This week I attended Hatch Conference in Berlin, Germany. It was an honor to give the opening keynote, "Design and (Blank)"—a talk sharing my experience leading other departments outside of design and how we might see this become a trend. Long live the generalist. After I delivered the keynote, I was lucky to be one of the attendees to experience the incredible speakers, interesting design topics, and connect with people who visited the conference.

Talk highlights

Designing through the Hype by Rachel Rosenson
Rachel Rosenson is Design Manager of The Studio at Zalando. Her talk focused on how to avoid getting sucked into the hype cycle, a relevant topic in the age of AI. What I appreciated about the talk were clear frameworks to think about how to approach emerging technologies, evaluate the hype, and explore designs:

1. Gather: Gather info on what's coming

2. Digest: Digest through the lens of the hype cycle

3. Focus: Focus on potential business impact

4. Provoke: Provoke positions on possible responses

5. Craft: Craft how the future might look

6. Iterate: Iterate to stay nimble

Rosenson’s talk was one of my favorites from the conference.

Emily Campbell's The Shape of AI
As someone who references Emily's The Shape of AI in my work, I was thrilled to see her speaking at Hatch Conference. AI patterns have not fully formed and it's helped a lot to have a resource of patterns emerging. Emily's talk wasn't focused on the content of her website but on the history of the name Artificial Intelligence in computing and the opportunity to make us more in control through feedback loops.

AI can do the heavy lifting so experiences can be more human-centered. I’ve personally explore this in Dynamic Interfaces, custom abstractions, and AI for neurodiversity¹.

Professor Erik Spiekermann's closing keynote
The closing keynote resonated with me. The iconic German designer talked about craft, specifically how important it is to make with our hands. Touching glass displays doesn't have the same learning effect as doing physical work. As Spiekermann said, "We are atoms, not bits." I found myself nodding my head the entire keynote. As a person who hand writes and sketches out most of their work, I believe these foundational skills are even more important as computation gets more powerful with AI. It was the perfect keynote for the event and location; and inspired me to write additional thoughts on this topic.

ÌníOlúwa Abíódún wrote a few wonderful posts summarizing a few of the talks: The Shape of AI, How UserTesting Does user testing on UserTesting, Design and (Blank), and How Linear Designs for Planners.

Connecting with people

In addition to the great speakers, the attendees are a great way to connect and learn from each other

There's no better experience than a long-time friend tapping you on the shoulder and being delighted when you turn around and realize they're also here. In addition, these gatherings are great opportunities to welcome new people into the community. You also meet your internet friends in real life and realize their actual height. I saw two former team members at One Medical and Black Pixel.

Returning to Berlin

My return to Berlin was dramatically different than Jason Bourne's experience. Like Tokyo and New York, Berlin is a Creative Lazarus Pit to rejuvenate. I love writing in the abundant cafes, wandering the streets looking at street art, or stumbling upon a repurposed building that is now a creative commune.

Recap

Though I limit speaking engagements and conference attendance, I’m so glad to be a part of Hatch Conference. It was an honor to be a part of the experience. Thank you to Damián Martone, Clemence de Robert, and the Hatch team for organizing and hosting a great event. It's a lot of work and they pulled it off. If you’re interested in attending in the future, visit www.hatchconference.com to stay updated.

Hyperlinks + notes

A collection of references for this post, updates, and weekly reads.

• The Shape of AI

• Congrats to Replit on launching the Replit Agent

• Alternatives to using pure black (#000) for text and backgrounds (The hill I’ll die on)