With this talk, we'll talk about climate change, consumerism, and waste. We'll talk about degrowth and unlearning decades of harmful production, development and processes, and about how consumerism will need to change in order, honestly, for the planet to survive. We'll show some practical examples of work that already has been done, and open the discussion about what we as designers can do to make sustainable changes for the better and create fundamental, systemic change. Angelos Arnis, the closing keynote for UX Copenhagen 2023 stated very bluntly “There is no planet B”. For far too long, we have been living in a world that applauds and encourages continuous growth, expansion, selling, and manipulation. It’s a world of over production and over consumption, but we’re running out of resources. Business as usual will not cut it anymore. It’s now that we have to start mobilizing change, and we need to do it fast!

The theme for 2023 was “Invisibility”. Our idea with the theme was to showcase how good design - and great usability - often are “invisible”, being easy to use, intuitive, and if possible, without much of a learning curve. Anyone working in the field knows that this is easier said than done. The conference also included talks about design leadership, DEI, and even climate change, however with this talk, we’d like to discuss what it takes, in our experience, to create a usable product or service; how we have biases among ourselves, and how we can pinpoint unintended consequences; the hidden ways in which certain parts of the population are systematically overlooked and excluded from the world we live in, highlighting racism, ageism, and gender - and opening a discussion on how to prevent this. We will also touch upon accessibility, and show examples of how sometimes, designs that are essential for some, often also end up being important for everyone else.