"We'll fix accessibility in phase two." "Now isn't the time to raise it." "Just do the first pass."

Most of us have heard some version of these recently. As AI adoption changes the pace and reach of our work, design leaders are making decisions about what to automate, whose needs make it into the room, and what deserves to be built at all.

Courage in those moments can be quiet: asking the awkward question, pushing back on an exclusion, making space for an experiment, or stopping work that shouldn't go ahead.

Over lunch, Aleks will host a conversation about the kinds of choices we're facing and how we find the courage to act when time, confidence or support are in short supply. Bring a decision you're wrestling with, or one you're glad you made, and she'll bring a few of her own. You'll share stories, compare notes and leave with sharper questions and a few new allies.

In Lithuanian, courage is drąsa, a feminine noun.

Aleks Melnikova

Founder at DRĄSA Studio

Aleks Melnikova is a design leader who builds products, teams and the methods that hold them together. For 18 years she has worked where human behaviour meets technology, heading up design and research at top London agencies and delivering work for Visa, Lloyds, Sky, Aviva, GSK, British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, Pearson, HMRC and many others across finance, transport, energy, healthcare, education and retail. Her work goes where organisations stop seeing clearly: the people they exclude, the needs they miss, the habits their teams mistake for process.

Trained in art in Vilnius and in product-service systems design in Milan, Aleks treats every one of those problems as designable. She invents research methods, tools and team rituals that bring hidden things into view, designs the products and shapes the teams that act on them. An accredited executive coach who has completed Harvard Business School Executive Education in innovation and leadership, she brings the same rigour to leaders that she brings to products. Inclusive design runs through all of it.

Aleks now runs DRĄSA Studio in London. DRĄSA is Lithuanian for courage, the quality she believes design needs most right now.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/aleksandra-melnikova-36116722/

Lunchtime conversation: The case for courage now

Aleks Melnikova

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