London Design Festival 2026

As technology changes what we can create, how do we decide what’s worth creating?

Last week was London Design Festival 2026. Here are my highlights.

Looking through this year’s #LDF26 programme, five highlights stood out to me from a product design and UX perspective:

• AI and creative judgement. The FLORA: New Creative Methods session on 13 September explored how AI changes creative iteration, decision-making and authorship. As production speeds up, understanding the problem and choosing the right direction become more and more valuable.
• Knowing when to question technology. The Shared Intelligence session on 12 September examined designers’ responsibility to question, reshape or reject emerging technology. The panel included representatives from Field.io, Arup, Moth and arebyte, alongside artist Sam Ghantous. This is the right kind of question for any product team deciding where AI belongs, and it’s one I’ve covered lots this year.
• Digital tools that protect focus. The Caligra × tldraw exhibition, held on 15–17 September, featured the Caligra c100 Developer Terminal running an offline, local-first version of tldraw. The demonstration paired dedicated computing hardware with a digital canvas, with an emphasis on focused creation. An interesting starting point for thinking about how our tools can better support uninterrupted work.
• Technology that feels very intuitive. In the festival’s Humanising Technology interview, LEPAS’s global chief designer Ivan Dulanovic discussed integrating technology so it feels natural and intuitive. He described using the movement of water as inspiration for how information moves across digital interfaces. The relevance extends well beyond automotive design: every interaction asks something of the user’s attention.
• Research behind simplicity. Solveiga Pakštaitė won the Emerging Design Medal. Her work includes Mimica’s Bump, a temperature-sensitive food label that becomes bumpy to indicate spoilage. In her festival interview, she described testing whether people understood the design and revising it when they did not. She also discussed inclusive design that preserves style and self-expression. A simple experience often rests on substantial research. The lesson translates directly to UX: test whether people understand the product in everyday circumstances, and treat accessibility as part of its usefulness and appeal.

The thread connecting these, for me, is deliberate decision-making: what to automate, what to simplify, what to question, and what to test. Our tools have never been more capable, and so those decisions are an even more valuable part of design now.

Which parts of LDF26 stood out to other UX designers?