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The Modern UX Practitioner

Paul Boag
Your instructor
Paul Boag
Tickets
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Workshop includes:

  • 🧰 Real deliverables you build during the sessions
  • 🗣 Interactive live sessions
  • 📺 Workshop recordings
  • 🔖 Templates and examples to take away
  • 🎤 Dedicated Q&A time
  • 🏅 Smashing Certificate

Workshop, 4×1.5h + Q&A Wed & Thu, June 24 – July 2, 2026
9:00 – 11:00 AM PDT 18:00 – 20:00 CEST Check your time zone

UX work has always been about doing more with less. Less time, less budget, fewer resources than you really need. That pressure is only getting worse. Stakeholders want richer insights, faster turnarounds, and more polished deliverables than ever before. AI is the most significant new tool in a UX professional’s kit in a generation, and used well it can help you meet those demands without cutting corners or burning out.

This masterclass is a practical guide to doing modern UX work with AI alongside you. Not hype, not theory, but the specific techniques Paul uses every week across research, design, content, and design leadership. Four sessions, two hours, delivered twice a week over two weeks so you have time to apply what you are learning between sessions.


Here’s What You Should Be Expecting:

  • Interactive live sessions

    4 × 1.5h live sessions + Q&A

  • Real deliverables

    Build actual outputs, not just notes

  • Practical techniques

    AI for research, design, and leadership

  • Lifetime access

    To all video recordings and examples

  • Dedicated Q&A time

    To ask all your questions

  • Smashing Certificate

    A well-deserved reward for your work


$300.00 $400.00 Register for this workshop → 4 × 1.5h live sessions + Q&A. June 24 – July 2.
With all video recordings & slides. Get a ticket.

🎪   Save up to 25% on this workshop with a Smashing Membership.


By the end you will have more than notes. You will have a working research repository and virtual persona you have built yourself, a set of AI-generated design artifacts tested against real user data, a skills library your team can reuse, and a concrete plan for leading AI adoption in your organization. These are outcomes you can take into your next project or your next planning meeting.


Who Is This For?

This masterclass is built for the whole UX team, not a single specialism.

  • UI and visual designers will see how AI can speed up your work without flattening your taste.
  • Researchers will learn how to turn past research into a queryable source of user truth that the whole organization can use.
  • Content designers will find techniques for drafting, editing, and holding the line on quality at pace.
  • UX generalists will get a clear map of where AI fits across the whole process.
  • Design leaders will walk away with a concrete plan for leading AI adoption across their team.

The sessions are built so everyone in the room sees themselves in every topic. Bring the whole team along and build a shared language for how you will use AI together.


What Will You Learn?

  • How to strengthen your UX research, design, and content work with AI without producing generic, soulless output.
  • How to think about AI as an enthusiastic intern, not an oracle, and why that makes all the difference.
  • How to build an AI-queryable research repository that your whole team can use.
  • How to create virtual personas that hold their ground across research, design, content, and leadership.
  • How to design faster with tools like Claude Design, Google Stitch or Figr.design without surrendering your taste.
  • How to validate designs using attention prediction and virtual user testing.
  • How to understand what motivates stakeholders to support or resist AI in your organization.
  • How to build an AI skills library that democratizes UX expertise across your team.
  • How to pitch an AI strategy that actually gets approved.

What You Will Walk Away With

Real outputs, not just notes. By the end of the four sessions you will have:

  • A working AI-queryable research repository that turns your existing research into a live source of user truth your whole team can query.
  • At least one virtual persona you have built and tested, ready to put to use on your next project.
  • A set of AI-generated design artifacts including wireframes and prototypes, validated using attention prediction and virtual user testing.
  • Your own AI skills library with reusable skills that let the rest of your team benefit from what you have learned.
  • A written plan for leading AI adoption in your team or organization, including an honest audit of current practice and a pitch you can take to stakeholders.

These are tangible things you can point at in a performance review, a team meeting, or a client pitch. You leave with more UX capability on day one than you arrived with.


What Will You Need?

A laptop, a willingness to experiment, and ideally a real project you are working on so you can apply the techniques as we go. You should have access to ChatGPT, Claude, or a similar tool so you can follow along with the demos.


Time & Schedule

This workshop is split over four days. Our virtual doors open at 8:45, we start at 9 AM PDT.

The workshop sessions will run on the following days:

  • Wed, June 24, 9:00 – 11:00 AM PDT (18:00 – 20:00 CEST)
  • Thu, June 25, 9:00 – 11:00 AM PDT (18:00 – 20:00 CEST)
  • Wed, July 1, 9:00 – 11:00 AM PDT (18:00 – 20:00 CEST)
  • Thu, July 2, 9:00 – 11:00 AM PDT (18:00 – 20:00 CEST)

Schedule

Day 1 — Putting AI to Work Across Your UX Process

8:45 AM PDT
Virtual doors open, registration, chat and introductions.

9:00 AM – 10:30 AM
Curious about what AI can actually do for UX work, beyond the hype? This opening session gives you a practical menu of techniques you can apply across research, design, and content from the very next day.

You will learn how to:

  • Think about AI as an enthusiastic intern, not an oracle, and why that reframes everything
  • Use AI for desk research, transcript analysis, and synthesis
  • Speed up wireframing, image generation, and attention prediction
  • Draft content from bullet points without losing your voice
  • Quality-control AI output so you can trust what it produces

10:30 AM – 11:00 AM
Q&A with Paul on the day’s material. Chat with each other.

Day 2 — Building a Living Source of User Truth With Virtual Personas

8:45 AM PDT
Virtual doors open, registration, chat and introductions.

9:00 AM – 10:30 AM
Research that nobody reads is research that nobody benefits from. This session shows you how to turn your existing user research into an AI-queryable repository, then build virtual personas on top of it that your whole team can interrogate like real users.

You will learn how to:

  • Diagnose why your current research repository is failing
  • Structure research so AI can surface the right insights at the right moment
  • Build virtual personas that hold up across research, design, content, and leadership
  • Query personas through discipline-specific lenses so each role gets value
  • Implement all of this without buying new software

10:30 AM – 11:00 AM
Q&A with Paul on the day’s material. Chat with each other.

Day 3 — Designing Faster Without Losing Your Taste

8:45 AM PDT
Virtual doors open, registration, chat and introductions.

9:00 AM – 10:30 AM
AI can generate a wireframe or a prototype in seconds. That does not automatically make it good. This session shows you how to use AI design tools to move faster while keeping your judgment and taste firmly in charge.

You will learn how to:

  • Analyze brand and aesthetic trends with AI
  • Generate wireframes and prototypes in tools like Claude Design, Google Stitch or Figr.design
  • Validate designs with attention prediction and virtual user testing
  • Decide what to delegate to AI and what to keep for yourself
  • Understand how the designer’s role is shifting, and what remains uniquely yours

10:30 AM – 11:00 AM
Q&A with Paul on the day’s material. Chat with each other.

Day 4 — Leading AI Adoption Across Your Organization

8:45 AM PDT
Virtual doors open, registration, chat and introductions.

9:00 AM – 10:30 AM
Knowing how to use AI yourself is one thing. Getting your whole team on board is harder. This session covers both the strategy and the mechanism for scaling AI adoption without everyone having to become an AI expert.

You will learn how to:

  • Understand what motivates stakeholders to support or resist AI
  • Audit your team’s current AI practice honestly
  • Define principles and guardrails your team can actually follow
  • Build a skills library that democratizes AI across your organization
  • Pitch your strategy so it gets approved the first time

10:30 AM – 11:00 AM
Q&A with Paul on the day’s material. Networking & Goodbye’s!


About Paul

Paul Boag is a UX and conversion optimization consultant with over 30 years of experience. He has worked with clients including The National Trust, the European Commission, Puma, and the University of Oxford. He has written seven books, including Click! and User Experience Revolution, and hosts the long-running Boagworld Show podcast.

Over the past two years Paul has been using AI across every part of his UX work — not as a novelty, but as a serious working tool. This masterclass is the distilled version of what he has learned, what has worked, and what he wishes someone had told him at the start.

$300.00 $400.00 Register for this workshop → 4 × 1.5h live sessions + Q&A. June 24 – July 2.
With all video recordings & slides. Get a ticket.

🎪   Save up to 25% on this workshop with a Smashing Membership.