The world is an increasingly chaotic, messy and complex place. As the climate crisis looms above our heads, technologic dystopias run amok in our minds. For design and designers, this is an opportunity that quite literally can’t be missed. By embracing complexity through new materials such as futures, systems thinking, organizational design and developing capabilities we can have the impact the world needs right now.
In this talk at IxDA’s Interaction’20, Sami Niemelä shares about stories, rituals and anticipatory systems that make this possible. He believes we’re yet to unleash the true vision of the internet but in order to do so, the inevitability of technology requires a counterforce that is design – understanding humans, responsible experimentation and ethics all boiled into one. He also shares tools and ideas he uses such as the Actionable Futures Toolkit that will get you started on aligning and rallying a group of human beings around a unified cause — and a purpose.
Embracing Complexity
About Sami Niemelä
Sami Niemelä is a design leader working at the intersection of systems, foresight and design. What he does daily is help teams, products and companies to become more resilient by making the right choices about their futures and business, and build teams, capabilities and organisations to support this in quest long term.
During over 20 years in the industry, he has worked on several continents, earning international patents, numerous awards and built exits to the largest companies in the world. He has organised and spoken at numerous industry events ranging from co-chairing Interaction 16 in Helsinki to local meet-ups (IxDA Helsinki) to being invited to speak at at Google in San Francisco.
Currently, he is one of the founders and the creative director at Nordkapp, a strategic design and innovation consultancy based in Helsinki and Amsterdam, and working globally. They partner & thrive together with progressive companies to boost their business impact by creating better futures, experiences and new ways of working. It’s what they call futures thinking, doing and learning. He is also an exhibited artist exploring the human potential in generative networks and machine learning.
