“We are living in a world where we do not agree.” The spoken word artist Joshua Idehen kicks off the session by delivering a humorous performance about the flaws of various ideologies, the world according to your mom, doing the washing. Aiming to unite the audience through music, he showcases the power of humor, language and love when speaking across differences.
Q&A from the session Structuring Structures with Jenny L Beijar, Marco Guadarrama, Emily Best, Sarah Watson and Györgi Gálik
Think about your childhood – what made you feel safe at home? For many of us, our childhoods were unplugged. Now, times have changed. We’re wired into tech at every turn. Parents have turned into safety officers—some offering trust and guidance, others building walls of protection. But for kids, the question is "What’s lurking in the dark?" IKEA, in collaboration with Our Normal Association, dives deep into this dynamic, exploring life from the perspective of kids. For adults, a digital security...
“Almost everyone has a story connected to their mobile phone. They are deeply personal and interconnected with our daily lives.” But what if technology isn't just what we do, but how we feel? Emily and Sarah knew this truth. Their experiences with tech left deep imprints, revealing that while Silicon Valley excels at innovation, it often overlooks the origin stories. Determined to change that, they embarked on a journey to build a timeline of technology, one that didn’t just highlight its triump...
This century will be defined by society’s capacity to respond to climate breakdown. It’s not going to be like the movies, a CGI spectacle of eschatological earthquakes and meteorites. Climate breakdown is a slow and terrifying disaster. Györgi Gálik, City Transitions Co-Lead at Dark Matter Labs, emphasises our need to have an honest understanding of the challenge we face in order to make informed decisions to address it. To take the temperature of society, Györgi points to everyday political tal...
Q&A from the session Entangled and Enmeshed with Andie Nordgren, Tony Olsson and Matt Jones
“Software is an interesting medium. At least in theory, once you make something and it doesn’t become successful, it doesn’t cost anything to change your mind. You can just stop running it.” Software is built upon software, forming a complex and often invisible dependency tree. This is the world Andie Nordgren (she/her) navigates, where large and aging codebases are like dynamic landscapes—constantly evolving, with each shift potentially introducing unexpected obstacles. Andie shares her reflect...
“When we know who enters what, we can also adapt the situation accordingly” As a part of the session ”Entangled and Enmeshed”, Tony Olsson shares with us his experience of working on UX design for access control management products. Tony (he/him) has been in the tech industry for many years, including at companies like Assa Abloy who, through their manufacturing, work literally with doors and locks. From physical objects to their virtual counterparts, doors have existed as long as civilisation i...
Are we in control of technological megasystems, or are they in fact controlling us? By taking on a critical approach to modern technology, Georgina Voss emphasizes the need to collectively challenge the systems that underpin our world. Humans suffer from hubris in terms of using technology to exert control. Voss draws a parallel to the film Jurassic Park, highlighting the role of technological systems in our everyday life. She explains how these systems affect us both emotionally and physically ...
The Q&A from session Time, Trust and Wisdom with Monika Jiang, Gustavo Noguiera de Menezes and Valeria Adani
“Trust is an outcome – not something you can design for.” For many years designers and users alike have been pushing for “seamless” technologies and services – but this approach has not always prioritised safety, privacy, and TRUST. We’ve been obsessed with making things easy to use, rather than making things that are transparent, accountable, and trustworthy. This dilemma is at the core of Projects by IF and Valeria Adani’s work. According to Adani, every time you invent a new technology, you’r...
“Underneath the experience of loneliness is always a longing”. It is not part of our human nature to isolate ourselves from others – yet this is increasingly the reality of modern-day societies. Our physical environments (such as car-centric cities and single-person homes), our technologies (such as social media), and our attitude towards work (i.e. careerism and the false promise of busyness) are no longer affording us the same opportunities to connect as before. Monika Jiang warns us that “con...
“We are the time travelers we’ve been waiting for”. Gustavo Nogueira de Menezes – Gust for short – founder of Temporality Lab, takes us on a whirling tour of wisdom on the philosophy of time and temporality. Or should we say, temporalities. For every society has had distinct experiences of being, doing and existing in their relationship with time. Take the very calendars we use – 12 months of varying lengths for some, and lunar cycles for others. “I don’t have time!” We’ve all heard – or said – ...
What connects Leonardo DiCaprio with the Grateful Dead, a 16th century Dutch diplomat, and a tech CEO recently arrested in a French airport. To answer we have to zoom out and look back. Ten years after three days ago, the last decade of the old millennium, revolutionary 1789, and further back still. Where did we come from and where are we going? Dan Shefet is a lawyer, specialising in European law and Human Rights as they apply to tech. Dan highlights the critical junctures where domestic law an...
The Q&A session from Shifting Systems with Dan Shefet and Dr. Katlyn Turner
Katlyn’s talk digs deep into a critical question: "How did we get here?" She challenges us to confront a deeply embedded paradigm—the "Twin Transition" of sustainability and digitalization. She covers three aspects. First, she critiques how we define environmental impact as caused by CO2, ignoring the other serious issues this oversimplified focus creates. It’s a convenient narrative that silences dissenting voices, labeling them "anti-climate." Then she asks, "Who really benefits?" and exposes ...
”What future will we dream when we dream with plants?” Jemma (she/her) is an artist, writer and curator working with plant intelligence and vibrational medicine. If you wonder what plants sound like – check out this talk. After a guided visualisation, where we imagine going back to a state of being before our human form – we see ourselves as plants. But what is your texture, your aroma – as a plant? Jemma believes we can design futures beyond our perceived limitations if we engage with more-than...
“As we eat food we are consuming things that we don’t even know what’s in there, because they are unknown and we don’t even know where to look for them.” What really makes up the food we eat? Dr. John De La Parra (he/him) invites us to decode the magic and mystery of our food, challenging the conventional ways we understand its composition and impact. He argues there is a deep knowledge often overlooked when we rely solely on the scientific data provided by traditional nutrition labels and compo...
The Q&A from the session Planting the Seeds with Jemma Foster and John De La Parra
Moderator Johanna Koljonen speaks to a packed Theatre stage before the closing keynote on Wednesday. She talks of the collective dreams that have been manifested through Jemma Foster's Geomantra app and helps us to land in the space of hopefulness and melancholy that is present in them before introducing Nipun Mehta and his keynote on Who Must We Be.
The Q&A from session Rewilding Us with Giulia Testa, Michael Kibedi and Seowoo Nam
”Climate change is hard to sense but we can try to rewild ourselves by reconnecting our senses to the planet.” Data definitely feels more hard than soft and it’s not something you generally associate with nature. But in her contribution to the session ”Rewilding Us”, Seowoo Nam (she/her) shows how useful it can be for green infrastructures. Currently doing design and research for award-winning Dutch agency C°F, Seowoo employs digital simulations to find ways of sensing through data. Because chan...
“We should look inwards and consider who gets to be called a designer and think of the cultural exclusion that’s happening there.” In this insightful talk, Michael Kibedi (he/him) challenges us to rethink our impact on the earth, ourselves, and our future. He explores how a human-centered economy and isolating technology contribute to environmental harm and social disconnect. Kibedi encourages us to reflect on who is recognized as a designer and the cultural exclusions shaping these recognitions...
“Do we want species to exist only at the bare minimum, just above the threshold of being considered endangered, or do we want a thriving nature?” Giulia Testa’s (she/her) talk dives deep into the concept of shifting baseline syndrome—a gradual change in accepted norms that has led us to unknowingly accept the decline of wildlife populations as "normal." She challenges us to recognize how our reference points shape our understanding of the natural world and influence our conservation ambitions. G...
The Q&A from session Learning How to Learn with Ella Fitzsimmons, James Taylor-Foster and Lore Oxford
“Through others we become ourselves, we learn, we grow and acquire knowledge”. As society becomes increasingly digital, people become more socially awkward. But, learning through interactions with other human beings is an essential part of life. So how can we learn from each other when there are less opportunities to meet in person? According to Lore Oxford, the answer lies in community building. Reddit provides a platform for people to come together and discuss topics of common interest. Whethe...
“Sometimes one has to travel to another planet in order to understand what is going on in one’s own”. — Trojan Horse James Taylor-Foster explores the meaning and power of design through concepts such as ASMR and LARP-ing. He introduces the audience to the concept of "world glimpsing," where we learn about our own world by experiencing the worlds of others. Using live action role-play (LARP) as an example, he affirms that temporarily becoming a different character helps us, among other things, to...
“By adding AI to software we can create something magical.” Ella Fitzsimmons cleverly draws parallels between AI and how magic has been used, portrayed and worked in medieval courts and beyond. It is something that we are fascinated by – a great power that allows us to create something from “thin air” with minimum work. She suggests that we as a collective need to deepen our understanding of AI. This allows us to no longer see the magic, that is AI, as a threat to humanity. Similarly she compare...
What does a climavore eat? More than a diet, it’s a call to address the manmade seasons created by pollution, soil exhaustion, and fertiliser runoff. How we structure our food systems in turn structures the environment, directly impacting the climate. Rosa Whiteley is Director of Material Research at CLIMAVORE, a research platform and agency who ask the question of how to eat in the anthropocene. She describes their activities on the Isle of Skye, where the cascading effects of intensive salmon ...
The Q&A from the session Manufacturing Materiality with Rosa Whitely and Laura Feinstein
