Hemingway Sessions: How to Build the Right Thing in Mental Health: Product Design Principles in an Era of AI

​AI has made building faster, cheaper, and more accessible than ever. Speed is no longer the hard part. Knowing what to build - and being sure it actually helps - is.

In this session, Hugo Welke draws on 15+ years of product design experience at companies like Canva and HubSpot to share the principles that the best product teams are using in 2026 to build with both speed and rigour. Principles that are 1) more relevant than ever now that anyone can spin up a prototype in minutes, and 2) more important than ever when the product you're building affects people's mental health.

You'll leave with 3 practical principles you can apply immediately - whether you're validating your first idea or scaling an existing solution - so you can move fast and build with confidence.

Hugo Welke is a product designer and design leader with 20 years of experience building digital products that scale. He has led design through hypergrowth at companies including Canva and HubSpot, and is now focused on the intersection of AI and human-centred design. He believes AI gives builders extraordinary speed — and that the right design principles give them the confidence to use it well.