Intentional Design: our PUSH UX Fringe Event in review

Three talks, one evening, our Munich studio

‍

On 21 October, the evening before PUSH UX Conference 2026, we opened our studio in Fraunhoferstraße to the Munich UX community and conference guests from across Europe. The guests came from many fields: UX and product designers, researchers, developers, product managers and founders.
Some came from agencies, some from the corporate field, some from startups. They had different backgrounds but shared one interest: how good products get made.

The evening started the way good evenings do, with drinks, snacks and a lot of first conversations. People met for the first time, and people who hadn't seen each other since last year's PUSH caught up. Then the room settled for three talks under one theme: Intentional Design. They covered the decisions that shape products, and the ones that shape working lives.

Don't ship the wrong thing faster
Christiane Moser (Founder, CUXpro) started with a question most product teams know too well. What happens when AI speeds up delivery, but nobody checks the direction? Her answer is Product Experience Mapping - she shared with us the tool she developed. It ties a shared experience vision to the small product decisions teams make every day. Speed only helps if you're building the right thing.

The biggest missed opportunity in B2B
Ani Szammer (UX Designer, DCCS IT Business Solutions) argued that enterprise software is usually judged on efficiency alone, and that this sets the bar too low. Drawing on emotional design, creativity and cognitive science, she showed how B2B products can support the people who use them all day. And feel good while doing it.

Staying resilient in uncertain times
Akshan Ish (Sr. Staff Product Designer, Miro) closed the talks on a personal note. Drawing on his work at IDEO, Spotify and his other stages, he talked about uncertainty, about the values that still hold when everything else moves, and about what keeps you going. Many in the room expected practical career tips. Instead he gave an open, personal look behind the curtain at what has kept him steady over the past years. In his own words, he wanted to speak to the humans in the room, not the designers. It worked.

Nobody left right after the last talk. The questions carried on over drinks, and the conversations moved through the studio and lasted well into the evening. Speakers got pulled into small groups. That's the part of a Fringe Event you can't put on a slide, and for many guests it was the best part.

Three very different talks shared one thread: keep people at the centre. That holds whether you're shaping a product or going through change yourself. It's also the core of our daily work, from health software to AI-powered tools that people trust and use every day.
Hosting an evening like this reminds us why we do it. Good ideas get better when people from different fields talk them through together.

Thanks to Christiane, Ani and Akshan for three great talks. Thanks to Christian Perstl and the whole PUSH UX team for having us in the Fringe program, and to everyone who came and stayed. See you next year.

‍