Becoming the Change You Resist

Designers are trained to lead change. We’re usually the first to experiment with new methods and tools. But recently, the change happening to us feels like the one we weren’t prepared for. New technology is challenging the instincts, craft and identity we’ve spent years building. And the message that keeps echoing back is the same: Adapt. Faster. Now.

This talk goes somewhere many of us don’t like to admit: the discomfort of change and the resistance to it. The strange grief of skills that used to define you becoming optional.

Drawing from personal experience shipping products across large organisations, this talk offers something specific: a way of thinking about what to hold, what to let go, what to push back on without losing the clarity that makes your work worth having and how to hold on to craft in a system that only sees output.