The panel took place on Tuesday, July 30, in the Auditorium of the University of Palermo. Other speakers included María Eugenia Marín, Martín Noe, Nora Palladino, and Damián Kirzner.

The focus of the talks was based on the premise: “In a field where change is constant, staying updated on new formats and digital platforms is a real challenge. What are the must-know novelties for creatives and communicators?”

What’s new in the digital universe?

As a designer, I have the habit of questioning the question to reach slightly deeper answers. In this case, I ask: What do we mean by “new”? It seems like things emerge with the label “new,” and there’s a specific moment when that label peels off… A moment after which, things are no longer “new.” Is that really the case?

Suppose we come home and find a dog. That’s new! But the dog itself isn’t new: it didn’t come out of nowhere, it was born some time ago. Why is it “new” to us? The appearance of the dog brings us questions and forces us to make a decision about what to do with it. And that, to me, is what makes something “new”: it generates questions we hadn’t asked before and presents possibilities and decisions we hadn’t considered until now.

What do we design?

So, what’s new in the digital world? Something inherent to digital since its inception is that it expands and encompasses more and more things. In this expansion, there’s always a part that is novel, which becomes commonplace. For example, today it’s rare to go job hunting with a newspaper under your arm like 20 years ago. The norm today is to prepare our resume on a computer, search for job offers online, and send emails. The digital advances into the everyday until it becomes diluted, until we no longer perceive it.

The new product of this advancement is that designers start designing the invisible. New professions like interaction design have emerged, focusing on defining ways to interact with a system. For example, the gesture of pinching two fingers on a screen to zoom out, which seems so natural, didn’t come from nature. It’s the result of a design process. Someone decided to use that gesture instead of another method and for the system to respond in a certain way to make it satisfying. The person who made those decisions is an interaction designer.

Another discipline that designs the invisible is user experience (UX) design, where we intervene in artifacts and services to ensure people have a specific experience. It’s not about designing the screen: it’s about designing what happens in front of the screen.

These are relatively new design professions that affect the already established design disciplines. And they lead us to ask: if designing is not just about working on the visible, what is designing?

How do we design?

Another aspect in which the digital has been influencing the design world, beyond these new disciplines, is the way we work. In software, agile methodologies have emerged and formalized. In themselves, they are not new: the Agile Manifesto was published in 2001. But they bring us questions that we are still working on.

Agile methodologies emerged to respond to the inherent uncertainty of a complex project. Applied to design, these methodologies are helping us gain greater control over the complexities inherent in the creative process, the relationship with the client, and with all other stakeholders.

So, the agile methodologies that appeared within the framework of software engineering are now also contributing to design. And as software design disciplines are feeding back into traditional design disciplines, they are also incorporating these new ways of working. One advance in this regard is Core Design, the initiative we promote from the Interaction Design Association (IxDA) for university education in Design.

Where is the world heading?

As the digital advances into the everyday, today we talk about digital transformation. The biggest challenge in this process is not technical or about generating more technology, but the cultural changes that are necessary.

Every human organization is built on declarations and agreements that we can call “political.” Software, on the other hand, is concrete and operates on the measurable and specific. Digital transformation therefore requires organizations to move from establishing networks of declarations to managing networks of well-defined commitments.

This will necessarily lead to social and cultural transformations: in what ways will we coordinate efforts to build the future?

What is our responsibility?

Every tool has two parts: one part that adapts to the problem (the technique) and one part that adapts to a person, which is the design space. Without technique, there’s no technology, just science fiction. And without a person, without design, there’s no technology: only technical curiosities.

In a world with more and more technology, which people depend on to perform social functions like getting a job, the designer’s social role is to understand and integrate all people into their work. This is known as accessibility: ensuring anyone can use an object, visit a place, or access a service, regardless of their technical, cognitive, or physical abilities.

Design today, then, is being redefined. It cannot be limited to satisfying a client, aesthetics, or even the visual. It’s compelled to face questions that rediscover its noble purpose: the ability to understand people and provide solutions to their real needs. That is the responsibility and social role of design in this digital world.