BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//Web Directions//AI by Design Melbourne 2026//EN CALSCALE:GREGORIAN METHOD:PUBLISH X-WR-CALNAME:AI by Design Melbourne 2026 X-WR-CALDESC:AI by Design Melbourne 2026 — 2026-06-03 to 2026-06-03\, Melbourne\, Australia X-WR-TIMEZONE:Australia/Melbourne BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:Australia/Melbourne BEGIN:STANDARD DTSTART:19700405T030000 TZOFFSETFROM:+1100 TZOFFSETTO:+1000 TZNAME:AEST RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=4;BYDAY=1SU END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT DTSTART:19701004T020000 TZOFFSETFROM:+1000 TZOFFSETTO:+1100 TZNAME:AEDT RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=10;BYDAY=1SU END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT UID:16b52088-ce0e-4392-982c-ec785a29a7b3@ai-x-design DTSTAMP:20260602T093942Z DTSTART;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20260603T080000 DTEND;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20260603T090000 SUMMARY:Registration DESCRIPTION:Register from 8.30\, grab a coffee\, connect with fellow attend ees\, and get ready for a fantastic day.\n\nhttps://data.webdirections.org /aixdesign/sessions.json#16b52088-ce0e-4392-982c-ec785a29a7b3 LOCATION:Novotel on Collins URL:https://webdirections.org/aixdesign/ END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT UID:28613e93-0bb5-41bb-89bb-9f11eeae910a@ai-x-design DTSTAMP:20260602T093942Z DTSTART;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20260603T090000 DTEND;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20260603T091000 SUMMARY:Welcome DESCRIPTION:Speakers: Steve Baty (UX Australia)\n\nSteve Baty\, your MC for the day gets the day started.\n\nhttps://data.webdirections.org/aixdesign /sessions.json#28613e93-0bb5-41bb-89bb-9f11eeae910a LOCATION:Novotel on Collins URL:https://webdirections.org/aixdesign/ END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT UID:e66a3c37-8305-4b81-bc74-2487673da05c@ai-x-design DTSTAMP:20260602T093942Z DTSTART;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20260603T091000 DTEND;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20260603T095000 SUMMARY:Most AI Products Aren't Very Good (Yet) DESCRIPTION:Speakers: Amanda Baughan (Maincode)\n\nTrack: AI x design\n\nLe t’s be honest. Most of them aren’t that good. They work\, but they don’t h old up. They’re usable\, but not especially useful. AI has massively scale d our ability to produce output\, but it hasn’t scaled the taste that diff erentiates great products from average ones.\n\nDrawing on experience buil ding and designing AI systems\, I argue that taste is not a soft skill but a critical one. It is a muscle built when curiosity meets discernment\, a nd exercised through decision-making. As making becomes easier\, the chall enge shifts to deciding what is good\, what matters\, and what should exis t at all.\n\nhttps://data.webdirections.org/aixdesign/sessions.json#e66a3c 37-8305-4b81-bc74-2487673da05c LOCATION:Novotel on Collins CATEGORIES:AI x design URL:https://webdirections.org/aixdesign/ END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT UID:5987da0c-44f5-4b4c-9c35-ed0437ae2c43@ai-x-design DTSTAMP:20260602T093942Z DTSTART;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20260603T095500 DTEND;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20260603T102000 SUMMARY:Tell AI to build a ‘Faster Horse’: Why reframing is the last human advantage DESCRIPTION:Speakers: Stefi Peykova Krishnan (NSW Health)\n\nTrack: AI x de sign\n\nAI is exceptional at optimisation. Give it a goal and it will refi ne\, accelerate\, and automate within that frame. It will generate better outputs\, faster workflows\, cleaner systems.\nBut it cannot decide that t he question itself is wrong.\n\nThat's not a limitation of the technology. That's design's opening.\nThe strategic value of design has never been ex ecution. It's the power of reframing ... dissolving inherited assumptions and asking what actually needs to exist. In the AI era\, this difference b ecomes critical. As optimisation becomes abundant in an era of intelligent systems\, the most valuable design capability may be the disciplined cour age to ask a different question.\n\nAI will give you better horses indefin itely. \nYour job is to ask why we're still in the stable.\n\nhttps://data .webdirections.org/aixdesign/sessions.json#5987da0c-44f5-4b4c-9c35-ed0437a e2c43 LOCATION:Novotel on Collins CATEGORIES:AI x design URL:https://webdirections.org/aixdesign/ END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT UID:2abd1c8f-3dbd-47d9-8f3e-9d29d54209b5@ai-x-design DTSTAMP:20260602T093942Z DTSTART;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20260603T102500 DTEND;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20260603T105000 SUMMARY:Real-World Vibe Prototyping at Google Maps DESCRIPTION:Speakers: Sam Keene (Google Maps)\n\nTrack: AI x design\n\nFor many designers\, "vibe coding" sits in an uncomfortable gap. We see the hy pe\, but the reality often feels like a parlour trick: great for messy exp erimentation\, but unreliable for professional work. It challenges everyth ing we’ve learned about pixel perfection\, forcing us into a new\, non-det erministic medium where we must "guide" rather than "draw."\n\nAt Google M aps\, we have moved past this disillusionment by treating AI prototyping n ot as a magic wand\, but as a rigorous design discipline. By reviving foun dational patterns from computer science and creative coding—such as state machines\, parametric design\, and recursion—we are moving from generating raw code to intentionally designing behaviour.\n\nThis session takes you inside the Google Maps UX pipeline to show how we integrate vibe prototypi ng into workflows that serve billions. We will explore how we use scrappy\ , AI-driven prototypes to validate the "feel" of dynamic interfaces and co mplex user flows long before engineering handover. You will leave with a p ractical framework for professionalizing your own AI prototypes\, turning the unpredictable messiness of LLMs into scalable\, human-centered experie nces.\n\nhttps://data.webdirections.org/aixdesign/sessions.json#2abd1c8f-3 dbd-47d9-8f3e-9d29d54209b5 LOCATION:Novotel on Collins CATEGORIES:AI x design URL:https://webdirections.org/aixdesign/ END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT UID:b01741ac-29ce-4dfc-95c3-7f614f295112@ai-x-design DTSTAMP:20260602T093942Z DTSTART;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20260603T110000 DTEND;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20260603T120000 SUMMARY:Lunch DESCRIPTION:Join your fellow attendees and speakers for a bite to eat\, cof fee and great conversation.\n\nhttps://data.webdirections.org/aixdesign/se ssions.json#b01741ac-29ce-4dfc-95c3-7f614f295112 LOCATION:Novotel on Collins URL:https://webdirections.org/aixdesign/ END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT UID:a5eb63ef-5d7d-45f6-ad30-2ca97fdf5392@ai-x-design DTSTAMP:20260602T093942Z DTSTART;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20260603T120000 DTEND;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20260603T122500 SUMMARY:Personas You Can Talk To: Turning Research Into Persona Agents DESCRIPTION:Speakers: Boris Divjak (ANZ)\n\nTrack: AI x design\n\nPersonas  are traditionally static artefacts: a poster\, a slide\, a section in a re port. They can be useful\, but easy to ignore once the project moves on. P ersona agents change that relationship by turning a persona into an intera ctive interface\; you can ask the persona questions\, follow up to dive in to details\, and retrieve insight conversationally rather than hunting thr ough repositories. In this session I’ll show how persona agents can make r esearch more present in everyday design work\, and what becomes newly poss ible when teams can interact with a persona as dialogue rather than docume ntation. \n\nI will share practical lessons from building AI persona agent s grounded in anonymised qualitative research. I will show how to improve their usefulness through curated verbatims\, a coherent persona narrative and instructions that ground responses in evidence. You’ll leave with a li ghtweight blueprint you can adapt: a simple researchtoagent pipeline\, pro mpt patterns that encourage sensible grounding\, and an ethical framing th at will help you position persona agents for adoption in your organisation as a way to democratise research\, rather than a replacement for ongoing discovery.\n\nhttps://data.webdirections.org/aixdesign/sessions.json#a5eb6 3ef-5d7d-45f6-ad30-2ca97fdf5392 LOCATION:Novotel on Collins CATEGORIES:AI x design URL:https://webdirections.org/aixdesign/ END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT UID:ed30e6dc-9334-441d-8f6e-bacb544c555d@ai-x-design DTSTAMP:20260602T093942Z DTSTART;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20260603T123000 DTEND;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20260603T125500 SUMMARY:Dispatches from the frontline: building AI with AI at Atlassian DESCRIPTION:Speakers: Milly Schmidt (Atlassian)\n\nTrack: AI x design\n\nAt lassian is rapidly pivoting into an AI-forward strategy\, both in our feat ures and our tools. I'm not going to get on stage and tell you AI is a mag ic technology that can do anything and everything\; instead\, I'll share s ome of the lessons already learned as we have gone down this road —not jus t about the technology itself\, but also about how our customers are think ing about it\, how you can upskill designers at scale and how to reconcile the problematic parts with the potential for real transformative value.\n \nhttps://data.webdirections.org/aixdesign/sessions.json#ed30e6dc-9334-441 d-8f6e-bacb544c555d LOCATION:Novotel on Collins CATEGORIES:AI x design URL:https://webdirections.org/aixdesign/ END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT UID:e2a5121b-f845-4e41-b6ab-72938f6ea716@ai-x-design DTSTAMP:20260602T093942Z DTSTART;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20260603T130000 DTEND;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20260603T132500 SUMMARY:Why Designers Are Accidentally Breaking Customers' Trust in AI DESCRIPTION:Speakers: Riley Coleman (AI Flywheel)\n\nTrack: AI x design\n\n For thirty years\, we've been designing one-way USER experiences. Now we a re designing two-way Human+AI experiences. We had established principles w e designed 1 user experiences with - consistency\, hierarchy and removing friction. We got very good at it. And now\, quietly\, that mastery may be the most dangerous thing we bring to AI design. Because friction\, it tur ns out\, is precisely how humans calibrate trust. That moment of slight re sistance before accepting a recommendation. The pause that lets a person f eel they have agency. The explanation that slows things down but makes the m feel seen. We've been trained our entire careers to sand those moments a way when the experience is based on consistency\, but doing so\, we'll be building AI experiences that feel effortless\, but remove users agency and but cannot be trusted. \n\nThis talk began not with research\, but with r egret\; recognising my own work in a case study of AI harm during an ethic s lecture at the London School of Economics. That discomfort became two ye ars of asking other designers whether they recognised it too. Most did. Dr awing on 240 interviews and eight frameworks built from that listening\, t his session invites designers to examine the most confronting possibility in their current practice.\n\nhttps://data.webdirections.org/aixdesign/ses sions.json#e2a5121b-f845-4e41-b6ab-72938f6ea716 LOCATION:Novotel on Collins CATEGORIES:AI x design URL:https://webdirections.org/aixdesign/ END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT UID:541ec9b5-5c68-4d73-be87-cacb2a8762ba@ai-x-design DTSTAMP:20260602T093942Z DTSTART;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20260603T133000 DTEND;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20260603T135500 SUMMARY:Fast ≠ good DESCRIPTION:Speakers: Michel Ferreira (Figma)\n\nTrack: AI x design\n\nEver yone in design right now is being sold the same vision: generate faster\, explore more\, ship sooner. And the tools genuinely deliver on that. But s omewhere in the rush\, a quieter question is getting lost — are we buildin g the right thing? For the right person? And does anyone actually own that answer?\n\nThis presentation takes an unexpected route to that question. It brings together a group of designers\, thinkers and builders who never wrote a prompt\, never ran a sprint\, never opened Figma — and makes the c ase that they already solved for this moment. Through Dieter Rams on the d anger of endless addition\, Ray Eames on what 'working good' really means\ , and a 1979 IBM training slide that reads like it was written last week\, fast ≠ good argues that the principles that made great design great haven 't changed — they've just become more urgent. Come for the dead designers. Leave with three things you can use on Monday.\n\nhttps://data.webdirecti ons.org/aixdesign/sessions.json#541ec9b5-5c68-4d73-be87-cacb2a8762ba LOCATION:Novotel on Collins CATEGORIES:AI x design URL:https://webdirections.org/aixdesign/ END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT UID:484cff26-7d0e-4c6b-9ca3-c5e343718b22@ai-x-design DTSTAMP:20260602T093942Z DTSTART;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20260603T140000 DTEND;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20260603T150000 SUMMARY:Afternoon break DESCRIPTION:Recharge before the final session with great food\, coffee\, an d more.\n\nhttps://data.webdirections.org/aixdesign/sessions.json#484cff26 -7d0e-4c6b-9ca3-c5e343718b22 LOCATION:Novotel on Collins URL:https://webdirections.org/aixdesign/ END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT UID:620478a9-3e53-4687-80ad-43dfe915c9a9@ai-x-design DTSTAMP:20260602T093942Z DTSTART;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20260603T150000 DTEND;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20260603T152500 SUMMARY:Designing AI Experiences for High Stakes Industries DESCRIPTION:Speakers: Alex McMahon (LMG)\n\nTrack: AI x design\n\nAI experi ences can look flawless in a prototype. The real risk starts after you shi p the feature\, when real users\, facing real consequences\, start pushing your model into use cases you didn’t plan for. This session draws on dire ct experience designing AI assistants for Australia's financial services s ector to explore how to design for accuracy\, accountability\, and the ine vitable moments when the model gets it wrong.\n\nYou'll leave with 3 actio nable frameworks: how to design human in the loop checkpoints that keep us ers genuinely in control without killing productivity\; how to build a des ign pattern language for AI behaviour\, covering how AI acts differently f rom deterministic systems and what that means for the patterns you design around it\; and how to build a research practice that tests the model befo re it tests your users\, covering accuracy\, edge case simulation\, and ho w to know when it's ready for real users.\n\nhttps://data.webdirections.or g/aixdesign/sessions.json#620478a9-3e53-4687-80ad-43dfe915c9a9 LOCATION:Novotel on Collins CATEGORIES:AI x design URL:https://webdirections.org/aixdesign/ END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT UID:389b6e46-51f4-4670-b57e-a99a8de3f0ff@ai-x-design DTSTAMP:20260602T093942Z DTSTART;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20260603T153000 DTEND;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20260603T155500 SUMMARY:Accessibility walked so AI could crawl DESCRIPTION:Speakers: Tori Sanderson (Avian)\n\nTrack: AI x design\n\nAI se arch\, LLM retrieval\, and automated agents all consume your content the s ame way assistive technology does — by reading structure\, not pixels. The y don't see your hero image. They don't care about your animation. They pa rse your headings\, your alt text\, your semantic markup\, and your metada ta. And if those things are missing or broken\, the model builds an incomp lete picture of your brand — and serves that incomplete picture to million s of people.\nWhich means somewhere in your organisation right now\, someo ne is writing a six-figure "AI-readiness strategy" that recommends clean m arkup\, logical heading hierarchy\, structured content\, and real text alt ernatives. Your accessibility team has been asking for the same things sin ce 2019. They were told it wasn't a priority.\nThis is the AI strategy you r accessibility team already wrote. They just didn't have the budget line to prove it.\nTori has spent years building content architecture for Austr alian Government digital services — environments where accessibility isn't optional and where a missing heading level means real people can't access critical information. This talk takes that experience and reframes it for the AI moment: what actually matters in your structure\, what's just thea tre\, and how to finally get accessibility funded by walking into the budg et meeting and pointing at the AI line item.\nThis is not a talk about add ing AI features. It's about recognising that the most effective AI strateg y most organisations can adopt is finishing the accessibility work they qu ietly shelved three years ago.\n\nTakeaways\n\nA dual-audience audit frame work you can run against your own products on Monday\nWhy the most impactf ul "AI optimisation" is boring\, structural\, and already in WCAG\nHow to hijack the AI-readiness budget for the accessibility work that actually ne eded doing\n\nhttps://data.webdirections.org/aixdesign/sessions.json#389b6 e46-51f4-4670-b57e-a99a8de3f0ff LOCATION:Novotel on Collins CATEGORIES:AI x design URL:https://webdirections.org/aixdesign/ END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT UID:4bcc3886-864b-4e1c-a912-a3a767e677ee@ai-x-design DTSTAMP:20260602T093942Z DTSTART;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20260603T160000 DTEND;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20260603T162500 SUMMARY:Humans in the Loop…But Where? Lessons from AI in Education\, Retail \, Financial Services\, Utilities\, Government\, and Health DESCRIPTION:Speakers: Melissa Voderberg (Publicis Sapient)\n\nTrack: AI x d esign\n\nAs AI becomes embedded in decision-making\, design\, service deli very and operations\, the question is no longer simply whether humans rema in ’in the loop’\, but which loops genuinely require human judgement\, emp athy and accountability. Building on ideas first explored by Walter Benjam in in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction\, this session explores how technology reshapes human agency\, how mediation between peo ple and intelligent systems evolves\, and where the tension between automa tion and perception becomes most critical. What is uniquely human at work today and how do organisations ensure those capabilities are preserved whe re they matter most?\n\nDrawing on practical AI case studies across educat ion\, retail\, financial services\, utilities\, government\, and health\, this talk contrasts scenarios where human–AI collaboration delivers measur able value with those where misplaced automation introduces risk\, bias\, or diminished customer experience. These examples highlight alternative fu tures\, emerging governance patterns\, and pragmatic frameworks for decidi ng where humans should lead\, guide or simply oversee AI systems. Attendee s will leave with grounded insights\, transferable lessons and tangible si gnals for recognising when humans are positioned in the right loops\, and when they are not.\n\nhttps://data.webdirections.org/aixdesign/sessions.js on#4bcc3886-864b-4e1c-a912-a3a767e677ee LOCATION:Novotel on Collins CATEGORIES:AI x design URL:https://webdirections.org/aixdesign/ END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT UID:0fd072ed-7d6f-424d-b42a-5b0fffd0363b@ai-x-design DTSTAMP:20260602T093942Z DTSTART;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20260603T163000 DTEND;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20260603T170000 SUMMARY:Beyond Algorithms: Trust and Culture in the Age of AI DESCRIPTION:Speakers: Hilary Cinis (Salesforce)\n\nTrack: AI x design\n\nWh ile technology choices are critical\, culture is an invisible force that h olds power over the success or failure of AI integration. This session mov es beyond the technology and solutions to explore how organisational cultu re affects AI safety\, trust and ultimately adoption. We will examine the role of HCD\, systems thinking and ethics in designing for AI and agent au gmented futures. Join us for a session designed to sharpen the questions y ou might ask of your leaders\, ensuring your organization’s AI journey is both innovative and accountable.\n\nhttps://data.webdirections.org/aixdesi gn/sessions.json#0fd072ed-7d6f-424d-b42a-5b0fffd0363b LOCATION:Novotel on Collins CATEGORIES:AI x design URL:https://webdirections.org/aixdesign/ END:VEVENT BEGIN:VEVENT UID:2197c8b6-24a9-4175-8279-cbe18c226a9e@ai-x-design DTSTAMP:20260602T093942Z DTSTART;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20260603T170000 DTEND;TZID=Australia/Melbourne:20260603T183000 SUMMARY:Happy hour DESCRIPTION:Join fellow attendees and speakers For our happy hour (and a ha lf) right here at the Novotel.\n\nhttps://data.webdirections.org/aixdesign /sessions.json#2197c8b6-24a9-4175-8279-cbe18c226a9e LOCATION:Novotel on Collins URL:https://webdirections.org/aixdesign/ END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR