About the Session

Today, UX is seen as a tool for innovation – for making an already designed system better through UI. But this can be a threat for UX’s existence in the future. Creation of new tech or products is known as Scientists’ and Engineer's job. Today UXers are not given roles in the research and development startups of new technologies that will change human perception & interaction. This can change. UXers can be inventors since the UX profession is already a merge of engineering and science. Because UX was always about creation and innovation. Tomorrow’s inventor UX Designer is the future’s prototyper today.

Columbia University discovered how to record a rat's memory and how to make it live the memory again by the help of a switch. Inspired by this technology I prototyped a conceptual social media platform that records users’ memories and I conducted research using this prototype. My aim was to collect today's users’ insights, reactions for the future. Please imagine, invent, prototype, research. That way we can change industries’ mindset for the UX profession.

About the Speaker

Esra Ayhan

Director at Ognit

Esra Ayhan Sagan is a Senior User Researcher and Designer with a Human Computer Interaction related field background. She is the director and the sole employee of her own limited company Ognit. She has been creating and improving how users and customers experience B2B & B2C products and services for 13 years. Through user research, she uncovers the needs, expectations, thoughts and feelings of users. This leads her to propose relevant, delightful, intuitive, and ultimately valuable solutions. With her solution suggestions she aims for business benefits that emerge from reduced costs and customer complaints, through to increased customer satisfaction and engagement.




She has been interested in learning about “human” since the first time she was introduced to “Biology”. Her journey for learning about humans started from reading the major automatic systems in the human body and continued with exploring how the mind works through user research. She feels lucky that her profession guided her into discovering how humans perceive what they sense in particular environments and how they decide to interact with them.




She is also a future human enthusiast. She loves exploring how our future selves might be like, through her personal research projects.