Speaker

Zhang Chen Canva Head of Design of CJKI Region
Head of Design of CJKI Region at Canva, and a founding employee of Canva's China office. Previously, as the first designer at LinkedIn China, he single‑handedly built the core visual identity and the beloved IP character "Mengmeng" for the professional social product "Chitu," pioneering the localization of a global social platform for the Chinese market.

With over 10 years of experience in internet design and five years in design management, he possesses strong design thinking capabilities as well as an international perspective on team management. He excels at bridging the gap between internet product design, visual communication, user research, and data analytics, driving design decisions from "subjective aesthetics" to "data‑ and insight‑driven" approaches.

His core competency lies in helping foreign‑funded unicorn companies cross cultural divides and achieve 0‑to‑1 localization. He has successfully helped two international unicorns enter the Chinese market, building design teams from scratch, defining product language, adapting to local user habits, and ultimately achieving business breakthroughs. At Canva China, he leads the design team in continuously exploring the localized expression of the "design equity" philosophy, ensuring that AI‑powered creative tools truly serve ordinary Chinese users.

Execution to Strategy: Redefine Design Roles in AI Age

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Session S1

Meeting room Undetermined

Time 10/30 13:30-17:30

Type Speech

Language Mandarin

Direction

keynote content

Content Introduction

As AI rapidly reshapes work, design and content professionals must make a critical leap: shifting from task‑oriented executors to strategy‑driven contributors who set the right direction. Beyond delivering high‑quality outputs, they connect content to business goals, user needs and growth paths, building reusable methodologies and measurable business impact.

To enable this transition, core capabilities fall into five categories:

1.Professional Competence——Master design systems and standards, translate problems into collaborative, verifiable solutions.

2.Business Acumen——Collect and interpret data, identify key drivers, and align content decisions with business outcomes.

3.AI Empowerment——Collaborate with AI to boost efficiency, bridge skill gaps, expand creative boundaries, and ensure controlled quality and consistency.

4.Global Mindset——Embrace cross‑cultural awareness and localization, develop transferable frameworks validated across markets.

5.Leadership——Build consensus amid uncertainty, orchestrate resources and collaboration to amplify team results.

AI delivers the greatest leverage. Rather than replacing expertise, it cuts costs and speeds up repetitive and high‑barrier work. This frees capacity for high‑value work: judgment, trade‑offs, framework building and strategic planning.

Ultimately, the value of design and content lies not only in deliverables, but in better‑quality decision‑making at scale, empowering organizations to reinvent roles and thrive in the AI era.

Participants Benefit

1、Master designers’ 5 core competencies for AI-era strategic growth
2、Learn full-link growth thinking via Canva’s global cases
3、Learn practical human-AI teamwork: break skill limits, seize opportunities and deliver projects.

Work Case

Produce outputs at scale with AI
Strengthen AI localization adaptation with professional insights
Boost content operations with a global perspective
Expand font library assets with AI capabilities