Barbara Slopko Bekavac
Intuera.eu owner
Velika Gorica, Croatia
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I'm a UX researcher and designer specializing in e-commerce optimization and neuroscience-driven user experience. As the founder of Intuera, I combine UX, CRO, and behavioral science to uncover how people actually think, decide, and trust online.
My work explores how design decisions shape user behavior, influence purchase confidence, and reduce friction across the customer journey. By optimizing cognitive load, clarity, and interaction patterns, I help brands increase conversions while building long-term trust.
Area of Expertise
Topics
Neuromarketing vs Dark Patterns: Where Behavioral Design Crosses the Line
Behavioral science and neuroscience have helped designers better understand how people pay attention, make decisions, and interact with digital products. When applied responsibly, these insights can improve usability, reduce friction, and create more intuitive user experiences.
However, the same psychological principles are sometimes used in manipulative ways. So-called dark patterns deliberately exploit cognitive biases to pressure users into actions they might not otherwise take - from misleading consent flows to artificially urgent purchase prompts.
This talk explores where the line lies between ethical behavioral design and manipulation. We will look at how psychological principles are used in digital interfaces, how certain patterns cross into manipulation, and why these practices have contributed to growing skepticism around neuromarketing and behavioral design.
Attendees will gain a clearer understanding of how insights from neuroscience and psychology can be applied responsibly in UX, product design, and digital services without compromising transparency, user autonomy, or trust.
Cognitive Debt: How Bad UX Accumulates Long-Term Cost
Cognitive debt accumulates when products repeatedly ask users to think harder than necessary: to interpret unclear labels, navigate inconsistent flows, recover from preventable errors, or remember information the system could handle for them. Individually, these issues seem minor. Over time, they compound into measurable costs: increased support tickets, longer onboarding, training overhead, higher error rates, lower adoption, and hidden operational inefficiencies.
This talk reframes UX not as visual polish, but as risk and cost management. Through concrete examples from real-world products, we will examine how small design shortcuts translate into long-term organizational friction and how to identify cognitive debt early before it becomes embedded in the system.
Designing Defaults: The Most Powerful Decision You’ll Ever Make
Defaults are not neutral. They quietly determine what happens when users do nothing and in real systems, doing nothing is the most common behavior.
From privacy settings and security configurations to subscription renewals and destructive actions, default states shape outcomes more powerfully than instructions, warnings, or tooltips ever can. They influence trust, risk exposure, adoption rates, and long-term product behavior - often without users realizing it.
This talk explores the psychology and system impact of defaults. Why do users stick with them? When do defaults protect people, and when do they manipulate them? And how can teams design defaults that guide better decisions without removing autonomy or adding friction?
Through practical examples from digital products, we’ll examine how small configuration choices create large downstream effects on user behavior, operational cost, and organizational risk.
Invisible UX: The Interfaces Users Never Notice - but Always Miss
The best UX is often invisible. Users rarely praise what works smoothly but they immediately notice when it fails.
Invisible UX lives in the small, structural decisions that prevent confusion before it appears: clear hierarchy, predictable flows, well-designed defaults, error prevention, consistent interaction patterns. These choices don’t draw attention to themselves. Instead, they remove hesitation, reduce cognitive load, and allow users to stay focused on their goal rather than the interface.
This talk examines how absence becomes a measurable signal of quality. Fewer support tickets. Shorter onboarding. Lower error rates. Higher task completion. When friction is designed out early, products feel “intuitive” - even though that intuition is carefully engineered.
Through practical examples, we will identify the invisible layers of interface design that shape user experience without demanding attention.
Error States Are the Real Product: What UX Reveals Under Failure
When payments fail, data is lost, requests time out, or actions can’t be completed, the interface becomes the system’s true face. Error states are defining moments. They determine whether users feel confused, blamed, anxious or supported and in control.
This talk reframes error handling as a core product responsibility, not a secondary UI detail. We’ll examine how unclear messages, dead ends, and missing recovery paths quietly erode trust and increase support costs. And we’ll contrast them with systems that use failure as an opportunity to reinforce reliability and transparency.
Through practical examples, we’ll explore how messaging clarity, recovery design, and emotional tone influence user perception under stress. Attendees will leave with a structured approach to designing error states that reduce frustration, improve resilience, and turn moments of failure into moments of trust.
The Psychology of Phishing: Why Smart People Still Click
Phishing attacks are often framed as a problem of careless users. In reality, even highly educated and technically skilled people regularly fall for well-designed phishing messages.
Attackers target human psychology rather than technology. By exploiting cognitive biases such as urgency, authority, and trust signals, phishing campaigns influence the way people make quick decisions online.
This talk examines how visual design, language, and familiar UX patterns increase the success rate of phishing attacks. By analyzing deceptive interfaces, fake login pages, and common social engineering tactics, attendees will gain practical insight into why phishing works and how organizations can better educate employees to recognize and resist these manipulative strategies.
AI Dark Patterns: How Interfaces Manipulate Human Decisions
As artificial intelligence becomes embedded in more digital products, a new generation of manipulative design practices is appearing. AI systems can personalize recommendations, pricing, and messaging in ways that strongly influence user behavior.
This talk explores how AI-driven interfaces can create powerful “dark patterns” that encourage impulsive decisions, extend user engagement, or guide users toward specific outcomes.
Using examples from e-commerce platforms, mobile apps, and digital services, we will look at how AI changes the balance between optimizing user experience and manipulating user behavior. The session will also discuss principles for designing AI systems that remain transparent, ethical, and respectful of user autonomy.
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