by Insights from Google, Maersk, Nestlé, DHL, and more
UX in 2026 is shifting in ways that go beyond AI — and the people who see it most clearly are the ones navigating it from inside the world’s most complex organizations
Ahead of UX360 Europe 2026, taking place 23–24 June in Berlin, we sat down with ten senior UX leaders from Google, Maersk, Airbus, DHL, Volvo Cars, Mercedes-Benz, Nestlé, and more. What emerged was not a trend report. It was something more valuable — a ground-level reading of where the profession actually stands.
These insights are a preview of the conversations that will unfold in Berlin this June. But they are also something you can take away right now — 10 signals from the senior UX community that are too important to wait for the conference room.
1. UX is no longer about designing interfaces. It is defining what kind of relationship a product is allowed to have with a person.
Sophie Kleber, UX Director at Google, has spent 25 years in UX — long enough to watch the graphical interface go from unsolved problem to solved one. What replaced it is something harder: conversational agents, anticipatory systems, ambient technology embedded in physical spaces. And none of it comes with a screen to design.
What it comes with is a more fundamental question: what kind of relationship does this product have the right to form with its user? A car sales assistant trying to become your best friend is a different ethical problem than a health coach who needs to be intimate to be useful. These are not branding decisions. They are the work. And UX is the only function in the room trained to ask whether a technology should exist the way it does — not just whether it can.
“The empathy we have for people, the defense of humanity — that is where UX finds its value.” — Sophie Kleber, UX Director, Google
2. AI is not the threat. It is the permission slip UX always needed.
Karen Reilly of Maersk isn’t asking how to survive AI — she is asking what UX would look like if you built it from scratch today. The synthesis, the recruitment, the theming: AI handles all of it. What that frees up is the strategic work UX researchers always wanted to do but never had the capacity for. At Maersk, that conversation led somewhere concrete: instead of a research repository, they are building a full intelligence platform — feeding 100,000 employees a living layer of customer and user understanding. The question AI is forcing isn’t “what do we lose?” It is “what do we finally get to do?”
3. Every room has someone asking “can we build this?” UX is the one asking “should we?”
Sophie Kleber, UX Director at Google, has a name for it: the bullshit sniffer. The ability to look at what technology can do and ask, seriously, whether it should — whether it actually makes human lives better or simply exists because it can. We had this moment with social media: it was thrown at humanity before anyone asked hard questions, and now we are grappling with what it did to kids, to behavior, to loneliness.
AI is the same inflection point. The teams that will matter are the ones that can step back from the excitement and say: here is the use case that actually works, and here is the one that doesn’t. That judgment — grounded in empathy, sharpened by an ethical compass — is not a soft skill. It is the most strategically valuable thing UX brings to the table right now.
4. If you frame it as UX, the room goes quiet. If you frame it as risk, everyone listens.
Chemsseddine Salem at the European Investment Bank stopped talking about user experience and started talking about risk: same decisions, different language — and a completely different response from the room. In regulated, high-stakes environments, this reframe is not a communication trick. It is a survival skill. The organizations that move fastest are the ones where UX has learned to speak the language of the people holding the budget and the accountability.
“I stopped framing things around user experience and started framing them around risk. That shift alone changed who listens and how quickly things move.” — Chemsseddine Salem, Lead UX Designer & Researcher, European Investment Bank
5. Democratization without governance is just organized chaos
Everyone can do UX now. Product managers, engineers, business analysts — AI has handed them the tools and removed the barrier to entry. Francesco Sardu at Nestlé and Dr. Shuo-Hsiu Hsu at Airbus both arrive at the same conclusion from different directions: democratization without standardization dilutes quality, erodes trust, and produces what Hsu calls “industrialized mediocrity.” The role of senior UX is shifting from maker to quality governor — setting standards, building guardrails, and ensuring speed does not come at the cost of rigor.
6. The real UX differentiator is no longer what you produce — it is what you understand
As AI makes execution faster and easier, the traditional outputs of UX become commodities. Jorge Márquez Moreno of NTT Data points to what doesn’t get commoditized: context. Understanding what changing user behavior actually means in environments shaped by automation, ambient systems, and invisible decision-making layers — that is the new competitive advantage. Gathering insights is no longer enough. The value is in interpreting what those insights mean for organizations navigating constant technological change.
7. Customer communication is part of the product. UX either owns that, or it doesn’t — but the user doesn’t care either way
Remy Ferber at Volvo Cars is watching the boundary between product and communication dissolve in real time. Notifications, lifecycle messages, cross-device journeys — customers don’t experience these as separate from the product. They are the product. The problem is that inside most organizations, UX owns the interface while marketing owns the message and CRM owns the trigger. The result is a coherent experience that falls apart the moment a user steps outside the screen. Ferber argues that orchestrating this is not a coordination problem — it is a design problem. And it requires UX to move into spaces it historically left to others.
“What we present to our users should feel like it was thought from the outside in — not the inside out.” — Remy Ferber, Volvo Cars
8. The next generation of UX leaders will be directors, not executors
Simon Truckenmüller at Mercedes-Benz is direct about where this is heading: designer roles as we know them today will largely dissolve. What replaces them is not a smaller version of the same thing — it is a fundamentally different orientation. The UX leaders who thrive will be the ones who can evaluate and judge what AI and non-UX colleagues produce, articulate intent with precision, and navigate organizations with the fluency of a director, not a specialist. Breadth of judgment matters more than depth of execution.
9. Accessibility is not a compliance requirement. It is a design culture problem.
Mansi Grover at DHL has seen what the European Accessibility Act actually changes inside large organizations — and it is not the checklist. It is the conversation. Getting accessibility into design critique, into system components, into hiring decisions requires a shift in how teams think, how decisions get made, and who gets included from day one. The organizations that treat it as a legal obligation will meet the minimum. The ones that treat it as a cultural problem will build something that lasts.
“Conversion rates are easy to measure. Dignity and inclusion are not.” — Mansi Grover, DHL
10. UX research is not moving toward more data. It is moving toward better judgment.
Across every conversation, one idea surfaces consistently: the value of UX research is not in the volume of insights it produces — it is in the quality of the decisions it informs. Kelly Frontani at Schneider Electric frames it as outcomes over deliverables. Francesco Sardu at Nestlé frames it as rigor over speed. Karen Reilly frames it as strategic influence over operational output. The direction is the same. UX research is growing — from a function that supports decisions to a force that shapes them.
Where UX in 2026 Goes Next: Berlin, June 23-24
These insights came from ten conversations. At UX360 Europe 2026, they become one — with senior practitioners from Google, Maersk, Airbus, DHL, Volvo Cars, Mastercard, and more in the same room, working through the same questions.
Two days of strategic discussion, practical frameworks, and peer-level exchange. One track. No distractions. The people, the conversations, and the thinking that will define where UX goes next.
If you want to know where the profession is heading in 2026 — Berlin is where UX leaders go to find out.
Join Europe’s senior UX research and design community — June 23–24, Berlin →
