How do you solve the world’s hardest problems? And how would you respond if they’re unsolvable? As user experience professionals, we’re focused on people who live and work in the here and now. But how does our UX work change when a project lasts not for one year, or even 10 years, but for 10,000 years or more? Enter the “Wicked Problem,” or situations with so much ambiguity, complexity, and interdependencies that—by definition—they can’t be solved.

By day, Jonathon Colman is a content strategist at Facebook, which is now used by 1.6 billion people. But imagine tasks that are far more daunting: dealing with impossibly long-term, ambiguous and complex problems.

Using real-world examples from NASA’s Voyager program, the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository, and other long-term UX efforts, we’ll talk about the challenges of creating solutions for people we’ll never know in our lifetimes. The ways we grapple with ambiguity give us a new perspective on our work and on what it means to build experiences that last.

Who should take this workshop? 

This free talk is for anyone interested in user experience, problem-solving, the fate of the world, and big, hairy audacious challenges. Sign-up now: http://bit.ly/1WH23ID