Research plays a critical role in ensuring that we understand all users’ needs. This includes the needs of novice internet users (NIU) alongside those of experienced digital users. In the context of global product building, how do we ensure that our research captures local nuances and user needs? And, with the additional complexity of remote research, how do we ensure that the research process itself is meaningful and relevant to NIUs? I will walk through a case study to illustrate research localization as a key component of inclusive design and product development.

Tiane conducts research in Next Billion Users (NBU) markets. She leads a team of researchers distributed across multiple countries and time zones, to uncover insights and lay the foundation for products for both end users and small businesses. This is her dream job, combining international research, cultural psychology, and product design, which are three of her favorite things. Prior to Google, she was an academic for 10 years, with work focused on cultural psychology in the Middle East and East Asia. She received her undergraduate degree from Stanford university and a PhD from Princeton University.

Too often product teams face a gap between strategy, design and delivery. The teams spend too much time iterating internally on design and build features not validated by the end user.

Bringing together the dimensions of root cause analysis and design thinking to a central point of contact. The Learning Lab leads a novel approach where our multi functional teams deploys design thinking principles to assist the bank connecting the dots to unlock the trapped value within our business through human centered design.

Kevin’s career has always been driven by the desire to demonstrate the business value of Design. Determined and results driven, business facing designer with 13 years of experience in customer experience, digital products & innovation with end to end execution.

Kevin possess a strong expertise in Service Design and Client experience - which have proven to deliver measurable improvements operationally as well as financially at the financial institutions for which he has been working.

With previous experiences in startups and consultancy firms, Kevin's focus today is to help organizations being truly customer focused and agile following the best practices learned. Active contributor to the APAC startup ecosystem, he co-leads www.FutureFinTech.io, the Open Collaboration platform hosted by INSEAD business school.

With Mergers/acquisitions, it is common to have multiple sub-organizations in your company. How do you make sure you do not ship your organizations to your customers? Should UX decisions be driven by Business Strategy or something else?

UX is a key function that should be at the heart of all organizations, however, many organizations struggle at having the right UX. This is probably because of the lack of well defined UX strategy. The situation becomes complicated when it comes to acquisitions/mergers.

The case study will show such examples with dos and don'ts on how to ship a coherent, smooth, unified experience that delivers the value, the customer is seeking.

Energetic, passionate difference-maker, a facilitator with a background in User Experience Design, Vikas Vaishnav heads UX for Product Design and Manufacturing Solutions, at Autodesk Singapore. As a UX leader, he is responsible for creating, managing, nurturing a customer-focused design ecosystem with his talented multi-disciplinary team.

In addition to people management, UX tools, and methodologies at Autodesk, he brings strong product leadership to the table. Specializing in customer focus at all stages of the product/project life cycle, he helps positively impact customers. With creative problem solving and coaching to teams, to excel in impacting billions of customers across the globe.

Vikas has a degree in Design from IITG, India, he started his career as an Interaction Designer in the software space. Moving on he joined Adobe, and now for over 8 years, he is at Autodesk.

Within the past two years our lives, work, entertainment, social rituals and even medical care have migrated to a virtual environment. Virtual worlds are evolving on a daily basis. Cultural norms are adapting accordingly. The value of NFTs and digital assets continue to soar.

With this shift comes a different kind of challenge for designers, who have been tasked with creating next-generation tools and methods to shape our new reality. What can we learn from our past to inform our future? How can we apply principles from physical space design to these virtual, three-dimensional worlds? What navigation systems feel spatially intuitive? What are the secret ingredients for immersive and memorable experiences today? And wait, no more buttons?

Maryna Razakhatskaya is a creative technologist and experiential designer with over a decade of experience in R&D and technology innovation. Her expertise and leadership has helped design and tech teams both in-house and on agency side navigate the ambiguity of designing with emerging technology. A hands-on practitioner and a pioneer of all things immersive, she experiments with technology, design, and lifestyle and shares her findings through worldwide exhibited work, content, and methodologies.

Maryna holds a MSc degree in Creative Technology and a number of international awards for creative applications of computer vision and wearable technologies.

This will be a 2-hour workshop on the Google Sprint methodology. Lin will adapt the workshop to fit UX STRAT's vision of helping design leaders and experienced designers take their careers to the next level. There will be no slides or video playback for this workshop, it's only live content.

Lin is a UX lead on Google Pay, building and leading product design for Google Pay India, Singapore, Japan and scaling Google Pay across the globe to help everyone join the digital payments wave. Before joining Payments, Lin designed experiences for small and medium business owners on Google Ads. Prior to Google, Lin was a design lead on Mint.com, where she used analytics, design thinking, user research, and A/B testing to form, design and test hypotheses to improve user experience both in-app and on the web. Lin believes that good design comes from empathy —with users, customers, stakeholders and team members alike. She’s a trained Sprint Leader and experienced in facilitating sprints, teaching the sprint methodology, coaching cross functional partners on incorporating collaboration tools and methods to unlock innovation.

In history big historical shifts and uncertain periods like wars and pandemics have been hotbeds of innovation. In this session we will not only go through lessons from history, but how going forward we can manage uncertainty and innovate using future scenarios and with tools including AI we have at hand now.

Remko is VP of Product (Innovation) at Koa Health, where he works on creating new products and services in digital (mental) health. Koa Health is a spin off from Telefonica Alpha. Being a designer by background, he innovates on the intersection of technology, AI and behavioral science, starting with future projection of what could be, bringing it back to products and services that can be.

In over 20 years of experience in UX, design and product management worked with companies and organizations such as Renault, Wallpaper, Financial times, Warner Brothers, British Council, Electrolux, Royal College of Art, Elisava Design School, Imperial College and Harvard Medical School.

He has a Master in Design Innovation Management (Product design) from Delft University of Technology, studied psychology at the Royal University of Leiden and exhibition design at the National School of Design in Australia.

It is human nature to trust AI and project our emotions onto it as we continue to use AI in all its forms as robots, drones or chatbots or invisible AI in search engines, recommendation engines and several apps. Today AI is built with data by engineers. UX leaders need to be involved to bring AI to life beyond it being a data prediction engine. UX designers who care about user research and design thinking and customer empathy are missing in the AI development cycle. This talk invites UX leaders to understand their roles in personality development of AI to genderize and humanize AI and go beyond it to develop character for AI with value tenets so that AI can be built ethically and support us humans in a trustworthy way.

Sudha Jamthe is the CEO of IoTDisruptions.com and a globally recognized Technology Futurist at the junction of IoT, AI and Autonomous Vehicles. She brings 20+ years of digital transformation experience from building innovation and growth organizations, shaping new technology ecosystems and mentoring leaders at eBay, PayPal, Harcourt, and GTE. She teaches Autonomous Vehicle Business and AI courses at Stanford Continuing Studies and BusinessSchoolofAI.com and AIX Design and AI Ethics courses at Barcelona Technology School. She enjoys mentoring industry leaders to shape emerging technology ecosystems. She advises innovation professionals, board of directors and city leaders on the future of transportation and bringing AI Innovation and No-Code AI Datascience for business user to companies.

Designers don’t be afraid of AI, it’s easier than you think! In this talk you will learn how AI works and how to design progressively with AI in its different stages of maturity. You’ll learn what AI can and can’t do and how to design around its weaknesses and strengths without compromising on value to your users.

This talk is aimed at both new and experienced designers and leaders who want to gain confidence in designing with emerging technologies.

Gideon currently co-leads the Product Design and Research department at Zinier where he and the super-cool design team designs the experience for the next generation of field work.

Part technologist and part psychologist, Gideon specialises in designing amazing experiences with emerging technologies such as AI, IOT, Automation, and brings over 15 years of experience of working in Startups, Corporates, Consulting where he has worked on a wide variety of products and projects which range from Fintech, Insuretech to Media, Health, Telcos and E-Learning.

This talk is a reflection of the evolution of a user experience (UX) consultancy's transformation into an experience strategy consultancy in an increasingly competitive market in China. As part of this transformation, the value of design has shifted from tactical to strategic in TANG’s projects. The potential roles and tasks of UX designers will be presented to inspire UX designers for future companies in the experience economy. Finally, practical examples will be given to present essential tools we invented for experience strategy. The insights from leading China UX consultancy will be shared.

Hsien-Hui Tang is Professor at Design Department, at the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, and Special Advisor at TANG consultancy. He serves both in design education and practices for research papers and design works. In recent years, Tang focused on the synergy between business strategy and design practice. He designed user-centered innovation courses in cooperation with design and commerce departments, conducted experience strategy case studies, and provided industrial training for design practitioners and business managers.

Michael is Associate Professor of Tongji University’s College of Design & Innovation. In addition, Mike is Dean of X Thinking Institute, SVP of Knowledge Management & Senior Partner of TANG Consulting, and co-author of X Thinking. His research focuses on eXperience Thinking (X Thinking) as a business philosophy for businesses, using eXperiences as a competitive advantage in the age of the experience economy.

At X Thinking Institute, Mike leads the company in the creation of knowledge that empowers business leaders with the know how to generate business value through extraordinary experiences. At TANG, Mike oversees the knowledge development, application and management, evolving the company’s capabilities.

As we progress in our careers in UX, leaning more and more into strategy is a natural outcome. A barrier to overcome, however, is the tension between our focus on making iterative optimisations based on detailed and rigorous evidence, and the need to step away from the detail and craft a simple and compelling story that motivates teams to follow a vision.

In our role as design strategists we inspire the creation of exceptional products and solutions by leading with passion and purpose. This takes authority, gravitas and the ability to communicate clearly and with the strategic use of drama as well as KPIs. In this talk we will look at key tools to help us demonstrate these aspects, such as a powerful strategic narrative and useful examples of strategic frameworks to apply to increase the impact and perceived value of our recommendations.

Angel drives the direction of the strategy and experience design for a range of global and European clients at Digitas Health. She has over 20 years’ experience in turning insights into experience strategy outputs that deliver high engagement with customers and measurable results for business owners.

From a multichannel strategy for a product launch to a behavioural change programme for patients, Angel has a proven track record in using digital engagement to move the needle on business objectives. Her clients have included the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies as well as household brands. Her passion is to design valuable experiences in healthcare using the most exciting new technologies and with a focus on connecting the dots between design and patient outcomes.

Doing design research during the pandemic has been extremely difficult, esp. in emerging economies like India. Non tech savvy users unfamiliar with tools like zoom calls as well as no access to smartphone or low internet bandwidth hinders talking to users. This talk explores research techniques which will bridge the gap of doing in person research remotely, esp. around understanding the context of users as well as their needs. Using crowdsourcing techniques or outsourcing research by training local guides are few techniques Veena's talk will focus on. These techniques could be used beyound the pandemic for global companies entering into newer markets.

Veena Sonwalkar is a User Experience Design professional with over 16 years of experience in helping businesses be future ready and scale-up profitably through design. She currently leads multi-disciplinary teams at frog Design. She has previously worked with Human Factors International (HFI), Thoughtworks and helped set up a design team in the US for Mindtree.

Veena has helped conceptualize and develop digital design strategies, defined experiences for consumer facing sites/apps as well as enterprise IT systems. She has led design projects for various companies like AT&T, MoMA, IKEA, AIG, Marriott, Exxon, Toyota, Sabre, etc.

Veena co-founded the Bangalore chapter of Ladies that UX which encourages female designers and design leaders. She has spoken at various design events like IxDA, Gartner Research Board, Talk UX.

Products and solutions around us are getting increasingly smarter through their use of AI. Designing for these intelligent solutions introduces challenges for design, because they are more dynamic, personal and can continuously evolve. In this talk I give insight in the data-enabled design process that we adopt at Philips Experience Design to design for AI. Through multiple innovation projects, I give insight in our design process and shine light on our most important learnings along the way. I show how our perspective on data as a design material is instrumental in creating meaningful solutions and how designing for intelligent solutions goes way beyond technical challenges.

Sander Bogers is a Senior Data Designer at Philips Experience Design. His work focuses on how data can be a more inherent part of design processes, especially in the design for more intelligent solutions. People and their stories, and how these can be captured by data, play a central role in that. His current work is a mix of front-end innovation projects, data & AI competence building in the design team, and product development for more personalized solutions.

In this talk, Josephine will showcase a design toolkit she has created for designing bots, virtual agents, digital assistants and all other Conversational AI interfaces. When we talk about designing for Conversational AI, we also talk about Conversational User Experience (CUX): a modality of interaction that’s based on natural language. When interacting with each other, human beings use conversation to communicate ideas, concepts, data, and emotional information. CUX allows us to interact with our devices, apps, and digital services the way we communicate with each other, using phrasing and syntax via voice and text or chat that come naturally. In 2016, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced, “Human language is the new UI layer.” CUX lets you harness the power of words to build trust and forge deep connections with your users. Therefore, Conversational AI is a powerful technology if designed and implemented correctly.

Josephine is a Design Strategist with a passion for tech-driven innovation and brand positioning. This passion is also reflected in the design toolkits she designed, among others a design toolkit for branding corporate startups and for designing for Conversational AI. Within Microsoft, Josephine mainly focuses on facilitating open innovation partnerships and customizing Microsoft technologies, such as Azure Cognitive Services and Microsoft Power Platform.

Besides her role at Microsoft, she also hosts The Design Strategy Podcast in which she speaks to Design Strategists about their career path.