Recap from World Usability Day 2026
November 12, 2026Tags: ai, conferences
What a wonderful day at World Usability Day 2026 hosted by UX Akron!
I was thrilled to share my “Beyond the Prompt” presentation - because an AI failure is rarely just a prompt engineering problem and is more commonly a systems architecture problem. I will be recording it and getting it up on the NimblePros channel here in the next week or so.
Then, I got to catch Jason Hong’s present on “The Promise and Peril of AI for Products”. This was a great talk that hit on similar points that I did, coming from a different approach! If you ever get a chance to catch one of his talks, do it! His energy and excitement comes out clearly in his presentation!
Then, there was a word from our sponsors. Special thanks to Tri-C’s School of Creative Arts and Eric Vaughn for their support. Also thanks to AI Catalyst Institute for sponsoring the event and giving away some neat UX and AI content-related books!
Next up was Missy Williams, talking about “Human-Centered Content in an AI Search World”. There are a ton of great tips on how to get picked up in these searches while also maintaining the human qualities in writing content. It’s reaffirming that I’m on the right track with some of the things I’m doing for work.
Greg Miller shared his “Prove You’re Human: What AI Bot Detection Costs Disabled Users” talk. Seeing the evolution of CAPTCHAs… remembering how much I overthought the visual CAPTCHAs and couldn’t use auditory CAPTCHAs due to auditory processing issues… his talk really resonated with me. He also talked about passkeys, and it was good to see that mentioned as well!
Finally, Nick Dauchot presented “Cutting Tokens, Cutting Carbon: The Business Case for Lean AI Design”. I’m only getting started down the AI and sustainability path. His talk really gave me more insights on CO2 emissions and financial costs - and the impacts of a “simple query” vs image and video queries. He has some eco prompts and talked about 5 techniques we can use today to help bring down the costs and carbon emissions of AI.
Thanks to Melanie Bozzelli, Carrianne Tuckley, Jo S., Jenny Gates, and everyone else who helped put on today’s event. Thank you for the opportunity to share my talk! It was such a wonderful day! 🙏🏻🎉