Richard Dalton

Richard Dalton — Head of Design at Verizon. Talks and sessions delivered at UXDX.

Richard Dalton

Head of Design

Richard Dalton is the Head of Design at Verizon, where he leads a team of 250 designers who create human-centric experiences for over 100 million customers. Richard mixes business and design skills with an entrepreneurial spirit about how to design a design team - one that’s human-centered, business-savvy, and committed to fostering an inclusive, thriving culture.

Past talks

7 talks · 6 events

2026

UXDX San FranciscoNov 2026

Talk

What Teams Need to Get Right When Designing with AI

As AI becomes embedded in product experiences, teams need to think beyond prompts, features, and automation. The real challenge is helping AI-driven systems understand the messy reality of human behaviour: intent, emotion, ambiguity, context, and trust. In this session, Richard Dalton explores how design can help teams build AI experiences that are not just technically impressive, but useful, understandable, and aligned with real human needs. Attendees will learn how to: - Spot where AI experiences can lose human context, and how design can help teams catch those gaps earlier. - Translate user needs, behaviours, and intent into clearer inputs for AI-powered products and services. - Build more effective collaboration between design, product, and technology teams when shaping AI experiences.

Richard Dalton

2024

UXDX USAMay 2024

Forum

Forum Deep-Dive: Structuring Teams and Portfolios for Success

This deep-dive session, following Richard's talk, is designed for you to dissect and discuss the complexities of product work structures and effective portfolio management. It's an opportunity to exchange challenges and innovative solutions. Key topics: - Creating and adaptation of product work structures that respond to evolving market demands. - Challenges and successes of building a portfolio that aligns with your organization's taxonomy and strategic objectives. - Discussing the implementation of flexible labor models to optimize team performance and operational efficiency - Share experiences on the application of metrics to measure and drive success in product management.

Richard Dalton

Structuring Teams and Portfolios for Success

Join Richard for a practical session on building results-driven product work structures. Discover strategies to blend short-term efficiency with long-term vision, utilizing strategic frameworks and optimized labor models. This talk will address essential topics, including: - Developing adaptable product work structures - Designing portfolios informed by a clear work taxonomy - Implementing new labor models to boost team efficiency and long-term value for all - Employing meaningful metrics to track progress and success Gain actionable insights at an executive level for enhancing productivity and refine your portfolio management approach to propel your organization to greater heights.

Richard Dalton

2021

UXDX EMEAOct 2021

Establishing a User Centered Design Culture Throughout the Organization

A user-centered approach for product teams should be a procedure deeply rooted in the organizational culture. However this is not the case in a lot of organisations with siloed teams and departments who struggle to structurally shift an organization’s value to the users. Moderated by Richard Dalton, this panel outlines how to create and sustain a user-centered culture within a team and extend that throughout the organisation.

UXDX USAJun 2021

Designing a Cohesive, Not Consistent Experience

Successful organizations take great care in mapping out the user journey to achieve growth and retention. While emotional experience is an essential part of user-brand interaction, they can only be reached through multiple touchpoints that work seamlessly together. Our panelists take on different perspectives of what it takes the team to build such a myriad of processes for success.

2020

UXDX EuropeOct 2020

The Design Operating Model: A Framework For Building And Maturing Your Design Team

Every design team should be tailored to the unique culture and needs of the company it serves. However, there are common components that form the basis of a Design Operating Model which can be used to drive, and measure, the maturity of your design team. In this session, Richard will share the basis of the Design Operating Model along with real-life examples from his career building and evolving design teams in 4 fortune 100 companies. - How to build your design team - How to create a Design Operating Model

Richard Dalton

2018

UXDX EuropeOct 2018

That Loving Feeling: How Companies Lost It, And How To Bring It Back

Why would a major Las Vegas hotel consistently have a room service waiting time of 1.5 hours? Why would a major airline consistently have delays that torment a well-known design and usability consultant based in Boston? Why would a major financial services company try and cross-sell a credit card when a customer is in the middle of the highway reporting a car accident? What we've got here is a failure to communicate. Businesses are complex, with thousands of people, processes, business rules, systems, and products all impacting thousands of touchpoints that millions of customers interact with. If left unmanaged this complexity can be disastrous for the customer. An organisation's biggest asset is its employees, the way they work, communicate, and collaborate. This system needs designing just as much, if not more so, than the customer-facing experiences we spend most of our time on. It's time we turned our talents inward and designed ourselves. The concept of Enterprise Architecture has been around since the 80's. Management consultancies like Accenture have made it a staple offering and books have been written about it. Unfortunately, they're all wrong, or rather missing one key component. In this example-filled, thought-provoking session the audience will be challenged to think about their organisations differently, introduced to the missing component, and given a framework and language for effecting a cultural change amongst their business and technology partners.

Richard Dalton