Who Gets to Decide? Designing Agency Back Into AI Search

AI-powered search is no longer just retrieving information. It interprets, summarizes, and increasingly decides what counts as the answer. As these systems become more confident and complete, users may be less likely to examine the underlying information, question assumptions, or notice where uncertainty and bias remain. When those biases reflect whose experiences were included, excluded, or treated as the default, the consequences are not equally distributed.

This talk is about designing critical human intelligence back into the experience. Drawing on behavioral UX, cognitive offloading and spatial thinking, Öykü will share practical design principles for making AI-powered search easier to understand, inspect and challenge. She will explore how interfaces can surface sources, uncertainty and alternative perspectives while helping people remain active participants in the decision-making process.

The goal is not to slow AI down. It is to build a better relationship between humans and artificial intelligence systems, one where technology reduces effort without replacing people as the ones who decide.

Öykü Doğru

Öykü is a product Designer based in Berlin, working at the intersection of behavioral UX and complex digital systems. She focuses on making products easier to understand and trust, especially when complexity starts getting in the way of confident decision-making.

Her work spans product strategy, end-to-end design, scalable design systems and 0→1 product development, with a focus on turning ambiguous problems into clear, usable product experiences. Most recently, she designed and shipped Bloomie, a self-initiated habit-building app informed by behavioral research and now used by real users.

Her current focus is on AI-powered products and how good design can help people stay confident and informed as more decisions get automated.