Talks
Across my career I have spoken within organisations and at conferences and have a passion for bringing straightforward guidance to help focus teams on performing and building products as effectively as possible.
I’m available for hire for speaking engagements, so if you like what you see below, contact me to discuss rates and dates.
Recent Talks
THE SCIENCE OF STORYTELLING
Admiral Speaker Series 2025, Various Ocado SLT away days, O!UX 2024
Despite being something that’s expected of us routinely a lot of people are still nervous about, or feel ill-equipped for public speaking.
Across this 1 hour talk or 2 hour workshop I explore the nuts and bolts of presentation techniques. Looking across both the content (what you say) and the delivery (how you say it) to offer accessible but ground-breaking tips for your future presentations.
HIRING BEYOND 2025
UXDX EMEA 2025 Panel Discussion
Hiring today is broken. Candidates are getting filtered out by AI before a human even sees their application, and hiring managers are often relying on outdated methods that don’t assess the full potential of a candidate. This discussion will tackle hiring challenges from both sides of the table:
How candidates can stand out despite AI screening and generic recruitment pipelines.
Why skills, mindset, and cultural fit matter more than portfolios or take-home assignments, and how hiring managers can assess them effectively.
How hiring managers can better brief recruiters to identify the right talent, even if they aren’t design or product experts.
How teams are using AI and hiring tech effectively without missing top candidates or introducing bias.
Real-world hiring strategies to improve hiring outcomes for both job seekers and hiring managers.
THE BASICS OF UX RESEARCH
FOR NON-UX RESEARCHERS
UXDX EMEA 2024 & UXDX EMEA 2025
Don’t know much about UX research but are expected to do it at your org.? Don’t know how to pick the right methodology? Don’t believe you can run a whole research process in 3 hours… well, this is the workshop for you.
Across this 3 hour workshop, told through the lens of a typical business problem/request you might be thrown, AJ will guide you through the UX research process as we aim to become better informed about the product we’ve been tasked to build.
Interactive, fun and a little bit mad, in just 3 hours you’ll have run a full research process and maybe have an idea for your first start-up.
CONFERENCE HOST
UXDX EMEA 2025, UXDX EMEA 2024
At UXDX EMEA 2024 and 2025 I had the absolute pleasure of hosting their main stage. Across the days I got to introduce all our amazing speakers and host a Q&A with them afterwards.
Other aspects of hosting duties include moderating a fierce debate on AIs impact on the UX space the first time, rousing the crowd to give a record amount of feedback for each talk the second time and at both summing up the whole conference in a not at all intense 15 minute ad lib slot at the end of the day!
If you’d like me to host one of your events, let me know!
ACHIEVING MORE WITH LESS: TIPS FOR BEING MORE EFFECTIVE UXERS AS TEAM SIZE SHRINKS
O!UX 2025
The current market is hard. Tech redundancies are everywhere and teams are faced with the issue of having the same amount of work, but fewer people to do it.
Through 5 approaches I’ve seen work in my career, we’ll discuss ways to strengthen your team’s approach to priority, capacity and risk mitigation to avoid falling into the trap of trying to cover everything your larger team used to and delivering worse quality work as a result.
WHY WE’RE NOT QUITE AS GOOD AT INFO SEC AS WE SHOULD BE
Tide’s 2024 Security Awareness Month Programme
Had the great privilege to close Tide’s Security Awareness Month activities with a talk about human psychology and why we don’t always act in the ways we know we should when it comes to being secure online.
With a background in psychology and behavioural economics, AJ dives deep into why people sometimes take the most unexpected paths, especially when it comes to their security habits. So, if you've ever wondered why we humans can be so delightfully irrational, AJ is the guy who’s got the answers…
THE UX OF AUTOMATED PROCESSES
UXDX USA 2024
As we are called upon to create more and more digital solutions where previously a user would engage with another person but now the response is automated, we run the risk of alienating our users and losing the reassurance of a 2-way interaction. In this talk I walk through my approach to the discovery phase when automating processes, to ensure the right balance is struck between efficiency of process and usability of our products.
DEMOCRATISING RESEARCH:
DOES IT WORK?
UXDX EMEA 2023
At UXDX EMEA 2023 I went up against the lovely Mike Brown (Reed.co.uk) as we
debated whether or not democratising UX research is a good idea.
Having more work than available people is a common problem in all companies. Democratising research is a way of helping product teams to do their own research so that research teams can help improve the overall quantity of research being performed. But it is not a free lunch - there are problems with democratising research as well. This debate will decide how teams should approach this subject going forward.
UNLOCKING A TRULY GREAT DRIVERLESS DELIVERY PROPOSITION
UXDX EMEA 2023
At UXDX EMEA 2022 I presented work I'd done researching Ocado's driverless delivery offering. While I was also researching the proposition we would offer to users as well, this talk focuses more on how you can test hardware products, before the hardware even exists...
In UX we always say, if only we were involved earlier in the process, but what happens when you get your wish and you end having to research a physical product that doesn't exist yet.
In this case study talk about grocery delivery by an autonomous vehicle AJ King will explore: How to usability test with no product. How to use research to achieve Agile hardware development. How to marry up hardware needs and customer expectations. How to get everyone thinking about the customer as early as possible.
MANAGING DATA: GETTING RESEARCH APPLIED
UXDX EMEA 2023
At UXDX EMEA 2022 I hosted a panel discussing insights repositories and sharing of UX data alongside Ashley May (Trainline), Monique Marins (Trustpilot), Romina Chitic (SMG)
Valuable data is being collected every day by team members across the organisation. However data is only as good as how easy it is to consume. In this panel we will discuss the ways that teams are managing the storage of research data, how it is synthesised, how it is distributed so everyone can access and how data privacy concerns are addressed.
OTHER TALKS
Overcoming Nervousness In Presentation Delivery (Workshop)
A workshop I ran at Agile Tour London, before hosting their Lightning Talks session. The purpose was to give the presenters of the Lightning Talks some useful techniques to avoid nerves during their talks.
(June 2019)
Using Improvisation Games to Teach Agile Concepts (Workshop)
A workshop I ran at Agile Tour London. The workshop used Improvisation games to explain Agile concepts like enabling constraints, work-in-progress limits and collaborative approaches to work.
(June 2018)
Upcoming Events
The UX Approach Blueprint: Organisational Structure of UX Teams.
UXDX London Community Event (Coming Dec. 2024)