#47 | Bilgi Karan | Driving future hybrid design experiences

Bilgi Karan

In episode 47 I had the absolute pleasure to catch up and learn again from Bilgi Karan.

Bilgi Karan is UX Manager at Inter IKEA Group - working on Smart Home experiences.

Hybrid design approach.

Bilgi has a strong background in designing hybrid experiences, uniting interaction and industrial design aspects, Before his role at IKEA, he worked as a Principal UX Designer at Above in Sweden, at TEAGUE in Seattle and Sony in Sweden, and graduated from Umea Institute of Design in Sweden. He shaped iconic design strategies like the Sony Walkman or Sony XPERIA.

UX Strategy informs Industrial Design Strategy.

During the episode, we explore the intersection of Interaction and Industrial Design: why you need to think about future digital interactions to inform strategic industrial design.

Further, we touch on what design areas are key contributors in designing connected smart home experiences and what excites him about the space.

Habits vs “Newness”

One of the key challenges when designing anything innovative is how to drive user adoption and create nudges to create a positive human behaviour change? In the episode we touch on strategies designers can apply to understand the border between these two aspects - and it starts and end with user research.

Tech-driven vs User-driven.

Bilgi had the chance to work with many Advanced Technology teams during his career. In the episode, he describes how he tries to approach tech innovation with a “human” perspective and why we should be careful to task designers to “find applications for technology innovations”.