 I'm happy to be there. Very honored. I'm going to be speaking about a topic that is very close to my heart and of course experience growth is the destination but what is inspiring us to get to inject this growth into the work we do is the starting point I want to talk about first of all do you remember when actually doing design was feeling more like cooking you needed to have good ingredient inspiration focus and a good recipe that was helping you telling a story through what you were doing you know sometimes I think it's not just for me but today it feels that function driven design is making us feel more like in a drive-through where everything has to be easy fast immediately resolved that it's somehow changing the way we're doing design and the way we're actually providing impact with our work you know I take one step back and I introduce myself I'm a designer from from Italy I'm trained as an industrial designer I'm a geek so I kind of got into digital very early and moved towards product design and service design as well so kind of an holistic perspective on what can be done in my last almost now 20 years of experience I kind of risked to spill my stresses on many different customer blueprints journeys wireframe sketches I landed in 2020 in sapient and there you know I thought a lot in also exploring how the dimension of what we can do with design can merge also with a new perspective of what technology can help us with doing and you know I think it's somehow for me this is what is important for what design truly is to me and what design should be doing design isn't just about the form of it the design is how it feels how it works what it means and the story our products and services tell I think it this is to me the most important thing that we need to consider when approaching a new program and you know I take these maybe because of course I was telling you I'm trained as an industrial designer I'm Italian as well so you can imagine that my background is filled with masters like Bruno Munari and Etore Sotsas that kind of taught me through my training how important it is to have a vision in what to do and you know at this time when they were working as designers that all was quite different from how we intended today and I want to just go back to these to ask the question on what our role should be especially now that we have artificial intelligence helping us to sort out the most let's say functional part of our work you know they were kind of using design to make societal impact to make statements that were not just designing you know the shape of a lamp or you know just just products they were kind of meeting a need a society had trying to tell their perspective on it and having a point of view that was the mean for them to meet brands that were like-minded and together with them build products and services that was making we were making the difference that were making statements that were changing lives but not only that because both of them they were also very much engaged they were also shaping education they were shaping storytelling they were active across different perspective of what design could mean why I go back to them because you know I know that more and more we're getting so much focused on the craft and execution to forget also our role into actually having the agency as designers to be having a point of view and to be actually using that point of view for shaping what we intend when we start the project that's another big point that I have at the moment in as a question in my career so human is my is the core of what we do but being human is so putting humans at the center doesn't mean to be human pleasers sometimes it feels like we just want to solve issues we want to be you know like those helicopter parents that are just caring about what do you need as a user what can I what can I do for you what can I solve in your daily in your daily life but you know solving I go back to the metaphor of the cooking it's not what we usually need as people we need you know we need perspectives we need things that allow us to you know to act and to feel you know fulfilled in what we do so we need platforms more than things that solve immediately our needs and if you think again about the metaphor I had from the drive-through you know if I just need to sort out my hungriness I just need sugar so I drive through you know a hamburger my sorted out but if I have to talk about a meal I remember it's difficult that I will mention that it's more likely that I will mention that restaurant where I had an amazing experience and I didn't get anything I was expecting and I didn't get any food that was let's say planned to be what I needed before entering the restaurant and you know I urge you to think about that when you start your design that that's somehow the spirit you need to take don't design just for replicability designed for building the experience that moves your customers that builds upon the tension and not only on the immediate need they have what they tell you they want to sort out I mean this is obvious but I think it these would be even more important as we have AI supporting us the good is something that we can resolve through a lot of means today thanks to technology thanks to modularity but what about the great that's where we need to focus that's the call that we get today we don't have to focus so much on just how we can use AI but what is our role when we can use AI how that requires us to be better to be different to be adding that perspective that moves us forward and it's gonna be more and more the challenge so before we will I had that of course the worry of everyone is about losing jobs you know the problem is more than that it's about you know being challenged more having to settle less for the average and having to prove that you're one step forward that something that can be sorted out by a machine that that's the real challenge we need to face and it's you know it's a tricky one but somehow to what I was telling you before it's also very fascinating one because it would urges to take our perspective and use them in what we do just not be in average just being different just being progressive just thinking about what's coming next and not what is that today I'll go back and I like this image because when we talk about design research and understanding customer needs and so forth sometimes it feels like that I don't know how it is for you but it's like okay I have this ten needs my client has okay let's sort them out one two three four five certain them all a lot of features for sorting them all and that's done my design is done it's covering all of the needs I've I've retrieved but that again is not where we want to work I believe a lot in the power of agency that is twofold agency you know is the fact that as humans we tend to be willing to do things to act upon things on one side is a mindset for us as designers what I was telling you before we are not just doing things we have an intention we decided to be designers because we wanted to have an impact let's think about the type of impact let's think about the philosophy behind our ways of working that has some hours to be a bit individual it's not just collective it has to be the vision we want to bring into the work we do and on the other side as a design goal because as we were saying we want our users our customers not to just be using our things but to be inspired through the projects the products the services we build experiences we design into progressing into moving forward how we do that three things that that would be the ingredients to this recipe first of all intention building intention will be like just defining the road on which we work the second one is motivation that is the fuel that motivates us to of course to to start moving within this space and finally aspiration it is our no star where are we headed where is our customer headed when we design things if we consider these three aspects we are already going in the right direction but how to do that I'm gonna be taking a reverse approach so how we generate intention we generate it through frictions and I know this is weird for most of us because I think and I'm sure that 90% of our decks are filled with frictionless experience in a slide two or three usually but actually good frictions are first of all what will differentiate experiences that can be you know designed autonomously by any machine to what is actually intentionally designed by a human to create a custom experience and secondly it's the poses that allow you through an experience to stop and think and react as a customer to that experience that will be more and more something we will miss because I think all of you already used to be always in on the move with experiences you're you're having and the fact of having a pose it's more and more actually not used anymore to so I take an example here I'm talking about was mentioned in my tech I'm talking about Amplifon I've been working with with Amplifon for this last three years Amplifon is the largest hearing aid retailer globally we've been working with them on what is the full digital ecosystem for them and as you can imagine it starts as a friction because their customers are elderly people so it's not like digital is their first their first interface and overall the very point of differentiation for Amplifon is actually the retail in-person experience so what we've been building is a full ecosystem for both the patients and the audio the audiologists to try and reduce the time required for them to be tracking things and gathering information in order for them to gain more time of in-person interactions and it's a different perspective for digital designer because usually you want your tool to be front and center to be the only thing that they see to design an app that they will always have in their hands and being interactive continuously in this case it's quite the opposite we were designing something that had to be less intrusive that that to be more reassuring for a very particular type of customer and especially for the audiologist that didn't have to take their time from the actual importance that was interacting with the patient another thing another experience in this case it was very interesting and this case was really building up on frictions was this experience we designed for having people to try and experiment what it means to be hearing impaired you know one of the biggest issues with people with hearing impairment is the stigma they feel of course worried to be sharing their issue because people with hearing impairment still today are made are feeling like that there will be jokes about the issue rather than feeling like it's something that needs to be solved and so here this work was to help people to feel what it really means to have this issue through a digital experience understanding what it means to be skipping words to not being able to fully understand the context to feel isolated while we're talking and this is helping a lot in having these people communicate with their family with their loved ones and making them understand what it actually feels like to be hearing impaired and finally of course we have we have built a design system so it's componentized but again where I want to take the friction part is that it is componentized but we've worked a lot in order to create automation but also you know small elements of complexity that allow us to move from a very plain design to something that as you can see it's a bit more complex with different typography really with with simple small complications more like when you think about the design of a Swiss watch the system is designed to allow to move from simplicity to complexity depending the context the customer type the moment in the journey so that again not everything feels the same so through your experience with the brand you can have different moments of interaction depending on the type of customer you are and the moment in which you're experiencing second topic we are at the field point we're talking about motivation and in this case of course we went beyond the fact that it's not said that we need to be frictionless in this case we talk about working through constraints and to me you know constraints will now was talking about the agents of the designer is a good exercise against ourselves because sometimes we go in automatic mode when we get a brief so we really know what is the best pattern for solving something we know what are best in class apps that are doing the same things best in class services you do a nice benchmark you take the best from that benchmark and you try to replicate that one exercise I always take us with my team is to try and put ourselves complications and constraints like okay what if we look at the benchmark we do everything that a benchmark is doing but like we have something that no one has done before and we need to sort it out anyhow even if it's not something already in the brief in this case for example when we talk about constraints the first word that I would talk always about is the automotive space I took about a project where we were thinking about redesigning configurators we've done it for many brands and through these experiences what we've learned is that as you can see configurators all look the same because they're platform-driven because they're so complex that you end up having always the same design patterns having the same structures also because it's very complicated to build a custom one but you know we asked ourselves but in an era where most configurators most configurations are starting on a mobile is it normal that most configurators are designed for desktop is it normal that when they get to mobile anyhow they're designed in landscape mode only because people in the product on the product side of automakers doesn't allow to think about cutting the picture of a car a bit but you know all of us I used to use our phones 99% in portrait mode so why we should be designing for changing our economy if we're not used to and that's the prototype we built so it was also for helping pushing forward the idea that from a technology perspective we needed to rethink this approach because strengths we chose was we need to design it for portrait it needs to be enabled by AI we wanted to be collaborative because most of configurators are just you and the tool and we wanted also to think about different filtering paradigm something that will allow both hyper technical people to be tuning the macro details but those two people that were just you know willing to play with a model to be doing that and as you can see the exercise was also a lot about injecting CGI and creating an experience that feels so our goal was why don't we use the same way you're adding filters to your pictures on your camera roll and use that paradigm before creating an interaction with a configurator no more just having to tune the little detail but just let's work through drivers because most of the people don't even know how many options they have to tune then of course there's people that are more you know passionate about that but we wanted to try and also as you can see sort out both people that wanted to change the detail and people that wanted to change the macro driver and through artificial intelligence we're also using collective information about what the choices are made from a majority of users to try and define automatically depending on the driver which is the color what are the packages you add what are the details you have depending on what the majority of other people that have chosen the same driver are doing much like you would use a prompt in any tool and here you see there's a second part is the sharing the configurator and having the possibility to tune it together with friends you know partner someone that will have to choose the car with you that will be able to create as you can see the different different recipes for creating your final configuration and ideally decide whether to merge them and create the best model for both of you and you know again I go back to the constraints because none of these would be feasible in a space where you want to go with the simplest solution but this is something that for automakers is super important because it's a branded asset it's the way your customer interact and discover your model in your car and you don't want to go with an average experience there you want to go with something that a customer will remember it's in a future where maybe you will go less and less to a dealership it will be an important part of your experience and that's it has to be memorable and differentiated it has to be a signature and that's where constraints help us build branding so last bit I want to talk about also when we talk about agency and the fact of acting it's not always good when we talk about agency we are used to these these pictures are coming from any of our social feeds I don't know if you know about part social agency but to me that's like the nemesis of the type of agency as designers we should be building part social agency is the type of feeling you get from looking at other people that are acting that makes you feel like okay with yourself like you have done your thing like you see someone building a Lego and it makes you feel reassured or you see someone else making a recipe and it feels for you like you have done it at the end of the day you kind of feel tired when you've spent your life scrolling your instagram or tiktok feed through this type of content and that's you know something that is preventing us from having that good agency I was talking about something that makes us feel the actors in in our life and that's where I'm saying as designers we have the duty to be helping society our customers to be focusing more on this latter positive agency rather than this one because this one is something that already exists it's something we are used to because all of our digital experiences feel like something that that is addictive and those frictions is that again allow us to be posing and thinking and acting and going also out sometimes from digital space it's not bad it can happen even if we're digital designers last part we talk about the resonance and I think in this case a different bit I'm talking about digital design earlier this last part is about also consulting I want to talk about aspiration as bringing beauty to what we do and beauty has been something in the last year years 10 15 has been completely cancelled from the design space it's been pushed to brand and marketing as if in design it was against the functionalism talking about the fact that our experiences had to be beautiful and when I say beautiful take it really in a you know very wide sense I mean beautiful in a sense that it's moving people that it's inspiring people that it's something that you'd remember that that you like and in this case I want to tell you that it's not just about products and use of course we talk about crafting stuff that should be differentiated but I'm talking about creating a different way into consulting into creating artifacts that move organizations through beauty that allow to story tell the change that organization need to take by using you know beautiful wrapping to to navigate through the organization in the right hands and having an impact and you know it's super important to be doing that because whenever we deliver 150 slides of pyramids and maps and charts and customer journeys they just land on someone computer and they don't move from there we have wasted our time and in this case thinking about storytelling impact is so much important it's so important for any type of brand but of course particularly when we really want to have a transformational impact finally the point is of course about again going back to the title of my talk so growth why I took this long digression because for building growth I believe that the experience lab approach requires focusing on what is sustainable for an organization and the sustainability is delivered just through meaning so if we really put focus and agency in what we do we can actually help organizations create things that have meaning that are used for longer the last longer for for their customers and therefore are automatically sustainable because they won't have to change so quickly and abruptly because they're not thought they're not future proof they're not thinking about such evolution what we do is I mean this is a strategy at Sapien so we we try and and of course make as much as possible the connection between the different capabilities so speed in this case stands for strategy product experience engineering and data partnering together in order to deliver such type of meaning to our customers of course today I'm representing experience I'm going to be talking a bit partially about the role of experience in this in this ecosystem and sometimes it feels like being this girl here the middle sibling because you're there in the middle between your serious strategy and product colleagues and you know the the data and engineering teams that are instead of course rooting for for tangibly building things and you're there orchestrating the elements of value that connect across these different disciplines somehow understanding as a middle child how to gather the attention of everyone through maybe sometimes small tricks like for example before I was saying creating beautiful artifacts for for crafting their attention into acting positively I couldn't close without an AI slide but just because I wanted to also reconnect it to what we were saying before I don't want to for you to catch the point that I'm against AI quite the opposite I'm just saying that the more we are in the system where AI is so important to our ways of working we need to make sure that we are not creating noise we're not adding the noise our scope is to go down in that pyramid and be using AI to create signals to create differentiated product to create differentiated services and for doing that if you see the role we need to get to use our vision for alimenting this this type of approach we need to have a style that is nuanced we need to ask for highly selected datasets for be working with AI we need to be asking for more we'll have to be the ones rooting for working on the great instead of the good because no one else will be doing that it's going to be our role to be making sure that we're not creating more let's say trash products and services in a very crowded ecosystem so closing here I think for me the message is this so what is about our role this middle child role let's never be content let's try and be always as much as we can bold with what to do let's not be afraid of doing that let's go back to those designers I was mentioning to you before they were not afraid of being bold because they knew what they wanted to to bring to society they had a clear mindset so they weren't afraid of stating that and most and all let's question patterns they're not stated patterns are something we learn we are able to learn new patterns of course in a reasonable way but let's again try and push for creating new patterns rather than just settle for the ones existing that is all thank you any questions okay can you pass the mic here please introduce yourself then the question hello thank you hi everyone my name is Riddhuma and I'm from Deloitte and thanks Laura for the amazing talk so you asked me to introduce myself I'm a six month old baby to UX so and I'm very new I come from an illustration background and this is a playground for me a lot of fun good great exposure so forgive me if my question comes from an uninformed state I wanted to understand what your first slide meant about generating intentions through friction that caught my attention but I don't think I was able to comprehend that very quickly sorry can you repeat the first part generating intention through friction would you be able to elaborate it's uh it's mostly about creating through this slowing down in the experience design creating the intention for the person who's interacting with your systems to be willing to go forward not to go you know heads down forward just because it's simple but because they intentionally want to interact with your system and frictions allow to create it's not roadblocks but just parts of the experience that's low down the flow you know we tend to instead just build everything so that it's as fast as possible and that you can go very quickly by the end of the flow and you know we've all been there like for example when building a an e-commerce cart removing all frictions is the best because you want your customer to buy everything to buy everything in one second but again think it from a societal perspective do you really want people to just be buying things heads down without reason maybe you want to understand and specify those moments where actually this purchase is intentional in the experience and I know it's it's tricky to be presented to a client as a perspective but it helps I go I go so extreme to making this example of the cart to make understand what it means to start injecting moments in which you're evaluating what you're doing and making sure as a customer you're you have actual intent in what you're doing okay so what I've been reading theoretically on books is that uh learnability and friction so to say should be reduced in terms of time reduction I mean they should not be able to spend time a lot on the product and it should be fast paced right so this thought approach seemed a little counterintuitive though intriguing so did you ever feel that your consumers were not comfortable with the friction that you were introducing to them through the product well not not actually because of course you get to define the friction once you have defined the macro ecosystem I think the point is what is your role as designer if it's just creating the thing or consulting your client so sometimes you just I mean I take again example I was making to you okay we focus on just maximizing the the sales in the cart but maybe you have a medium to long-term vision and makes you understand it for that brand putting that friction and having that pose brings value to the brand itself because it's allowing people to be more conscious about the fact that they're buying through that brand it's not amazon it's that brand that is selling you the thing and it's creating a relationship so of course you need you need to prove it you need to support it with strategic data but just for making you the example that it's not always said that that speed is the solution thanks I love it thank you anybody else any question we'll take one more question yeah here yes please yeah so I have a question I really first thing I really like the analogy of are we humanists or are we trying to just human pleasers I can't hear so much yeah so can you hear me now yeah so I really like the one that you where you questioned are we just human pleasers and also we were talking about business impact so sometimes as a designer it feels like we're always working in isolation in the sense that it's only us who is always trying to bring this perspective but I'm sure that even our non-design colleagues are trying to create a good product right so how do we kind of go from this constant battle of like tech first or design first to starting to speak a common language so first of all of course I mean the speed perspective I was mentioning it's all about trying to work all together on these where of course somehow still the rows remain because each of us has its own angle that it's bringing to the table you know more and more what I'm seeing is that business optimization and technology standardization of the platforms is kind of killing completely this fact of being exploring in design but it's because we are not getting as early as possible into having an impact so somehow this fact of learning how to speak business and technology in order to have that impact as early as possible and not be talking about just the needs resolved but as I was making this example now trying to say okay let's not use the standard cart we need to change it we all know that changing a cart is a nightmare for any client and any technology platform because they have the standard approach but what if you are able to focus and partner with strategy to build a business case for doing that and you need to be the one suggesting that you can't just be heads down designing it so yeah you need to you need to upstream a bit but it's worth it thank you