whether it’s a lack of leadership support, unclear career paths, or resistance to UX best practices, many designers struggle to grow in environments that aren’t fully UX-aligned.
At UX Maturity Struggles, we’ve gathered four senior UX professionals to tackle real challenges submitted by the community—just like yours! Think of it as a UX agony panel, where our experts will offer insights, strategies, and advice to help you break through barriers and advance in your career.
Submit your UX challenge in our survey and join us for a candid discussion on navigating the struggles that often go unspoken. Your growth shouldn’t be limited by company culture—let’s figure out how to move forward together!
Survey: Submit your UX challenge in our survey
AGENDA
- Presentation of UX Unite and IDA IT
- Intro of the panelists
- 1st part of the challenge discussions
- Break
- 2nd part of the challenge discussions
Meet our panelists
Sidse Bordal, Strategic Design Lead at DBI - Dansk Brand-og sikringsteknisk Institut
As Strategic Design Lead at DBI, she helps the organization utilize and navigate the uncertainty of strategy and development processes. She works to promote design thinking across the organization and fosters a holistic, co-creative, and experimental approach to innovation. Though originally trained as a designer, she has spent many years in research and teaching at SDU and Design School Kolding. During this time, she completed a PhD in design processes and methodology, as well as an industrial postdoc on design thinking and design sprints for business development. Nearly three years ago, she transitioned to the private sector. Her work is increasingly inspired and influenced by strategic foresight and systemic design.
Why she is a great fit for this panel
She specializes in design processes and methodology, design thinking for business development, and strategic design. With extensive experience in designing processes and facilitating workshops, she brings both practical and theoretical perspectives to the discussion. Having spent many years in research, she has a strong foundation in the theory behind design thinking. However, applying and embedding it within an organization is an ongoing learning experience—one that she is actively exploring.
Michael McKay, Vice President Digital Products at Novo Nordisk
With a background in innovation and product development, Michael has focused on implementing user centric and innovative practices in large size enterprises in the last years. He has worked in Tech companies like Amazon, PayPal, and eBay to understand how a large digital company works and is now implementing user centricity and design cultures and methods at scale in global enterprises. He currently drives Digital Products in a transformation team at Novo Nordisk, implementing UX Design, Strategic design, Product Management and Product Adoption.
Why he is a great fit for this panel
Practical experience, Hands on knowledge. Leadership, Strategy and vision, broad experience from various industries globally on how we succeed and fail when attempting to drive design methodologies at scale into a large enterprise.
Emilie Ava Møllenbach, Director at FORCE Technology
Emilie has 10 years of academic research and teaching experience within HCI (Human Computer Interaction), Interaction Design, and Digital Innovation at ITU, DTU, and KU. Followed by 6 years as a Design Lead/Director of UX and Design at MobilePay and Issuu, working with user research, sketching and prototyping, design system development, data driven UX, release ready design, and UX and Design strategy. She has been working in deep-tech public/private innovation for the last 3 years, leading a team of 25 researchers and consultants within Digital and Sustainable Innovation.
Why she is a great fit for this panel:
Lot’s of fun experiences and reflections
Kevin Hawkins, Vice President of Product Design & Research at Monta
Kevin Hawkins is a VP of Research & Product Design with 17 years of experience in solving complex problems, scaling global teams, and amplifying business value. Previously, he’s worked at Glovo, Booking.com, PwC, Spotify, Capital One, Gap, and more. After time in-house, consulting, and in agencies, he’s built a framework for navigating a career. Let’s dig-in into the lessons learned and best practices proven.
Why he is a great fit for this panel
He is a senior product leader that’s led design, research, content, and internationalization for 17 years across B2B & B2C. He loves mentoring, tackling new challenges, and have worked in many different business model types (in-house, agency, consulting).
Meet our moderators
Helena Zilmer Levison, Founder of UX Unite
Helena is known as the Queen of UX because she is actively fighting to raise the industry standard of UX in Denmark. She has built UX Unite from the ground and is proud to see it as Denmark's largest UX community. Helena is a strong moderator, having hosted several panels in the past, the past 2 years she hosted and moderated the main stage of UX Nordic, and she hosts her own podcast Why UX?
Sophia Maria Seitz-Rasmussen, Senior Product Designer at Monta
Educated in contemporary art in Aarhus, DK, and Vienna, AU, in 2011, she spent four years practicing art—exhibiting in Denmark and internationally, managing projects, and being poor—until she realized that a solely artistic career was unsustainable and took a radical choice. In 2016, she transitioned into tech and innovation, earning a Bachelor of Engineering degree from DTU.
As the driving force behind introducing and establishing UX design in a deep tech company, I have personally experienced the challenges of seeking professional growth and fostering talent in demanding environments. With over 14 years of experience in various creative industries, I have gained invaluable insights into the often challenging and demotivating journey of professional growth when the surrounding structure fails to recognize or support one's potential beyond craftsmanship, should it be art or design. Despite these obstacles, I have persevered and progressed, making bold decisions along the way.
Throughout her career as a designer, she has worked in UX research & design, strategy, and design leadership. In every field, she is driven by a passion for connecting people and sharing expertise, turning individual efforts into a powerful collective force for positive, lasting change. She embraces a holistic approach that centers on users while harnessing collaborative processes and shared understanding to elevate outcomes.
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Who is UX Unite?
UX Unite is the largest UX Community in Denmark. We bridge the gap between UX Designers and businesses. Create transparency around UX and unite the amazing designers in our ecosystem. We support and embrace all UX initiatives, so feel free to reach
out for future collaborations.
This event is closed for registration.
Information