Ariel Sim
Biography
Ariel Sim
Ariel is the Director of Design Anthropology at MaRS Discovery District, where she is setting up a design and user research function focused on long-term foresight and urban innovation. We want to make the future of cities awesome, for everyone.
Ariel applies consumer-design techniques for the adoption of sustainable products and services. She coaches emerging designers and empowers them to create and engage consumers with ethical technology. Ariel started her career as an anthropologist, co-designing environmentally sustainable homes and schools, and later moved into consumer design for digital technologies.
Keynote Topic
Behavioural Design for Technology Adoption
The mass adoption of new technology often relies on behavioural change to be successful — an obstacle that can be difficult to overcome. Whether it’s adopting team management software to increase efficiency or transitioning to a centralized database system, Ariel will explain how the application of behavioural coaching is critical in encouraging users to try something new and develop new habits.
How might we future proof user experience?
If the user experience is on a mission to perfect functional and incremental design, design anthropology is on a mission to illuminate the social transformations that come from large-scale changes to technology and systems. We will start by exploring a theory of social change that challenges us to broaden our view of design from tomorrow’s innovations to the 20-50 year view of how our designs reshape our behaviours and rules of engagement. We’ll then deep dive into the responsibility of designers, the transdisciplinary nature of modern design, and we will play with some scenarios of possible futures.
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