I had the chance this year to go to the FLUPA UX DAYS, a benchmark event in the field of UX Design in France.
This was my first edition, and I was accompanied by my colleague Anaïs Bernard (Product Designer). We were eager to discover the conferences, as the program and the theme interested us.
Design, between heritage and future
This 2025 edition of Flupa UX Days had something unique about it.
In an uncertain context, between economic tensions, upheavals linked to AI and loss of bearings, the design community has come together to question the meaning of what it does.
The theme “UX & Transmission” served as a common thread for a collective reflection: how can we transmit our practices and our values to build a more desirable, more inclusive and more sustainable future?
A suspended, lucid and necessary moment, where each talk seemed to respond in its own way to this quest for meaning.
I suggest we come back together to the conferences and feedback that have had the greatest impact on me. and to share with you the concrete lessons I learned from it.
Design in the Age of the Generative Economy, by Anne Asensio
With extensive experience in industrial design, notably at Renault and then at Dassault Systèmes, she brings a vision of design beyond interfaces: we are talking here about complex, embedded systems, connected to industrial realities such as the automotive or aeronautics industries — fields where tools and methodologies are often ahead of our own.
In particular, she presented the use of digital twins at Dassault Systèmes: 3D environments that allow scenarios to be simulated upstream of production with impressive precision.
These environments open up new ways of collaborating around design, allowing complex scenarios to be collectively explored even before the production phase.
An approach that encourages better anticipation of impacts — even if everything ultimately depends on of what we choose to do with it.
👉 What I remember: the importance of thinking of design as a deeply collective approach, where the human remains at the center, even in the face of increasingly complex tools. It's a real reminder: don't forget the power of collective intelligence, the need to meet in real life, on site, to cultivate connections and "living together."
And in the age of generative AI, this idea takes on even more meaning. As Anne Asensio so aptly put it: we're moving a little into uncharted territory—we might as well go there together. Share our experiences, our doubts, our discoveries. Don't remain isolated, but learn from each other. Perhaps this is the best antidote to the opacity of technology: moving forward together, while maintaining the human dimension.
Design for a Living World, by Nicolas Roesch
From user-centered design to life-centered design.
With intelligence and humility, Nicolas Roesch invited us to change focus, to design no more for ou salary. the living, but with him.
On the program: biophilic design, inter-species, sensitive mediation objects, and above all an invitation to reintegrate the living as a stakeholder.
He took us from “user-centered design” to “life-centered design,” inviting us to reconsider our practices from the perspective of sustainability, connection to the territory, and interdependencies.
Among the axes he shared, The one about the imaginary particularly spoke to me as a designer. He reminded us that our visual culture has gradually become disconnected from the living: “If you know more logos than tree leaves, then you understand why we need to repopulate our imaginations.” This sentence is striking because it reminds us to what extent nature has been erased from our stories, our fictions, our visuals, our childhood games.
This is what notably prompted him to found ZOEPOLIS: to put the living back at the heart of our design stories and practices. Because if the living isn't in our imaginations, it won't be in our projects.
👉 What I remember most is this desire to design not only for the living, but with it, by accepting the discomfort that this implies, by slowing down, and by learning to compose with other forms of life and thought.
Nicolas Roesch talks about these "uncomfortable coalitions" —like the one with wasps, which no one likes, but which must nevertheless be taken into account. It challenges our usual comfort, because we have always designed for human comfort.
To conclude, this sentence from Arthur Westwood, quoted by Nicolas, sums up the role of design well: "The territories of the Earth, including cities, are the places where humans and non-humans continue to weave life together. Design can become an invitation to become conscious and effective weavers of the web of life."
UX in health, transmit to better alert the doctor and better educate the patient, by Clémence Mayolle
This feedback highlights a fundamental challenge of health design: making medical data intelligible, useful and accessible, throughout the care pathway, for all stakeholders – doctors, pharmacists, patients.
At the heart of this approach: transmission. It's about sharing the right information, at the right time, without overwhelming the user with unnecessary alerts. Too many alerts kill the alert, but too few weaken the safety of care.
It is therefore essential to design smarter alerts, to contextualize data in detail and to offer support that facilitates compliance, with a strong conviction: better transmission means better care.
In this logic, UX in health becomes a mediation tool:
- A well-thought-out shooting plan can replace a long speech.
- A clear alert becomes a moment of therapeutic education.
- A printed document facilitates cooperation between professionals.
👉 What I remember: Information design is a powerful ally in healthIt is not just about making the information readable, but about structuring it to support medical decisions, encourage patient autonomy and facilitate coordination between caregivers.
What I particularly appreciated in this approach is the desire to make digital tools real transmission media: media which help to understand, promote compliance et create a link between doctors, pharmacists and patients.
Good design, here, is not just a clear interface. It is a way of take care of several people, through tools designed to inform, support... and, ultimately, better care.
Designer in 2030: a prospective workshop to take charge its evolution, by Marie-Valentine GALLON
With the workshop “Designer in 2030”, Marie Valentin (designer at Mirakl) offered us a rare moment: a step aside to collectively reflect on what we want to become, in a profession in perpetual transformation.
In a context of technological acceleration, where AI raises as many opportunities as uncertainties, the challenge was not to draw up a fixed scenario of the future, but to ask this simple and essential question: “How do we want to evolve?” Individually, collectively, strategically.
The workshop, built like a time travel, has helped trace the evolution of the profession since 2005, to better understand where we come from... and where we are going. From the pixel-perfection of Flash to today's strategic hybridization, designers have learned to work with ever-changing tools, roles, and requirements.
The designer's profession: between past reality (2005) and future projection (2036).
I really liked the lively, playful and engaging format, combining projection, card games, round tables, and writing a collective manifesto. Special mention to the “booster cards” (strategy, data, tech, society) who helped each to build a personal roadmap for the next 5 years.
💬 My main takeaway: the future of design is not a matter of pure technological mastery. It's a posture, strategic outlook, a ethically to cultivate.
Using AI, yes, but without denying what makes us human: the ability to listen, to make sense, to create connections.
👉 To remember:
- Design doesn't disappear, it evolved.
- It's up to us to be engines of change, not spectators.
- To support our teams, we must give the right to experiment, to doubt, to be mistaken.
- The design of tomorrow will be collective, hybrid, responsible — and still deeply human.
“Designer in 2030” is already here!
Each design is a manifesto for the future by Thorsten JONAS
What if every design decision was a commitment to the world of tomorrow?
This is the conviction that carries Thorsten Jonas, activist designer, who gave us a lucid, hard-hitting… and resolutely political conference.
From the outset, he questions our founding promise: user comfort.
This comfort, often presented as an end in itself, has a invisible cost : precariousness of workers (delivery people, drivers), standardization of cities (Airbnb), destruction of local businesses, etc.
By wanting to optimize too much for the end user, we forget about others: the planet, communities, futures.
On the AI side, the observation is just as clear: beneath its miraculous appearance, it consumes, it exploits, it smooths. It produces efficient interfaces, but conforming and hollow, the imagination is impoverished.
👉 What I liked: its ability to broaden our focus, to take design out of UX alone
to anchor it in social and environmental ecosystems. It's no longer just about thinking for the human but with all living things.
🛠️ For this, it offers two simple but powerful tools:
- A consequence mapping : list the negative impacts of an experience,
not just its profits. - Un enriched user journey which includes social, ecological, temporal effects
of each step.
As designers, we have the power to tell other stories, to create more sober, fairer, more inclusive experiences.
In short, this conference is a call. A call to no longer make design a simple tool. of conversion but a political, ethical and ecological act.
To remember :
- Thinking about exclusions : Who don't we design for? And why?
- Awareness of the consequences : every choice counts, no matter how small.
- Third impact to integrate : beyond business and user,
let's also think about the impact environmental. - No longer be subjected to systems : transform them.
This moment echoed a sometimes forgotten truth: Designing is always about making choices. And each choice says something about our values.
In conclusion for UX Days 2025
This first UX DAYS was truly enriching. A moment that does you good, you come away from it feeling good.
with lots of ideas and thoughts. Despite the many challenges and tensions about the future, I remain hopeful about our ability to find solutions.
Many interventions focus on the right topics, relying on collective intelligence,
creativity and our responsibility for every action, even the most trivial.
🤩 It was also an opportunity to exchange with other designers, to meet old colleagues and also to meet new people.
👏 Thank you to FLUPA, the volunteers and the speakers for this excellent organization and the quality presentations.
🖤 A huge thank you also to UX Republic for this great opportunity.
Théo MERIEN, Product Designer at UX-REPUBLIC
