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Design

Watch “Embracing complexity” with Sami Niemelä

The craft of interaction design is entering a new golden age where we instead of pixels look into things such into futures, strategy, organisations and capability development. This new age requires new tools and approaches, and paradoxically, letting go and embracing complexity.

The world is an increasingly chaotic, messy and complex place. As the climate crisis looms above our heads, technologic dystopias run amok in our minds. For design and designers, this is an opportunity that quite literally can’t be missed. By embracing complexity through new materials such as futures, systems thinking, organizational design and developing capabilities we can have the impact the world needs right now. 

In this talk at IxDA’s Interaction’20, Sami Niemelä shares about stories, rituals and anticipatory systems that make this possible. He believes we’re yet to unleash the true vision of the internet but in order to do so, the inevitability of technology requires a counterforce that is design – understanding humans, responsible experimentation and ethics all boiled into one. He also shares tools and ideas he uses such as the Actionable Futures Toolkit that will get you started on aligning and rallying a group of human beings around a unified cause — and a purpose.

Embracing Complexity

About Sami Niemelä

Sami Niemelä is a design leader working at the intersection of systems, foresight and design. What he does daily is help teams, products and companies to become more resilient by making the right choices about their futures and business, and build teams, capabilities and organisations to support this in quest long term.

During over 20 years in the industry, he has worked on several continents, earning international patents, numerous awards and built exits to the largest companies in the world. He has organised and spoken at numerous industry events ranging from co-chairing Interaction 16 in Helsinki to local meet-ups (IxDA Helsinki) to being invited to speak at at Google in San Francisco. 

Currently, he is one of the founders and the creative director at Nordkapp, a strategic design and innovation consultancy based in Helsinki and Amsterdam, and working globally. They partner & thrive together with progressive companies to boost their business impact by creating better futures, experiences and new ways of working. It’s what they call futures thinking, doing and learning. He is also an exhibited artist exploring the human potential in generative networks and machine learning.

Source: Interaction 20 – Embracing complexity

By Itamar Medeiros

Originally from Brazil, Itamar Medeiros currently lives in Germany, where he works as VP of Design Strategy at SAP, where he leads the design vision for the entire Human Capital Management product line, ensuring cohesive product narratives and establishing best practices.

Working in the Information Technology industry since 1998, Itamar has helped truly global companies in multiple continents create great user experience through advocating Design and Innovation principles. Itamar has also served as a juror for prestigious design competitions and lectured on design topics at universities worldwide.

During his 7 years in China, he promoted the User Experience Design discipline as User Experience Manager at Autodesk and Local Coordinator of the Interaction Design Association (IxDA) in Shanghai.

Itamar holds a MA in Design Practice from Northumbria University (Newcastle, UK), for which he received a Distinction Award for his thesis Creating Innovative Design Software Solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments.