Featured Speaker

GENERATION NUX – The Next User Experience and Creative Leadership

Anne Stenros, VP Design, KONE

In many ways, we are living today in a "VUCA" environment, meaning volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous conditions, in which things are unpredictable and under constant change. Navigating in the world of the "Generation Flux" (describing the chaotic business era) needs visionary actions and forward-looking attitude as well as good insight into the direction forward. If the "leading light" is missing, it will be impossible to find the way. In order to navigate, we should have an understanding of the nature of the changes and a clear insight of the preferred future. In this kind of constantly-changing environment, design leadership is entering a new level of importance.

Based on this kind of future forecast it is important to see the new challenges and possibilities in design leadership and design competences. Design research, like futures studies and trend research, will become an important strategy both in design and innovation in the future. R&D lead time must be shortened, therefore we will need new methods and tools—such as research by design and design-based prototyping—in order to compete with emerging market innovation. We will also need stronger capabilities in cutting-edge design, science, technology, and industry. Particularly in humanizing technology, interactive, adaptive, elastic and intuitive designs will be the key characteristics of tomorrow. In future breakthrough innovations, we will increasingly see merging physical with digital, and products with services, and therefore we will need the understanding of service science and complex systems.

The emerging new type of user experience, UX 2—with the characteristics of the do-it-yourself spirit and social production—will reframe the role of the designer and user-driven design practice. We will also need knowledge of the holistic user experience and the user experience for all senses. The future of brand design is related to an "omni-channel" approach, which means keeping design and experience consistent throughout different channels, media and platforms (physical, digital, personal, and social). We will see more and more emotional engagement and empowerment with brands; design leadership of tomorrow will be about thinking deeply about the brand personality and ethos and creating a unique design story beyond the products. And finally, design cannot solely rely on customer focus groups and customer surveys; when asked where state-of-the-art design comes from, 48% of executives said that it comes from "visionary thinkers."

"Creative leaders shape the system around them, thinking outside the building, not just outside the box."
—Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Professor of Business Admininstration, Harvard Business School

Biography: Anne Stenros

Anne Stenros (Helsinki, Finland) graduated with a Master of Architecture from University of Oulu, Finland, and University of California, Berkeley. She has a doctorate in technology in the field of architectural theory from Helsinki University of Technology. From 1995 to 2004 she acted as a Managing Director of Design Forum Finland. In 2005, she acted as Executive Director of Hong Kong Design Centre. Currently, she is Design Director of KONE Corporation and responsible for KONE Design, elevators and escalators. She has lectured around the world and written articles on the theory and philosophy of architecture, design and innovation. Her latest book, Design Evolution (2005) is about corporate design strategy.

KONE is one of the global leaders in the elevator and escalator industry. The company has been committed to understanding the needs of its customers for the past century, providing industry-leading elevators, escalators and automatic building doors as well as innovative solutions for modernization and maintenance. KONE’s objective is to offer the best People Flow experience by developing and delivering solutions that enable people to move smoothly, safely, comfortably and without waiting in buildings in an increasingly urbanizing environment. In 2010, KONE had annual net sales of €5 billion and approximately 33,800 employees. KONE class B shares are listed on the NASDAQ OMX Helsinki Ltd. in Finland.

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