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Stéphan Willemse

Stéphan Willemse

Strategy Director
,
Digital Arts Network
Te-Whanganui-a-Tara, Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand
Bio

Stéphan uses creativity, design and strategy to help organisations innovate towards positive, progressive futures. He works across innovation, experience design, emerging technologies, cultural intelligence and futures projects with clients including Starbucks, ANZ, Countdown, TradeMe and the public sector. He holds degrees in PPE, Development Studies, Education and an Executive MBA. However, he doesn’t like wearing a suit and his idea of the perfect board meeting is at a quiet surf break. He thinks ideas are powerful and that his young twins ask the best questions about the world we live in.

Upcoming Talks and Workshops

HCD IS DEAD, LONG LIVE HCD

There is a strong backlash about the perceived failures of Human Centred Design (HCD) and its contribution to contemporary macro problems. There seems to be a straightforward connection: HCD and Design Thinking have been adopted by organisations and are increasingly a part of product/experience development, especially in big tech. But the full picture is more complex than that and HCD really does have some issues.

In this talk we cover a little history to show where HCD came from and discuss the current context of use. But mostly we present a future of post-HCD. What is it? How is it different from today? We look at being post-human and a move away from anthropocentrism. Then we turn to post-centred and reconnect with systems thinking and assemblage theory. Finally, we question the very term ‘design’ and ask what post-design is required to be.

Past Talks and Workshops

HCD IS DEAD, LONG LIVE HCD

Ethics
Futurism
2023
 

If we asked you to hand us a design to ruthlessly critique, would you do it? Designers are experts at pulling information and inspiration from everywhere, but our outputs are often created in isolation. At Hatch, we turned the traditional design approach on its head and created a culture that embodied the behaviours we were asking of investors. By embracing vulnerability, mistakes and asking for help, we delivered outputs (and outcomes) that had an outsized impact on our customer’s lives. We call it radical collaboration - it’s often confronting, sometimes scary, but also the only way any of us ever want to work again. Join us to learn what it is, why you should get radical, and the simple ways to start now.