World Usability Day Austria 2026

Opening Session

• moderated by Christiane Moser (UX Salzburg)

A warm welcome to World Usability Day Austria 2026, a gathering of UX communities from across Austria. Christiane Moser from UX Salzburg moderates the opening and guides us through the evening.

How AI warps our view of the future - and what to do about it

• Peter Horvath

AI, as any new technology, is projected to have a big impact on the future. But unlike earlier inventions, it not just influences future events, but disrupts how we think of the future. In this talk, Peter Horvath will present some early concepts about how to describe this disruption, and, maybe, how to better grapple with it.

Peter Horvath is Strategy & Service Design Lead at Whitespace, working at the intersection of design and business. With a background in economics and an MBA in innovation management, he combines strategic thinking with service design. His writing also explores how systemic design can help us understand the future of generative AI.

Using AI efficiently

• Tara Bosenick

Working with AI makes us faster almost at once; whether it also makes us better, and at what cost, decides whether the gain lasts. This talk takes “sustainable” in two senses: AI use that preserves professional judgement instead of replacing it, and AI use that spends compute only where it pays off. Both rest on the same competence, which is not prompt engineering but knowing when to trust, when to check and when to discard. Two questions, asked before the work starts, sort any task into one of four modes, each with its own economy: no reasoning model for routine work, no long context where a short one does, no checking every output where checkability can be built in once.

Tara has been working as a UX specialist since 1999 and has helped to build and shape the industry in Germany on the agency side. She specializes in the development of new UX methods, the quantification of UX and the introduction of UX in companies.

Discussion: Human Values, Global Impact: Shaping the Future of AI

• moderated by Christiane Moser

How can we shape an AI-driven future that benefits people, society and our planet? In this discussion, we explore the responsibility of designing ethical AI, its potential to bridge global inequalities and connect communities, and its role in creating a more sustainable world. Together, we will challenge assumptions, exchange perspectives and discuss how human values, social equity and environmental responsibility can guide AI innovation towards a better future.

Wrap-up

• moderated by Christiane Moser (UX Salzburg)

Closing remarks and a look back at the evening.