The language of journeys: Themes in the field of experience intelligence at Beyond the Map 2025

For the first time, journey management takes the global stage at Beyond the Map 2025 (October 8–10, Barcelona). Born from a decade of Service Design Days, this new conference gathers leaders in CX, design, and business transformation for an immersive dive into journey-powered experience intelligence.

Across three days, you’ll explore six themes shaping the future of journeys: Design Leadership, Futures & Foresight, Technology & AI, Experience & Empathy, Evidence & Insight, and Journeys & Ecosystems. Anchored by pioneers who are delivering real impact inside the world’s most complex organizations with journey management, the program goes beyond theory into practice. Expect case talks from global brands, hands-on masterclasses from experts, and the chance to connect with peers shaping the future of journeys.

Among the highlights is a keynote by Jochem van der Veer, Co-founder & CEO of TheyDo, and Patrick Quattlebaum, Co-founder & CEO of Harmonic Design, who challenge the “hero’s journey” metaphor and make the case for journey management as an integrated practice that drives lasting change.

Here’s a closer look at each theme and the presenters behind it:

Theme: Design leadership

Good design doesn’t scale without good leadership.

Design leaders shape more than services. They shape entire organizations. That’s why Beyond the Map 2025 puts design leadership in focus. Within this theme, you’ll hear honest conversations about what it takes to guide interdisciplinary teams, align business and design goals, and build strategies that hold up under real-world complexity.

Sessions focusing on design leadership include:

Orchestrating Ecosystems at Scale: The Invisible Work of the Service Design Leader

Presented by Natalia Argüello, Head of Service Design, Zurich Insurance, you’ll learn how visualization, negotiation, and governance enable service design leaders to align global frameworks with local realities.

Designing Expertise at Scale: Building Strategic Influence at Rabobank

Presented by Rabobank’s Sander Viegers, Head of Design, Natalia Marmolejo, Design Strategy Lead, and Manjari Sahu, Senior Service Designer, you’ll learn how a one-hundred-strong design team is embedding maturity and influencing strategy across a legacy-heavy, regulated enterprise.

Charting a Course to Strategic Alignment

Presented by Dan Sullivan, Director of Journey Management at CHG Healthcare, you’ll learn how immersive journey exhibits are helping CHG align product, marketing, and ops teams to accelerate impact.

A Humane Compass: Purpose-Driven Leadership

Presented by Birgit Geiberger, Global Head of Product UX Design at IKEA, you’ll learn why purpose-driven leadership rooted in empathy and regeneration is vital for navigating accelerating change.

Navigating Change: Co-Creating Strategy Supported By AI

Presented by Colette Forma, Director of Radical Innovation at KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, Stella van den Berg, Director Waste Valorisation at The Ocean Cleanup, and Geert Christiaansen, Founder of Specto Consulting, you’ll gain a hands-on framework for aligning teams around sustainable strategy, supported by AI-enabled facilitation.

Integrating Journey Management for Real Impact  

Presented by Patrick Quattlebaum, Co-Founder & CEO of Harmonic Design, you’ll engage in a practical workshop on embedding journey practices into strategy, operations, and governance for lasting change.

Theme: Journeys & ecosystems

Journeys are where design meets business impact.

That’s why Beyond the Map 2025 puts Journeys & Ecosystems at the center of the program. This theme brings together pioneers proving how journeys can unify teams, scale practices, and deliver real outcomes inside the world’s most complex organizations.

Sessions focusing on journeys and ecosystems include:

Making Every Mile Count: Scaling Unified Journeys Through Research and Insight

Presented by Lufthansa Group Digital Hangar’s Daniel Hoffmann, Lead Service Designer, and Melanie Völkle, Chapter Lead for User Research, you’ll learn how Lufthansa is centralizing insights to align teams and scale unified journeys across brands and channels.

Scaling a Journey Management Movement

Presented by Aki Sirawongprasert, Service Design Practice Lead at Lloyds Banking Group, you’ll see how Lloyds is mobilizing hundreds of change-makers and securing executive buy-in at pace to embed journey management in a 300-year-old organization.

Institute for Journey Management Introduction

Presented by Mark Smith, Co-Founder of the  Institute for Journey Management, you’ll discover why the field needs a neutral industry body and how to get involved in shaping the future of journey management.

From “So What?” to “Now What?”: Turning Journey Mapping Into Real Business Impact

Presented by Zurich Insurance’s Itziar Pobes, Principal Service Designer, and Martina Francella, Senior Service Designer, you’ll explore how minimalist mapping combined with business metrics transforms maps from decoration into measurable momentum.

Journey Management Masterclass: How to Get Started From Scratch

Hosted by Marc Fonteijn, CEO of Service Design Show, this masterclass brings together global voices to show how journey management is becoming a cornerstone of modern organizations. Featured panelists include Jochem van der Veer, Co-Founder & CEO of TheyDo; Florian Vollmer, Director of Insights at Autodesk; Jens Scharnetzki, Chief Product Owner & Head of Experience Design & Journey Management at EnBW; Bill Staikos, Founder & Managing Partner of Be Customer Led; and Aude Jacquemin, Global Customer Experience Manager at Lyreco Group. Together, they’ll share practical guidance on how to set up, scale, and sustain journey management so it delivers real business impact—enriched by candid lessons learned, pitfalls to avoid, and strategies that work.

Beyond the Hero Journey: Forging Integrated Practices for Enduring Change

Presented by Patrick Quattlebaum, Co-Founder & CEO of Harmonic Design, you’ll learn why it’s time to ditch the “hero’s journey” metaphor and embrace journey management as an integrated discipline that drives lasting change.

Theme: Futures & foresight

You can’t manage journeys if you can’t see where they’re headed. Uncertainty is the only constant. That’s why the Futures & Foresight theme digs into how organizations are using speculative design, scenarios, and foresight methods to anticipate change and shape better outcomes. This theme challenges outdated notions of prediction and focuses instead on creating the conditions for resilience—helping teams design for what’s next, not just what’s now.

Sessions focusing on futures and foresight include:

Futures for Service Design: Uncertainties and Possibilities

Presented by Lucy Kimbell, Professor of Contemporary Design Practices at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. This keynote explores scenarios for the 2030s, where design, business models, and training must evolve to stay relevant, ethical, and impactful.

Speculating Outcomes: Measuring What Hasn’t Happened Yet

Presented by Sarah Auslander, CX Design Principal at Payoneer, and Roee Bigger, Service Designer & Lecturer at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, you’ll learn a practical method for using speculative design and generative AI to define long-term outcomes, short-term outputs, and the metrics to track them.

Applying futures at the LEGO Group - The playful process workshop

Presented by Carol Tang, Futurology Manager, and Søren Lethin, Senior Design Manager, this interactive workshop explores how LEGO applies futures thinking and an audience-first approach to franchise innovation. Through team-based exercises, you’ll gain practical methods for applying foresight to strategy and design, and see how future insights translate into lasting play experiences.

Designing from Difference: A Futures Literacy Lab to Diversify Anticipatory Skills

Presented by Maya Van Leemput, UNESCO Chair on Images of the Futures & Co-Creation at Erasmus Brussels University, this interactive lab builds futures literacy, helping teams work productively with diversity, uncertainty, and change.

How Resilience Stifles Change

Presented by Alessandro Manetti, Founder of Open Future Lab, alongside Mushon Zer-Aviv and Maya Van Leemput, you’ll participate in a critical reflection on resilience as a design buzzword, reframing the questions that matter for the futures we want (and don’t want).

Applying Futures at the LEGO Group – The Case Study on LEGO Preschool

Presented by Carol Tang, Futurology Manager, and Søren Lethin, Senior Design Manager, this case study shows how LEGO uses futurology and an audience-first approach to future-fit play experiences, building resilient, relevant, and responsible strategies that endure across generations.

Future Screenshots 

Presented by Mushon Zer-Aviv, Senior Faculty Member at Shenkar College of Engineering, Design and Art, this rapid-futuring workshop uses climate change as a case study to uncover actionable opportunities in complex contexts.

What Service Design Is (Not) and Can (Not) Do

Presented by Jasper van Kuijk, Assistant Professor Designing for Responsible Digital Transitions at Karlstad University, this provocative closing keynote blends satire, comedy, and critique to explore the boundaries of service design’s future.

Theme: Technology & AI

AI won’t replace you, but the people who know how to design with AI might.

The Technology & AI theme explores what happens when human-centered design meets machine intelligence. Expect case studies where design teams and AI tools are already working side by side, plus candid discussions on the ethical considerations that can’t be ignored. This theme is about frameworks you can use to navigate a world where humans and machines collaborate—ensuring innovation never comes at the cost of trust. Expect practical insights into what works, what doesn’t, and what’s coming next.

Managing the Human Engagement Risks of AI

Presented by Ovetta Sampson, Founder of  Right AI, this opening keynote unpacks the cognitive, cultural, and social risks of GenAI and how designers can spot, frame, and mitigate them.

From Shaping AI Products to Redefining Design Itself: Inside BBVA’s AI Transformation Journey

Presented by BBVA’s Marga Barrera, Global Head of Design, and Enrique Rodríguez Carrero, Global Design Discipline Manager, this case study shows how design is steering AI strategy, and how AI is reshaping the role of design inside a global bank.

From Foundations to Impact: Building Journey Management in B2B

Presented by Gitta Mors, Manager Customer Centricity B2B, KPN, and Lucy Stuyfzand, Journey Management Lead at Essense, you’ll learn how AI is helping make sense of data and research to drive customer-centric impact in complex B2B environments.

The Rise of the Journey Ops Role

Presented by Grace de Athayde Câmara, Customer Journey Operations Lead at Pfizer, you’ll get an inside look at the emerging “journey ops” function and how AI-enabled insight practices help scale governance and impact.

Reverse Engineering the Human Engagement Risks™ of AI  

Facilitated by Ovetta Sampson, Founder of Right AI, this hands-on workshop teaches you how to deconstruct design projects and reassemble them with ethical AI baked in.

Theme: Experience & Empathy

Empathy without action is just theater.The Experience & Empathy theme digs into the lived realities of users, employees, and customers. It’s about proven approaches that turn needs and emotions into real organizational change, giving you the tools to make empathy more than a value, but a capability.

Sessions focusing on experience and empathy include:

From Metrics to Meaning: Decoding the Feeling Economy

Presented by PwC's Roger Gagnon, Chief Experience Officer, Lauren Pleydell-Pearce, Chief Creative Officer and Christy Ho, Senior Service Designer, this keynote reveals how signals from 3,400 customers translate into a practical system that links what people feel with what businesses value.

Preparing for Digital Offboarding

Presented by Sabine Junginger, Professor of Design at Northumbria University, and Natalia Villamizar Duarte, Lecturer in Urban Design & Programme Director at Newcastle University, you’ll learn about the concept of digital offboarding and how to design for lifelong, equitable access to essential public services.

Making Customer Journey Research Last

Presented by Paulien Kreutzer, Senior Design Researcher,  Stby/Quicksand, and Qin Han, Senior Design Researcher & R&D Lead at Stby, this workshop shows how to record, document, and reuse customer journeys as a long-lived knowledge base that keeps delivering insight across the organization.

Theme: Evidence & insight

If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. The Evidence & Insight theme digs into how data, both quantitative and qualitative, drives strategy when it’s framed in the right context. Rather than focusing on dashboards and numbers, this theme looks at turning measurement into meaningful change. You learn practical ways to make data actionable so it drives better design and smarter decisions.

Sessions exploring evidence and insight include:

Managing the Human Engagement Risks of AI and Reverse Engineering the Human Engagement Risks™ of AI, which also appear in the AI & Technology theme, and Making Customer Journey Research Last, which also appears in the Experience & Empathy theme.

Six Themes, One Common Language: Journey Management

Beyond the Map 2025 is where the future of journey management comes into focus. You’ll learn directly from leaders who’ve scaled practices, bridged silos with purpose, and proven the business impact of design. And you’ll be part of the first global community built around journey management, in a city where work and strategy meet creativity and the salty sea. See you there!

October 8–10, 2025 | Disseny Hub Barcelona

Only a few tickets left! Save your spot today: beyondthemap.com