Differentiating with Design Activism Slides from the NUX6 talk by Daniel Harris, Friday 27th October 2017. 2017.nuxconf.uk / nuxuk.org Synopsis: We’re in an incredible era of un-precidented technological opportunity where anything we can imagine can be built. As designers, we’re at the forefront of making this technology work for organisations. The question is, are we pointing this power in a positive direction? Welcome, generation i!. You are more likely to be depressed and mentally unwell than ever before! Our digital culture compounds these generational challenges and the industry continues to treat digital like an exploitable asset. So what happens then as that asset becomes further and further a part of society. A part of our humanity? At the same time this generation is valuing the part organisations have to play in improving communities and lives – not just with sponsorship or CSR programmes, but in the way they operate and serve. And it’s becoming part of big business. Some estimates suggest that 75% of the S&P 500 companies will not exist in 2027 – companies unable to respond to the rate of change in customer expectations of them. In comes Design Activism; termed by Alistair Fuad-Luke as “design thinking, imagination and practice applied… to generate and balance positive social, institutional, environmental and/or economic change.” I’ll use stories and examples to show how UXers are increasingly empowered to build the world they want to see, with their client and organisational stakeholders with them all the way. In this new era, appetite, point of view, and passion become major ingredients for unleashing the power of UX and design into a new realm of influence.