Sydney Creative Customer Experience (CCX)

Welcome Back CCX Sydney to our Events for 2026 from myself, Lydia, Sylvia and James and we are planning a bumper selection of speakers for the new year. Our next event on July 21st will be a interactive AI tools workshop facilitated by our very own James Earnshaw and from Faster Zebra Charbel Zeaiter who will both be showing and helping
our CCX members move beyond the prompt and start using AI more effectively to deepen Design discovery.

As this will be a workshop, will be applying a $10.00 cover charge to cover Food and drinks and on this occasion will be kindly hosted by our new friends at Lorikeet. Details below on the venue location (Surry Hills)
IMPORTANT NOTE FOR THIS SESSION!
An Important detail is that due to gaining entry to Lorikeet we will need any CCX Member planning to attend this session to supply us with their First and Last name in advance of attending.
On this occasion we will not be able to accept Members who do not supply these details. Many thanks CCX Sydney.
PLEASE NOTE Attendees please bring your own Laptops and your favourite AI prompting tools installed ready to use.

About the workshop
AI is often framed as a way to move faster: faster ideas, faster wireframes, faster outputs. But for designers, that may be the least interesting use case.
This session explores how AI can be used at the beginning of the design process — during discovery, framing and definition — not to replace design thinking, but to amplify it.

Drawing on the Double Diamond, service design and UX discovery practices, we’ll look at how small, deliberate interactions with AI can build a shared “project brain”: a strategic thinking partner that understands the context, constraints, users, assumptions, risks and emerging opportunities.
This is not a talk about agents. It is not a demo of one tool. It is a practical exploration of how the skills designers already have — framing, questioning, synthesis, critique and sense-making — become even more valuable when working with AI.

Part talk, part workshop, attendees will try a step-by-step discovery flow for themselves and explore how AI can help them stay in the problem space longer before jumping to solutions.

About James:
James Earnshaw is a UX and product design leader who has spent his career helping teams make sense of complex problems across telecommunications, banking and financial services. With a background in service design, discovery, design systems and enterprise product delivery, James is interested in how strong design process helps teams avoid rushing to the first plausible answer. Recently, he has been using that experience to develop a new way of working with AI — one that leans into the Double Diamond, structured discovery and step-by-step context building to turn AI into a sharper strategic partner, rather than just a faster content generator.

About Charbel:
With 27+ years across design, tech, education, entrepreneurship, and product, I’ve built things that breathe across four continents. From shop floors to strategy rooms, classrooms to fabric cutting rooms, I’ve helped companies and people shape their vision and make it tangible.
Right now, Charbel is focused on:
• Neupreneur (coming soon)
• Faster Zebra: learning for the new economy
• Velvet Onion & Friends: an innovation and product development agency
• Febble Flim & Family: fictional worlds that dance too close to the edge of reality
And now, I'm bringing these vast experiences to life: Young Founders, The Innovators, XD4.0 & Brand Mavericks: kits and books for mindset-first founders building ventures that open up a world of possibility.
If you're to explore something - conventional, unconventional, or completely undefined - I’d love to hear what you’re working on.
Good things come to those who make.

Therefore don't miss out on a place at our second interactive workshop CCX Sydney event for 2026, as places will be limited for this session.