DesignTalks: Future of UX Design

With extreme growth as a catalyst, our role as product designers has evolved toward the stewardship of ever-larger, more holistic platform technology. Scaling product design while maintaining a consistent user experience has pushed bespoke craftsmanship to the edges—and blurred the boundaries between PM and design lead.\n\nIn this talk, Roy explores the emerging confusion that surrounds the evolving role of design lead, discusses what he learned helping Airbnb build its design system, and shares his experience co-founding a platform team.

Just as we start to get a handle on the product design landscape, it changes on us—again. With that reality in mind, what does designing for spatial computing look like? What does it mean to design for artificial intelligence and future food systems? What kind of skills and experience will you need to pivot, adapt, and thrive in this new era, and what roles do storytelling, empathy, and emotion have in the designed future?\n\nIn this talk, Dane explores these themes against a backdrop of product innovation stories, starts, and stops.

As industry races towards 2020, Gen Z’s $44 billion of disposable income is triggering truly massive change. Design now has a seat at the boardroom table, and as industry dances with disruption, there are great expectations that design will act as the conductor of a symphonic enterprise.\n\nIn this talk, Joanna lays out the foundation for the future of design, from the momentous trends composing change at a cosmic scale to the delicate minuets found in crafting design systems.

The timeline of computing history is marked with innovations—vacuum tubes, the mouse, the device in your pocket—that enabled new ways for us to interact with our computers. The language we invent to interact with these innovations is the essence of human-computer interaction (HCI). Today, technological innovation happens at a pace that makes it difficult to wrap our minds around the long-term implications for society, politics, and ethics.\n\nIn this talk, Irene traces the history of the HCI field and explores what the future might look like given the latest advances in computing technology.