Jason Giles began his career at the dawn of the commercial internet, when a new technology cracked a door open and curiosity mattered more than credentials. He was early enough to watch the dot-com crash unfold firsthand, discovering that technological disruption rarely replaces human judgment, it changes where it’s needed most. Today, after more than two decades leading design at Microsoft, DirecTV, Ticketmaster, and now UserTesting, Jason sees the same patterns emerging with AI. The excitement, uncertainty, fear of missing out, and rapid acceleration all feel remarkably familiar. In this talk, Jason draws on lessons from the internet’s formative years to explore why AI doesn’t diminish the value of designers it raises the premium on judgment. As AI compresses days of design and research into seconds, the real competitive advantage shifts from producing work to knowing what good work looks like, what questions to ask, and which decisions still require human discernment. The session concludes with an extended Q&A, focused on the questions that matter most to the audience.

AI isn't coming to design, it's already here. But between the hype cycle and the panic, there's a gap: the real work of building with AI when you're shipping products, managing teams, and working with real constraints. This talk cuts through the noise. We'll explore what it actually means to integrate AI into your design practice and product workflow; not as a feature checkbox, but as infrastructure that changes how teams work. We’ll explore the practical realities of how AI is changing the shape of design work, where it genuinely speeds you up (and where it doesn't), and what it takes to lead a team through this shift without losing what makes design matter.

In this talk, Shaeema Boer explores what responsible AI means from a product design perspective, drawing on emerging global AI frameworks and her experience designing AI-powered products at Accenture Song.

Many UX professionals spend years mastering research, strategy and design, yet still struggle to create impact. This talk explores the difference between UX competence and organisational competence, and why understanding people, trust, influence and alignment is often what determines whether great UX work creates real change. Drawing on lessons from consulting and enterprise environments, it challenges the idea that identifying problems is enough and argues that understanding how organisations work is just as important as understanding users.

What if we designed services around how people actually experience them, rather than how we assume they do? Drawing on my lived experience of hearing loss, extensive travel, and my work as a UX designer at Emirates, this talk explores how accessibility extends far beyond digital interfaces. Through personal stories and real-world service design research, I'll share how small moments of empathy can transform a customer's journey, and how those same principles can help us create services that are more inclusive, intuitive, and ultimately better for everyone.

As AI becomes embedded in more of the products we design, an uncomfortable reality has emerged: systems can work exactly as intended and still cause harm. From recommendation engines that resurface painful memories, to biometric AI that performs poorly on underrepresented groups, to automated decisions that quietly exclude vulnerable users, many of the most damaging failures in AI aren’t caused by bad actors. They’re the result of perfectly reasonable design decisions made with incomplete data, narrow assumptions, or the wrong optimisation goals. In this talk, Dr Lizette Spangenberg explores how algorithmic cruelty emerges in everyday products and why traditional UX approaches often fail to catch it. Drawing on examples from social media, consumer technology, and healthcare AI, she introduces practical frameworks that help teams identify who a system works worst for, uncover hidden risks, and design more humane AI-driven experiences. Attendees will leave with a new lens for evaluating AI products and a set of actionable tools they can apply immediately within their own organisations.

How politeness, workshops, and fake alignment drive products into the ground by Tomislav Kozacinski

We spend years learning how to make products usable. But what makes them feel effortless, trustworthy or even joyful? This talk explores the often overlooked qualities that give software personality, and why those qualities are becoming even more valuable in the age of AI.