Dr. Matteo Testa is a strategic designer and researcher based in Milan after studying at Politecnico di Milano and Kookmin University.

His expertise ranges from communication and user experience design to data visualization and creative technologies. He has worked in visual communication and taught creative coding with the Codice Inutile collective. Since 2020, he has collaborated with Arup in digital advisory and R&D projects for the built environment and organized the Europe TotalUX network.

Q: What does user experience mean in your work?

MT: As a designer, I am invested in the many facets of strategic design for systemic change with accessible experiences enabled by digital technology. Over the past years, I have shifted my focus from experimental multimedia to strategic advisory work. This change is driven by the desire for a tangible impact on emerging social and environmental issues while striving to be the best possible advocates for all humans involved.

From this perspective, User Experience is a flexible method we can use to track the problem of understanding how people will participate in evolving contexts by involving them through every stage. This practice blends research techniques and design thinking to inform how we envision, prototype, and test our solutions in collaboration with our stakeholders.

In my experience, the most effective approach involves integrating the traditional toolkit of actionable prototypes and narrative-style synthesis with real-time data analysis and visualization. By doing so, we take on the role of translators, conveying technical domain knowledge to clients and validated user requirements to engineers. With each intervention, we strive to encourage people to contribute to systemic change in their field without forgetting to add a touch of delight.

Q: From your perspective, what are the potentials and challenges of UX design in urban and transport planning?

MT: In the field of design applied to the built environment, we are in tension with the growing scope and connectivity of problems that need to be addressed. Nowhere is this more crucial than in urban and transportation planning, where technical and social dimensions are intricately linked.

In such projects, we must advocate the integration of the engineering, social sciences, and design fields. Whether it’s walkable streets or airport operations, the desired outcomes require integrated systems of seamless services that genuinely cater to user needs and goals—spanning end users, clients, workers, and regulators.

UX research methods must evolve to incorporate interpretable data-driven insights without replacing traditional qualitative data and intuition. In the past years, I have been researching new workflows using topic modeling and sentiment analysis to organize interview transcripts and community detection on surveys to derive collective personas. I believe our practice makes an essential contribution, but it is time for improvement in accuracy, cost-effectiveness, and balancing biases.

In this scenario, I am optimistic about the possibility of technology addressing the single issues, but I see keeping environmental and social sustainability together as the main challenge. We need to develop tools that align with collective interests and adapt to ongoing societal changes.

Q: What is the role of creative technology as a communication tool and adaptable medium for exploring UX solutions (e.g., data sonification)?

MT: Creative technology is a wide interdisciplinary area of contemporary art that centers on mediums and tools as part of the meaning creation. These tools have become essential to my practice; as an immersive, flexible interface, they can enable innovative approaches to work, research, and entertainment. The possibilities are truly endless. I have applied it in the past in digital formats for web design, product configurators, and data journalism, as well as physical exhibitions and mixed-reality sculptures. Organizing workshops in Milan with Codice Inutile collective, I have found that they are also invaluable as didactic tools at all levels to teach about art and science through practical collective learning.

I am currently focused on researching design applications of responsive spaces. This started with the development of a generative soundscape for a temporary installation in the Arup London Hall. In this piece, musical composition and acoustics parameters are controlled in real-time by data regarding the smart building resources usage, comfort levels, and occupancy. I am planning to further explore the value of sonification in the representation of time and emotions and as a complement to visualization for better accessibility. Through this work, I aim to design transparent and equitable technologies that promote sustainable and cooperative behaviors instead of imposing procedures, using design to empower people to make sensible choices by fostering a deeper understanding of the consequences of their actions.