Why UX design matters - and how you can make an impact

Design talk

What will I learn?

A UX designer helps to improve the online customer experience, but what if we told you it's so much more than that? In this session, you will meet Elinor, a Senior UX Designer at BrightAct, a company who helps to address and stop domestic violence. You will find out more about BrightAct during this session, along with why UX design matters – and why it's so much more than just design. What do you need to think of with these impactful businesses, and how does it differ from other products?

About Elinor

Elinor Samuelsson is a tech entrepreneur and Senior UX Designer from Sweden. Elinor started her first company, The Kokon, in New York City in 2016. The Kokon was a stress resilience pod for the office, using multi-sensory design to entrain brainwaves. Later, Elinor joined an Innovation Lab in Sweden to focus on reducing chronic mental illness. Here, Elinor led the prototyping of an education platform and created nine indicators for preventative mental health, based on the needs of teenagers. After realising that mental illnesses often stem from trauma, Elinor founded BrightAct in 2020 as a global safety net to help those who are dealing with domestic violence. Alongside being a hackathon ninja at night with BrightAct, by day Elinor worked as a project manager for a national innovation project in the public sector, working to train leaders from 13 municipalities in innovation strategy. Today, Elinor takes on the role of Product Lead at BrightAct, focusing on user-driven innovation and systems design. For her work with BrightAct, she was nominated "Rising Star of the Year" at the Nordic Women in Tech Awards, "Digital Inspiration" by IDG, and "Young Idea of the Year" by Företagarna. Elinor has worked with brands such as WeWork, Lululemon, Singularity University, Museum of Modern Arts NYC, Accenture, and Typeform. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, Fast Company, and Business Insider. Elinor graduated with double honours from Parsons The New School of Design in 2013.