The Garden Sessions: Design in the Age of AI
TL;DR
A full day in Lisbon with twenty designers, in a space chosen for focus and honesty.
A sharing moment of real stories from everyone, including you. A safe place for people say what they actually feel about this moment.
Two talks that get you thinking. One on designing for AI agents, the users reshaping the internet. And another on what it means to stay human when these tools keep multiplying.
A workshop where you design AI experiences with paper and pens. Slow, physical, intentional.
A collaborative session where you create a personal experiment to run over the next 30 days, and leave with something tangible to keep it alive.
A community of 20 designers who you can co-work throughout the year in the same space of the event, keeping the conversations going.
Early bird at 180€ from April 19 to April 30.
An intimate, one-day event for 20 designers in a carefully chosen space in Lisbon. It brings together a small group of practitioners to think deeply about their profession, build new skills, and share openly about how they're navigating this moment of change.
Every session is designed so speakers and participants are in the same room, in every sense. Talks flow into conversations. Conversations flow into making. The format weaves together honest storytelling, focused thinking, and hands-on work into a single arc that builds throughout the day. Everyone in the room shapes what happens in it.
We're still working on the program to give you a cohesive, intentional experience. Here's what's taking shape:
Sharing. The day opens with vulnerability. Gus and three participants share their personal journeys with AI so far: how it started, what fears they carry, how optimistic or pessimistic they feel right now.
Thinking. Two talks that push thinking in different directions. Nuno explains how to design experiences for AI agents, who will be the main users of the internet. Madalena asks the question no one else will: how do we stay human when the tools keep multiplying?
Making. Pedro leads a hands-on workshop on designing AI experiences. Identifying use cases, calibrating automation, applying design patterns. The entire workshop is done with paper and pens. No computers.
Committing. Gus and Catarina close the day with "The Playground Never Closes," a session built on embodied cognition and improv where everyone designs a personal experiment for the next 30 days and leaves with a tangible reminder to keep it alive.
Getting together. The day does not end when people leave. A small community for the 20 participants to share their journeys, with co-working days so the conversations continue and the group holds each other accountable.
What you take away
You leave the event with:
More confidence about the future
The kind of clarity that comes from spending a day with their peers who share the same questionsA renewed sense of agency
The understanding that designers are not passive observers of change. They have the tools, the empathy, and the perspective to actively shape what comes nextThe conviction that experimentation is the way forward
In a moment where everything feels uncertain, the best response is not to wait for answers. It is to keep trying new things, learning from them, and adjustingA deeper connection to the human skills that no technology can replace
Creativity, intuition, the ability to sit with ambiguity and make sense of itA community of peers
Twenty people who spent a full day doing real work together, not networking. That shared experience stays
The core bet
The world is changing fast and designers are uniquely positioned to help make sense of it. But only if they move. The Garden Sessions is a space to unfreeze, reconnect with what makes design powerful, and walk out ready to experiment.
Applications
This is an intimate event and we want to be thoughtful about who's in the room. Not to be exclusive, but to bring together a genuinely diverse group of designers with different backgrounds, perspectives, and ways of working.
Apply to join the list. From April 19, accepted participants will receive access to confirm their spot and complete their registration.
180€ early bird, available until April 30.
250€ regular price, from May 1 onwards.