The Trust Stack: Data, Decisions and Human Confidence in the Age of AI

In this new context, design is no longer only about shaping interfaces or improving usability. It becomes a way of making complex systems understandable, contestable, and accountable. Design can help people see how decisions are made, understand how their data is used, recognise uncertainty, and retain meaningful ways to question, correct, or override an automated outcome. As AI begins to remember, summarise, recommend, and act on our behalf, design expands into new territories: shaping consent, confidence, escalation, and control; designing for doubt; and creating the conditions under which trust can be earned rather than assumed. Hosted by Tech, No? at Barclays Eagle Lab as part of London Design Festival, The Trust Stack brings together perspectives from public technology, people science, trustworthy digital services, human-centred design, and AI product development. Drawing on work across GOV.UK, Barclays, Projects by IF, and Tomoro AI, the discussion will explore trust at several connected levels: how organisations introduce AI into everyday work; how public-facing systems communicate capability and uncertainty; how services use personal and organisational data responsibly; how AI agents become part of existing teams and workflows; and how design can connect technical decisions with the people and institutions affected by them. Together, the hosts and organisers, Yiner Zhou (panel host), Vicky Wang, and Xiaoyu Wu, will ask: What makes people trust AI at work, and when is scepticism valuable? How do services earn confidence when they build the test framework? What can public technology teach us about accountability and access? When AI tools remember, summarise, recommend, or act on our behalf, what should remain visible, contestable, and human? And what does design mean when the material being shaped is no longer only a product or service, but the relationship between people, data, institutions, and intelligent systems? This conversation is for designers, technologists, founders, researchers, strategists, public-sector practitioners, and anyone curious about how trust is created in real practice. Speakers Jose Carlos Alatrista — former Head of People Science, Barclays, organisational Agentic & AI Adoption Advisor Jose has over 15 years of experience building people analytics and people science functions. In the past two years, he has increasingly focused on AI adoption in large corporate settings, working with Microsoft 365 Copilot and gaining hands-on experience across agentic AI tools including Claude Code, Codex, and Copilot Studio. Pete Kowalczyk — AI Design Consultant, GOV.UK AI studio Pete is an award-winning writer and designer, helping develop the field of AI design. In 2025, he was a London Library Emerging Writer and in 2026 was recognised as one of the UK’s Top 10 Conversational AI practitioners. Sam Netherwood — Co-founder, Tomoro AI Sam focuses on how AI agents can become effective participants in real work. He brings a product-building perspective on designing human–AI collaboration that improves productivity while preserving clarity, control, and human expertise. Gemma Lord — Director, Projects by IF; IDEO alum Gemma is a creative leader who brings strategy, design and innovation together to help organisations make bold decisions and build products and services with data and AI can trust.