UX Maturity Struggles - Expert panel

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: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfjqte5QvZ5SxnFTiNWXOhMYbXGCAR5QSZHb8To8MlTbXptWg/viewform 

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.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sidse-ansbjerg-bordal-phd/

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.

​LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelmckay71/

​Emilie Ava Møllenbach, Director at FORCE Technology

Coming later...

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 she 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).

Website: Http://kevinthecreator.com

LinkedIn: Http://linkedin.com/in/kevinhawkinsdesign

Instagram: Http://instagram.com/kevinhawkinsdesign​

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

Coming later...

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COMMUNITY PARTNER

IDA IT / THE ENGINEERING ASSOCIATION IDA

IDA is a professional association for technical, IT, and natural sciences professionals. Our most important task is to help you get the maximum potential out of your working life.

That is why we offer personal career counseling, where we can help with clarification of competencies, applications, CV and LinkedIn, and preparation for the job interview. You can also participate in our professional networks, as it is here you find our events and other clever heads, who are members of IDA. You can also get help to tackle salary negotiations, as you get access to our salary calculator and statistics.

Read more about all the benefits of being part of IDA: https://english.ida.dk/join-ida

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SOCIAL MEDIA PERMISSION

By participating you automatically give UX Unite permission to take photos that may be used for Social Media purposes. In case you do not accept these terms, it is your responsibility to let the UX Unite staff know so we can respect your privacy. 

You also give UX Unite permission to tag you in our Post Event Post a few days after the event on LinkedIn. 

Write to the organizers at info@uxunite.com if you do not want to be tagged.

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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.