Every other day a headline screams „AI is eating the digital world“, but Kim is tired of the noise. Together with the UX experts from Schwarz Digits and Centigrade, he wants to bridge the gap between academia and real-world business to debunk common myths. In their talk, they combine insights from digital design research with first-hand industry experience to show what it takes to be AI-ready.
Let’s be honest: nobody knows exactly where this transformation is heading. But we can already see a pattern: teams are merely patching up old workflows with AI features instead of fundamentally redesigning them. True efficiency happens though when we rethink and remodel our processes from the ground up. That’s why it usually starts with a change in mindset and a bias for action. Two shifts are important. First, speed: when AI makes a team much faster, the whole organization has to absorb that pace: responsibilities, decisions, and downstream teams included. Otherwise you’ve just moved the bottleneck. Second, legibility: AI can only draw on your organization’s knowledge if your concepts, designs, and code
are readable, by humans and machines.
Spoiler: your mindset is key – and sometimes that’s even more complex than the technology itself.
Senior UX Professional at Schwarz Digits.
Till Köhler works as a Senior UX Professional at Schwarz Digits, where he leads UX projects and strategic initiatives. A communication designer and design manager by training, he uses his ten-plus years of experience to connect design, technology, and strategy. He is an advocate for a holistic approach to design, viewing it not merely as an aesthetic tool, but as a core methodology that integrates effectively into an organization’s structures.
Interim Professor at FH Dortmund & Char at IREB.
Kim Lauenroth has shaped how digital products get built since 2011 – a decade at adesso SE leading its Requirements Engineering competence center and working as chief digital designer on large-scale insurance, healthcare and public sector projects, then since 2022 as Interim Professor of Digital Design at FH Dortmund, exploring how AI is reshaping design and engineering. Since 2016 he has chaired IREB, building certification programmes that bridge developers and stakeholders, and he also chairs Bitkom’s Software Steering Committee. He holds a PhD in Requirements Engineering from the University of Duisburg-Essen, having studied Computer Science, Business Administration and Psychology – a combination that still shapes his approach to design.
Founder & CEO at Centigrade.
Thomas Immich is the founder and CEO of Centigrade, one of Germany’s leading providers of human-centered solutions. With over 20 years of experience in digital experience design, user requirements engineering, and agile software development, he has trained hundreds of IT professionals. As co-founder of LeanScope AI, a technology platform for human-centered decision making, he enables both corporations and start-ups to accelerate their digital transformation through AI-powered automation in ResearchOps, DesignOps, and MarketingOps.
