The remote conference hosted by Fifth Beat!
Two days to get inspired and educated on design topics

We often talk about experimentation as the key to growth. That's right, experimentation brings innovation, which in turn leads a business to grow, mature, gain new market share and reach higher audiences. But experimentation is first and foremost the ability to adapt. Ability to adapt in a market that changes at the speed of light. And in the historical moment we are living through, experimentation means first and foremost surviving. Changing one's processes and mindset is the only way to transform oneself, to face the crisis and overcome it by coming out of it improved.

In design processes, experimentation is the basis of designers' learning process leading to problem solving with a fair amount of confidence. That is precisely why the act of experimentation is related to the competence level, together with bias. So: when does it make sense not to experiment?

‍

Introducing and scaling an experimentation program comes with multi-faceted challenges and organizations apply the most diverse strategies for how to tackle them. At Vista, we have decided to implement a multiplier system as one of the key elements of our experimentation growth strategy, the Ambassador program. In this talk, we will share how we approached and realized our idea, how the program is currently doing, and our reflections on the first 12 months running it. Transparently, we will talk about what went well, what needed optimization, as well as what we are still struggling with.

Managers and entrepreneurs struggle to envision the future they would do business in a society more characterized by Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity. The VUCA perspective calls for different approaches to tackle societal challenges. Thus, experimentation practices and mindset are needed as capabilities that managers or entrepreneurs should master. The talk aims at sharing how experimentation is a practice of design and how companies and individuals can and should adopt such an approach in their daily activities.

We are at the end of the 1950s. At the trade fair in Milan, there is a lively-eyed gentleman wandering around, a builder of useless machines and a designer of foam rubber toys. He has published some children's books that he initially thought of for his son and designed objects that earned him two Compasso d'Oro awards. At the Rank Xerox stand, one of the first photocopiers is presented. Bruno, our protagonist, approaches and asks the representative for information about how it works and if he can try it out. Seeing the enthusiasm of the future customer, the representative, intrigued, asks, 'Excuse me, Mr. Munari, what are you interested in? Do you have an office?' 'No,' he replies, 'I am an artist.' The rest of the story is history and culminates in an exhibition in Tokyo in 1965. We tell it in this talk, where, among other things, we will reflect on how 'experiment' shares etymology with 'experience' and why I (or we?) secretly get bored of proposing workshops that seem designed like a trip to Disneyland, complete with gadgets and guaranteed fun by contract. If, as a child, you hated producing the drawing for Mother's Day exactly as the teacher wanted it, you are already part of the resistance. Welcome 🙂

Thanks to the power of AI, computing experiences aren’t just becoming smarter - they’re becoming more human-like. Academic and industry research shows that these anthropomorphic AIs elicit emotional connections and expectations from their human users. We humans lean into these connections; we put googly eyes on our Roombas, eyelashes on our car headlights, and even marry our robots. 

‍

Fostering appropriate and ethical emotional connections with AI requires companies to build cultures of careful experimentation. It’s not just as simple as running A/B tests, for three reasons: 1) Tech companies have paid less attention to users’ emotional needs than their cognitive and functional ones, and therefore have less expertise in meeting emotional needs; 2) Users’ emotions vary widely across regional, ethnic, gender, socioeconomic, and other cultures, and experiments are needed to tune AI products to particular contexts, and 3) It’s easier to get emotions wrong than to get them right. 

‍

In this talk, we’ll describe and discuss these issues, talk about how experimentation needs to change in this brave new world of AI-powered experiences, and propose a series of experiments that can guide the development of emotionally appropriate, culturally inclusive AI.

‍

Life is made of choices, but we don’t choose very often. We take the easy path, the default option. We cling to old habits and hardly ever question the status quo. But then, how can we move fast, learn faster, and even thrive in a turbulent world we can hardly understand? Enter PopcornFlow – an anti-fragile philosophy, actionable techniques and tools that leverage ultra-rapid experimentation to fight personal & organizational inertia. In this session, we’ll explore how to exploit uncertainty and innovate like some of the best and most aggressive companies around.

“When you'll die, how old would you rather be? 2 experiments old... or 20 thousand?” – Claudio Perrone