Michael Kibedi

@uxmichael.co

1173 Followers 475 Following

👊🏾💥 critical technologist // design researcher // writer // speaker // 📨 First and Fifteenth // 🦆 birdwatcher // 🍽️ collects menus (no, really) // 🔗 https://linktr.ee/uxmichaelco // 🌐 uxmichael.co

Photo of Michael Kibedi, a critical technologist and design researcher, speaking at the 2026 UX London conference
Promotional image for UX London, a 3-day UX and design conference in London, advertising a talk called “Whose English gets to be default?” by design researcher Michael Kibedi with a 20% discount code JOIN_MK
Photo of the All Day Hey! Conference screen in a cinema auditorium
Four Forbes business magazines, each with celebrated tech CEOs who have in different ways disgraced their companies.
Still from BLKNWS Terms & Conditions, showing a world map zoomed in on the Atlantic Ocean, South America, Caribbean, and Africa with red and green dots in the ocean visualising the thousands of Africans who were transported as enslaved people.
Photo of the book” The AI Con: How To Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create The Future We Want”, by Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna. The cover a plain white cover with the word “The” in giant black letters, “AI” in giant red letters, and “Con” in giant black letters, and the book is shot close up and top down on a light green textured wool covered sofa material.
A lecture in a university building filled with people. On the projector screen is the logo "NO & __" in reference to the forum on Technological Refusal
Photo of a new book called Design Beyond the Human: Transdisciplinary Conversations About the Planet, published by Bloomsbury
Promotional post of Brain Rot, AI Slop, and the Enshittification of the Internet showing an AI Slop image of Jesus juggling two shrimps (yes you read that right)
ffconf an independent web dev conference in Brighton at the Duke of York cinema
Royal coat of arms and logo for the Royal College of Arts, one of the top arts universities in the world here in London. The white logo and text is superimposed on a dark purple-grey filtered photo of the Dyson building campus.
Fungi inspired promotional poster "Fungi as Your Futurist: A playbook for symbiotic futures” by sporesight studio.
Photo of a network interface card on a white background.
Luke Murphy of Bristol's Web Dev Conf, presenting a slide showing the full lineup of ffconf in Brighton, which will be on Friday 14 November.
Jhey Tompkins introducing his talk at Bristol's Web Dev Conf which will probably teach you more about design, engineering and the marrying of the two than most courses, bootcamps, or books. Seriously.
Remy Sharp presenting at Bristol's Web Dev Conf on how he got into fixing Gameboys with a few simple tools, and a bit of patience. A mindful hobby that is also a parable for how we should all make do and mend more, in an industry urging to buy the shinier marginally better thing that we probably don't need.
Salma Alam-Naylor presenting at Bristol's Web Dev Conf. The slide shown is the final one showing Salma's various web links and project pages, gloriously rendered in the classic Netscape browser in Times New Roman, reminiscent of the early 90's web.
Lex Lofthouse presenting a masterclass in Design for Developers at Bristol's Web Dev Conf. The slide shows is a bright turquoise background with some commonly used symbols: heart, rotating arrow, question mark in a circle, which are all highlighted as common ambiguous icons we should always label.
Henry Desroches, a creative design engineer, presenting at Bristol's Web Dev Conf. On screen is a black slide with giant white san serif letters "THAT'S PERSONAL WEBSITES BABEY."
Tey Bannerman speaking at Bristol's Web Dev Conf, impeccably dressed in high-waisted straight leg white trousers, white short sleeved shirt and dark green tank top presenting important life lessons on finding balance between joy and discipline in work to reignite your passion for creativity.
Luke Murphy, co-organiser of Bristol's Web Dev Conf, introducing Michael Kibedi and his talk "Death, and how tech forgot about mortality"
Top-down photo of a critical technology non-fiction book published in French by éditions divergences, on plain white table, called APOCALYPSE NERDS by Nastasia Hadjadji and Olivier Tesquet. The book has plain bright yellow cover with both the title and authors in large text and the rest of the cover taken up with a blurb in French.
Michael Kibedi, a tall Black man wearing a rather fetching yellow black and white striped sleeveless knitted top, onstage at The Conference 2024, delivering a talk in the cavernous Slaghuset venue space in Malmö. It was a two day conference and, I've got to be honest, a career highlight. It was such a vibe!
A POV shot showing a hand holding a small passport sized self-published booklet called HYPE: A critical field guide by the German design researcher Johannes Klingebiel.
Hype Studies party in the Sants neighbourhood of Barcelona, a small club lit with red light and lots of hypers having after hours getting down!
Photo of a redbrick building that has been newly renovated so that it contains a glass front and modern interior, which is one of the buildings of Universitat Oberta de Catalunya in Barcelona.
A dimly lit gallery space with spare interior fittings with a fluorescent light tube leaning against the two side walls that lights the room with an eerie blue-grey light. In the middle of the gallery, is a raised platform with a series of steel pipes, running in fixed track formation with occasional bends, that range from the ceiling to the floor in the middle of which are a number of small flat screens with graphical displays. White text is overlaid stating “Meshwork by Merve Mepa. Connecting the structural logics of weaving to the complex digital infrastructures of today.”
A dimly lit gallery space with spare interior fittings with a fluorescent light tube leaning against the two side walls that lights the room with an eerie blue-grey light. In the middle of the gallery, is a raised platform with a series of steel pipes, running in fixed track formation with occasional bends, that range from the ceiling to the floor in the middle of which are a number of small flat screens with graphical displays.
A rainbow hued poster promoting a conference in Lisbon called Future Days with the giant slogan in black serif text “I’m co-creating a brighter future”. The conference takes place at Estufa Fria from 30 April to 2 May 2025
A mid-green promotional poster for a conference called Content Rising taking place on Thursday, 12 June at Kew Wakehurst in Sussex, England. One of the speakers is a design researcher called Michael Kibedi, who is a Black man with glasses wearing a white shirt, who will be giving a talk called Human Decentred Design.
A futuristic fantasy arid landscape showing a pinkish-blue sky and distant rock formations on the horizon, with a circle of twelve floating white heads facing inwards towards each other.
The title page of my talk “The Spirit of Bartleby: In defence of refusal” features art called “Incantations to a Vague Borderland”. The triptych, completed in 2024, is by the London-based artist Gaia Ozwyn whose practice seeks to test the boundaries of belonging and separation, echoing her reflections on her dual Caribbean-British identity.
A carved African ivory mask on a dark grey background. The mask has intricate carved details around its edges depicting small figures linking arms across the crown of its head and an interwoven textural piece around the base of it jawline. White text is overlaid stating “Fifteenth #13: On FESTAC ‘77. How the greatest show in Africa was accidentally forgotten. Available January 15th, 2025 at UXMICHAELCO.SUBSTACK.COM”.
Picture of a book titled “Imagination: A Manifesto” by Ruha Benjamin on a white tablecloth with multi coloured block stripes emanating in different directions from the centre so it looks likethe book is in the middle of a rainbow coloured explosion. The cover of the book features a young Black girl with elaborate braids staring out head-on with a dark orange border and sky-blue background. White text overlays the picture stating “First #13: Imagination - A Manifesto. Bringing poetic understanding to what radical imagination can be. Available January 1st, 2025 at UXMICHAELCO.SUBSTACK.COM”.
Picture of a book titled “Eaten by the Internet” edited by Corinne Cath on a textured cotton tablecloth with thick off-white and light blue stripes. The cover is vertically bisected half blue and half black, with the title and the names of its contributors on the cover. White text overlays the picture stating “First #12: Eaten by the Internet. The many impacts of internet infrastructural invisibility. Available December 1st, 2024 at UXMICHAELCO.SUBSTACK.COM”.
A large portrait painting of an eighteenth century white man in formal shirt and dark suit; however, the painting creates the illusion that the fabric of the portrait is being pulled aside to reveal the partially dressed figure of a young enslaved Black girl who stares directly at the viewer with a sad look. White text is overlaid stating “Fifteenth #11: On reclaiming futures. Bespeaking our desired futures into existence. Available November 15th, 2024 at UXMICHAELCO.SUBSTACK.COM”.
A white mug on a white desk, with four piles of neatly stacked books of a similar height to the mug behind it