Key takeaways from Camp Digital 2025

[Ellie] Inclusion as a mindset, not a tickbox

Inclusion was a recurring theme throughout the day and one that showed up in lots of different ways.

Hera Hussain’s keynote on trauma-informed design at Chayn set the tone brilliantly. She shared how they’ve developed their principles through trial and error, learning by doing and being open about what hasn’t worked along the way. One idea that’s stuck with me is how they rethought compensation for research participants when they were volunteer-led and money wasn’t an option. Instead, they asked people what they wanted in exchange for their time. It opened up a different way of thinking about how we value people’s time, labour, and contributions.

Hera also talked about the legal and ethical limitations around paying certain participants, like refugees, which forces her team to get creative in how they ensure contributions are still respected and fairly acknowledged.

Designing trustworthy AI systems

Dr Zeynep Engin’s session was a standout. Although she covered technically complex topics, like AI agency, trust thresholds, and governance models, she did so in a way that resonated deeply.

One key insight was that our governance systems are designed around human error, but AI doesn’t make human errors - it makes AI errors, which look different and need different checks and balances. Without new governance models, we risk doing harmful things without realising it or failing to spot problems until it’s too late. Her talk helped clarify how far behind our current governance mechanisms are in comparison to the pace of AI development, and how important it is to close that gap.

What really stood out was how she unpacked the question of meaningful agency in AI. She explored what makes agency in AI agents feel “real” and how that links to our understanding of consciousness and the boundaries between humans and machines. She shared a spectrum of trust and the thresholds that go with it, helping to visualise how people build (or lose) trust in AI systems as they become more advanced. It got me thinking about how we can support our clients to proactively develop governance models around AI, before they start integrating it into everything.

[Ben & Ellie] Challenging design defaults

Later in the day, Claire Dellar’s session on universal design built on the theme of inclusion, offering a powerful reminder of how our assumptions about users can unintentionally exclude people.

Claire, an accessibility and design strategist, unpacked the social model of disability and shared the idea that if you design for the person with the highest need, you naturally create better experiences for everyone else. She illustrated this with a video walkthrough of the interconnected tools and technologies that help her navigate everyday life as a wheelchair user.

In a separate session, Alistair Somerville suggested that the word “normal” is often a statistical construct that risks excluding those outside the average. He gave a critique of common design approaches, like (design heresy alert) the Design Council's Double Diamond, saying that as the diamond converges, there’s a danger of implying a single 'normal' user that we're designing for. The helpful question for me was - what happens to the people who sit outside of the convergence points? Are we running the risk of excluding those people by design? He suggested using terms like “typical” may better avoid the exclusionary implications of “normal.”

Taken together, both sessions were a powerful reminder that the assumptions we build into our design processes, whether linguistic or practical, have real consequences. Challenging those defaults early can help us build more inclusive, human-centred systems by design.

[Ben] Making the case for service design

In a service design business case workshop with Ignacia Orellana and Clara Greo, we explored how the strongest cases arise where user pain points intersect with organisational waste.

One practical takeaway: by quantifying inefficiencies and frustrations, we can build clearer, financially grounded business cases. This approach offers a practical way to help clients identify and prioritise meaningful improvements, especially when budgets are tight and time is limited.

Values, tech and team culture

One of the more philosophical and moving sessions was on spiritual values in software development by Michael Palmer. It explored how values like humility, empathy, integrity and gratitude, rooted in historic religions, can enrich team dynamics and improve ethical design.

Empathy came through as especially important, aligning closely with human-centred design and accessibility - stemming, for example, from the Judeo-Christian principle of ‘loving your neighbour as yourself’. There was also a useful provocation around awareness of personalisation risks to prevent echo chambers and maintain diverse perspectives.

[Ellie] Bringing people with us

There was a common challenge throughout the day between the speed of change (especially in AI) and the need to bring people with us.

A lot of the conversations, particularly around reform and change in the public sector, focused not just on improving existing systems but on radically shifting how things are done. This isn’t just a technical challenge, it’s cultural too. It means adjusting how we work, what roles come to the forefront, and how we support leaders and stakeholders to get comfortable with change that feels new and sometimes scary.

For me, that was one of the big takeaways: we need to keep making space for people at all levels to join us on that journey.

Thanks to everyone at Camp Digital for creating such an open and thought-provoking event. We left brimming with ideas and look forward to coming back next year.