2025
Closing Talk: Design Matters 25 Reflections
Tey Bannerman & Rahul Lindberg Sen, Co-Hosts
This session explores how speculative design and immersive storytelling can be powerful tools for shaping aspirational futures. By examining historical innovations that once seemed impossible, we’ll uncover how bold ideas become reality when paired with tangible prototypes and compelling narratives.
Hanna Norlin is a designer, futurist, and strategist specializing in speculative design, storytelling that drives action, and human-centered innovation. Her work explores how design can move beyond aesthetics and function to become a tool for envisioning and shaping better futures. A passionate advocate for futures thinking, she bridges imagination and reality—turning bold ideas into tangible, experienceable futures. Fascinated by how past visions became today’s realities, she started studying History alongside her previous degrees in Informatics and Business Innovation. Beyond design and strategy, where she has over a decade’s experience with companies like TV4, Spotify and Volvo Cars, Hanna lectured and held keynote speeches at design schools, leadership programs, and industry conferences. Alongside her dreams of professorship are those of utopian sci-fi writing and living life as a rock climber in the yellow camper van she built herself.
