Designers and design leaders debated whether strong design cultures should require designers in every room. The discussion opened an important reflection: how can design intent scale without diluting craft, judgement, and the user’s voice?
An insightful reflection on design leadership across judgement, information flow, transparency, team growth, ownership, organisational influence, and the evolving role of design beyond output.
A debate on Empathy vs Consequences from EPC Design Dialogues, exploring why good design must begin with understanding people, but mature design must also examine what its decisions set in motion.
Takeaways from EPC Design Dialogues’ round tables on leadership, critique, AI, B2B delight, behaviour, coaching, and the shift from design as output to design as responsible judgment.
Psychogeography helps designers see that people do not experience places in a neutral way. Every environment shapes mood, attention, movement, and choice. To understand design deeply, we must study not just users, but the emotional force of context.
What weakens design first is rarely the obstacle you can point at. It is often the ground beneath it. A useful way to rethink why teams break, adapt, or grow.
The real test of design is not how it works on a good day. It is whether it still holds when the user is stressed, interrupted, overwhelmed, or simply not okay.
Great design often begins before users say anything at all. In the pause, the hesitation, the unspoken discomfort, there is a signal. The best designers do not just study behaviour. They learn to notice what escapes the chart.
Your notebook isn’t just holding your ideas. It’s steering them. Page size, friction, and even how erasable a mark feels can push you toward commitment or endless iteration, clarity or chaos. Change the surface, and you may notice your decisions change first.
In the age of AI, information spreads fast and flattens even faster. This Unscripted session distils two debates into practical takeaways: keep context in mind when you share, use cognitive diversity to catch blind spots, then converge to ship.
Care deeply, but don’t cling. Detachment keeps you adaptable, trusted, and in the game longer than any single design.
Design is evolving fast. Here's what designers and design leaders are saying about where you should put more effort.