Design by default – how societies are created by intentional and unintentional designers

When we think about designing a society, we can easily associate that responsibility with the roles of designers, architects, engineers, urban planners or other ‘design professionals’ – let’s call them intentional designers. But, looking through history, we can see that societies are more complex and organic than expected. As a result, they can be defined by both intentional and unintentional design.

Non-designers have always played a key role in inspiring intentional design, shaping how intentional design has been adopted or even mainstreamed. Today, technology increasingly democratizes design and empowers non-designers to use tools such as AI to design. But what will be the consequences of that? How will society look in the future if every CEO can create their own product? Or what will happen if every Product Manager can code their own App?
In this talk, we’ll examine some examples of how designers and non-designers made significant decisions that impacted modern society and how design professionals can engage with the masses to bridge the gap between intentional and unintentional design.

About Adilice

With a background in architecture, research and digital products, Adilice is a customer advocate on a mission to help companies develop meaningful solutions through insights-driven strategies. You can currently find her at Pleo – a Danish fintech unicorn – working within the product organisation to grow their understanding of customers’ needs and help them identify new business opportunities. Her previous experience includes consultant and product owner roles, but they can still be summarised as customer-centric product development. An unconventional career path that has led her to leverage experimentation in everything she does while keeping people and context at heart.