Henney
Hyehyun Ahn

When AI can generate screens in seconds, what should we actually teach UX/UI students?

I'm a professor at a regional university in South Korea who was handed a blank canvas: build a 4-year UX/UI curriculum from scratch, starting with the class of 2026 — students who will graduate into a world where most production tasks are automated.

My answer was to stop teaching tools and start teaching decisions.

In this talk, I'll share the competency-based curriculum I designed and am currently running — one that replaces "make pretty screens" with "define problems, test hypotheses, and own the decision log." 

Every semester has one core skill, one signature deliverable, and one clear rubric. AI isn't banned; it's embedded — but students must document how they used it, why they chose (or rejected) its output, and what they'd do differently.

This talk offers a ground-level view of what happens when you rebuild design education for the AI era — not as theory, but as a living experiment running right now in a classroom in Gwangju, South Korea.

Henney Hyehyun Ahn is a design educator, creative director, and studio founder based in Gwangju, South Korea. After eleven years in New York — working across advertising, publishing, and financial services at agencies including Publicis Groupe, Random House, VML, and DIGITAS — she returned to her hometown to join Gwangju University, where she is now an Associate Professor in the Department of Visual Image Design. She also runs Biibiis, a design studio working at the intersection of visual design and emerging technology.

At Gwangju University, Henney is building a four-year, competency-based UX/UI curriculum from the ground up — one designed for students who will graduate into a world where most production tasks are automated.

Her teaching philosophy shifts the focus from tools to decisions: defining problems, testing hypotheses, and owning the reasoning behind every design choice. Most recently, she led students in a city-scale public media project where they photographed their surroundings, expanded the images using AI, and saw their work displayed on large outdoor digital billboards across the city — a reminder that design education can be, and should be, genuinely exhilarating.

She runs before dawn and photographs mountains. Sometimes at the same time.