We invented our world at human height, with us in the middle. Much of our work is designed even more narrowly, with a particular kind of human at the middle. What happens when we go beyond the limited “user-centric” or “human-centric” scales? What does it look like, feel like, move like when humans are not in the middle of the system?
Panelists
Alicia Dudek is an experienced design ethnographer and futurist. Her work brings the customer’s point of view and human voice to any group’s innovations and decisions. The work she does with teams brings empathy into the organisation to help inform, inspire, and initiate innovation. Central to her ability as a change agent is a capability to illuminate absences of customer understanding and to build powerful projects to rally teams and decision makers around their client’s needs. She is the founder of Mycoreality, a fungi-focused, mycelium inspired conversation firm focused on improving and increasing human fungi collaboration to help save our world.Ian Bogost is an author and an award-winning game designer. He is Ivan Allen College Distinguished Chair in Media Studies and Professor of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he also holds appointments in the School of Architecture and the Scheller College of Business. Bogost is also Founding Partner at Persuasive Games LLC, an independent game studio, and a Contributing Editor at The Atlantic. He is author or co-author of ten books, including Alien Phenomenology and Play Anything.
Susan Moylan-Coombs is founding director of Gaimaragal Group’, a company established to create a new story of connection and wellbeing for all Australians. Its aim is to facilitate the voice for our Elders in the contemporary social space, empower our youth to realise their full potential, and provide two-way cultural translation to bring individuals and communities together. Susan’s ancestry is Woolwonga and Gurindji from the Northern Territory. She has extensive experience working with First Australian communities nationally and internationally, and expertise in community consultation, empowerment and the facilitation of voice and storytelling. Susan is also a founding board member of PTSD Australia New Zealand and a board member of NSW Indigenous Chamber of Commerce and COTA NSW (Council on the Ageing). She has previously held the positions of Executive Producer ABC’s Indigenous Programs Unit and Head of Production, NITV a division of SBS.
Tricia Wang is a global tech ethnographer living at the intersection of data, design, and digital. Her passion is to help organizations uncover how our bias towards the quantifiable comes at the expense of profits and people, and how to fix it. She is the co-founder of Sudden Compass, a consulting firm that helps enterprises move at the speed of their customers by unlocking new growth opportunities in their big data with human insights in their digital transformation. Organizations she’s worked with include P&G, Kickstarter, Spotify, and GE. She also co-founded Magpie Kingdom, a consultancy that helps globally minded companies gain actionable insights about the Chinese consumer. Their newsletter, Magpie Digest, unpacks trending conversations in China to reveal insights about youth culture and macro social implications.