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Ernest Hui
Cathay
Head of Design
Ernest Hui is Head of Design at Cathay, the Hong Kong-based international aviation group. He leads the design function across customer-facing digital products, including the Cathay app, website, booking, check-in, and loyalty platforms, and is building the HORIZONS design system as the shared foundation for consistent product design across the group. His focus now is building an organisation-wide Design Practice that defines design at Cathay under one shared methodology and research discipline. His team's work has been recognised internationally, including Red Dot, the London Design Awards, and the Illumi Award for Research Excellence, among other awards. Ernest has spoken at Aviation Festival Asia, FTE, QUAL360 APAC, and The Outlook Conference. His central thesis: technology serves the experience, not the other way around.
Tools Create Possibility, Design Creates Conviction: Building Trust for Design in the Age of AI-Powered Travel
In 1839, photography arrived and painters declared their art form dead. They were asking the wrong question: photography did not end art, it kicked off a new renaissance. Design is in its own 1839 moment now. AI has made making cheap: options, mockups, and interfaces can be generated before lunch. What AI has not made cheap is conviction, the judgement to choose, reject, and defend a point of view.
This talk tells that story from inside an 80-year-old airline. It traces how a design team grew from 5 to 40, how research became the foundation that let one researcher's findings carry the weight of ten, and what it took to move from being asked 'can you add some UX to this' to design being in the room before the brief is written. It is a practitioner's account of earning permission to lead inside a traditional, regulated enterprise, and of what that earned trust is now worth as AI reshapes the digital travel journey, where empathy, automation, and connected systems have to converge without losing the traveller's trust.
1、A first-hand account of building a design practice inside a traditional, regulated enterprise, growing a team from 5 to 40 and earning the organisational trust to be included before the brief is written.
2、A working answer to what becomes valuable when AI makes production cheap: a practical case for conviction and judgement as the scarce skill, not a slogan.
3、A grounded view of where empathy, AI, and connected systems can converge in a real passenger journey, and where that convergence still depends on human trust.
