Behind the Scenes: How the Service Design Team Crafted a Hit Conference Session
The Service Design team recently took the stage at the Seattle IT Learning Conference, and the response was incredible. Our session, “Empathy by Design: Crafting Human-Centered AI Experiences,” was a standout success. It led to an encore presentation and provided valuable lessons for our team.
Here’s how we brought it to life, from idea to final delivery.
From idea to core message
Our journey began when we were invited to speak at the conference. We were excited to have the opportunity to share our passion for service design and wanted to ground our session in what we know best: human-centered approaches that prioritize empathy, trust, and user needs. We reviewed several potential topics, and we unanimously voted to focus on artificial intelligence, a subject that continues to shape the broader landscape of technology and user experience.
And that’s how we landed on our core message: Trust in AI starts with human-centered design (HCD). This became the guiding principle for our entire presentation.
Designing the experience
We approached the presentation like a design challenge. How might we create a session that’s engaging, relatable and inclusive for both in-person and virtual attendees?
Here’s how we did it:
- Crafted an opening hook that tapped into our shared fascination with fictional machines like Wall-E and R2-D2, characters that operated with empathy.
- Focused on telling a compelling storying around AI, trust, empathy and human-centered design.
- Defined clear roles and allowed every team member to contribute their unique voice and expertise.
- Invited the audience to reflect on why we admire these fictional robots and what it means to design for AI.
- Utilized research and key findings from a survey of U.S. adults and AI experts to inform and develop content for our presentation.
- Presented practical strategies for building trustworthy AI and showed how our team measures trust in a recent project.
- Invited the audience to answer reflective prompts like “Do you trust AI?” to spark participation.
- Led an activity where attendees applied empathy to choose voices for AI bots for a workout coach and government assistant that inspires trust.
- Prepared thoroughly for logistics, including a site visit and close coordination with organizers to ensure the hybrid setup ran smoothly.
- Each part of the session was shaped through team reviews, working sessions and dry runs with the team and leadership.
Our approach in creating the session reflected core HCD principles: empathy, collaboration, inclusion and iteration, and on the day of the conference, the process paid off. The session was engaging, interactive, and made the audience feel included and connected. Here’s some feedback we received from event attendees:
Their message resonated across the room: AI should never replace human judgment — it should amplify compassion and connection.
The session drew more than 260 online participants and about 50 in person, making it one of the most-attended events of the conference. It was also one of the most discussed. The chat stayed lively from start to finish, filled with positive reactions and thoughtful questions. Participants described it as “authentic,” “refreshing,” and “relevant,” appreciating how the presenters made AI approachable and people-focused.
“Loved the human-centered design perspective—it felt real and relevant.”
“More sessions like this—creative, grounded, and people-focused.”
“It was refreshing to see a topic that made AI approachable and inclusive.”
Empathy by Design ranked as the second most valuable session of the entire conference in post-event surveys. Attendees highlighted the presenters’ ability to connect emotionally while offering practical insights — a rare combination in discussions about emerging technology. The diverse composition of the presenting team also stood out, reflecting the very values of inclusion and representation they spoke about.
Looking forward
Following our success, the team conducted a retrospective to reflect on the entire process. We captured best practices and ideas that we’ll carry forward –not just for future presentations but also for how we support other IT teams and city departments. We’re already adapting elements from our session into:
- Self-guided resources for staff interested in applying HCD
- Workshops that help teams use HCD to improve services and build trust with users
- Open conversations about AI and encourage trust building as we bring it into our daily work
We are proud to have shared our message and are excited to apply what we learned to future projects.
This post was partially generated by AI and edited by a human.