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 behavioural 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 organisations 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.

The challenge for organizations today is how to deliver a multi-layered complex system to serve the needs of many and make sure the business will survive and thrive despite everchanging market dynamics. As designers, we often find ourselves solving large-scale, complex problems and leading global transformation programs, which can be challenging. And breakthroughs come from a new way of thinking in transformation. So, we've started with system design! Together with my teams at two separate innovation centers, we've pioneered System Design as a new method of problem-solving to tackle large-scale, complex challenges. We have delivered innovative solutions such as blockchain-based ID systems for the United Nations for ID'less societies or building data-driven, intelligent platforms to eliminate food waste for supermarket chains. System Design Framework combines well-known design thinking and systems thinking to analyze systems collectively, enables the right next actions and shapes the technologies most suitably. In this session, I will share insights on applying System Design Framework to drive innovation and deliver value to organizations.

Nur is design expert in everything about human-centred services and systems. With a deep passion to shape new technologies and deliver value for humanity Nur helps organisations to achieve sustainable transformations and leverage new technologies for better use. She has set up and led award-winning innovation teams in Europe and managed capabilities such as UX, Service Design and System Design. She is the author of the System Design Practice book. Currently, she works with the United Nations’ Accelerator labs and provides training in System Design at multiple universities in Europe.

In this presentation, Adi will share an on-the-ground perspective of what designers can do to get into the weeds and co-create this value. Through stories from personal experience on this journey, she'll bring a view on what it means for a designer to shape the direction of AI at their business, tactically and strategically.

Adi Veerubhotla is a UX Architect in the Data & AI group at IBM. She has been in enterprise design for 10 years, focusing on information exploration and sense-making from business data. For half of that time, she has been designing experiences for and with cutting-edge AI technology. To her, machines are tools to be used for a purpose. Through her education in Computer Science and Human Computer Interaction, she enjoys blending the world of experience design, cognitive psychology and systems thinking to craft responsible systems of value.

Beyond work, she enjoys nature & experimental cooking with vegetarian food, and is learning to view the world again through the curious eyes of a little kid.

As design & product leaders, our shared goal is to bring differentiated value for our customers & companies. This value can be provided by analyzing & predicting outcomes from data. When incubating new products & concepts, it's paramount to think about what design strategies can help curate these data & drive successes for customers.

In this presentation, Sen will discuss how his team within FCAT, which is at the heart of Fidelity's 'innovation engine,' uses design-thinking and data science to incubate new products. This talk will include stories & lessons learned from a product designed, developed & launched at an AI-Incubator. Using examples of iterative product development, Sen will also talk about how using a human-first approach, building trust with users & authentic data-driven experiments helped his team drive the product to success.

Supritam Sen is a Director of Product Management at Fidelity Center for Applied Technology (FCAT). He currently leads multiple cross-functional teams within an AI-Incubator within FCAT. His focus is to assess, test, and scale AI products/concepts that provide value to Fidelity's internal employees & external customers. Over the last few years, his focus has been to incubate products using Design and Data Strategy. He is passionate about investing & finance, and in his free time, he likes to read, watch soccer, and travel to new places. Sen holds an MS. in Computer Science from NC State University and an MBA from Fuqua School of Business (Duke University).

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.

In this use case on integrating design, data and AI, I will show how human-centered technology can contribute to the transformation of healthcare. By showing an explorative, first-of-a-kind clinical design trial with bariatric patients and healthcare professionals of the Catharina hospital in the Netherlands, I'll present how patient engagement can be improved by making care more personal and precise. And how we explored different ways to interact more directly and effectively with patients and a multi-disciplinary team of healthcare professionals. By testing an intelligent ecosystem, including sensors and data-trackers we were able to gather data about patient's experience, context and behavior, and I will show how that has led to a better understanding of patient’s needs and new forms of care delivery and future healthcare concepts.

Jos-marien is specialized in UX research for healthcare innovations and in Data-enabled Design where mixed methods are used to collect qualitative and quantitative data, which is input as a creative material for innovation.

In her work, she combines intelligent ecosystems, artificial intelligence and deep user insights into user needs. She loves to work in multi-disciplinary teams with designers, statisticians, data scientists, psychologists, clinicians and patients.

Speculative fiction writer and essayist, William Gibson said: 'The future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed.'

Most of us at this conference would very quickly be able to create a list of currently emerging technologies: non-fungible tokens, the metaverse, blockchain, machine learning, computer vision, artificial intelligence, regenerative agriculture, lab-grown meat, CRISPR, robotics. These technologies have the potential to change everything.

Our job as designers is to find truly compelling value propositions for these technologies in peoples' everyday lives; to apply these technologies to solve real human problems in real human ways.

Designer, PJH, will share his experience of defining the value proposition for a machine learning and computer vision product and how his studio designed the user interface to unleash the power of those technologies.

Paul-Jervis Heath is an award-winning product strategist and designer with almost 25 years of experience. He is Chief Creative Officer and a founding partner of Modern Human, a multidisciplinary design practice and innovation consultancy. Modern Human design products, services and environments that enrich modern life and exists to empower and liberate real people through design.

PJH's highly diverse portfolio of design projects includes dashboards for autonomous vehicles, smart home appliances, intelligent environments, digitally integrated retail stores, publishing services that accelerate the pace of human discovery, geospatial information services to enable conservationists to protect endangered species and augmented reality toys. He has designed libraries, museum exhibits and even a call centre.

Paul Jervis Heath has built design practices within a number of organizations. He is the former Head of Innovation at Cambridge University and has led design at a number of London design firms.

For nearly one thousand years humans have been designing programmatic machines to augment our work and play. Until very recently, those machines were merely tools we wielded. Now we are challenged with a new realm of experience design: dynamic experiences for humans collaborating with artificial intelligence (AI). This is new and exciting work! Identifying and considering the benefits and limitations of these systems is challenging enough. Determining how, and to what extent, they will augment their human partners; what that exchange 'feels' like and how it changes over time; and how we will keep people safe and in control can be intimidating. What new thought paradigms, design approaches, and perhaps even methods are needed? Together we'll explore the implications on UX that these systems have and how we can design human-centered AI.

Carol Smith’s career spans 20 years collaborating on complex problems, focusing on UX research and prototyping, across industries and platforms. She has been leading research to integrate ethics and improve human experiences with artificially intelligent (AI) systems, autonomous vehicles, and other emerging technologies since 2015.

Carol is a Senior Research Scientist in Human-Machine Interaction for the AI Division of Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute in Pittsburgh, PA. Carol also teaches courses for CMU's Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII). She is an active UX community organizer, served two terms on the UXPA international board, and is an ACM Distinguished Speaker. Carol has an M.S. in HCI from DePaul University.