Rosenverse

This video is only accessible to Gold members. Log in or register for a free Gold Trial Account to watch.

Log in Register

Most conference talks are accessible to Gold members, while community videos are generally available to all logged-in members.

Day 1 Panel
Gold
Tuesday, June 4, 2024 • Designing with AI 2024
Share the love for this talk
Day 1 Panel
Speakers: Cennydd Bowles , Dan Rosenberg and Lisa Welchman
Link:

Summary

In this panel, Lisa Welchman, Kenneth Bowles, and Dan Rosenberg engage in a deep conversation about the evolving role of designers and UX professionals as AI increasingly impacts their work and the broader society. Kenneth stresses the dual meaning of responsibility, emphasizing that designers must consider users, society, and their profession, not just immediate clients. Dan highlights the risk of blind faith in AI tools, cautioning about ‘garbage in, garbage out’ and the importance of human judgment in design decisions. Lisa points out the commoditization of design work driven partially by the profession itself, warning of potential disintermediation and urging designers to reclaim their agency by understanding business and technology deeply. They all agree on the imperative for designers to engage with emerging technologies proactively rather than resist. Collaboration across disciplines, especially with data science, and addressing structural organizational silos are critical to responsibly guide AI’s integration. The panel also touches on designing for unpredictable AI error states, ethical mitigation strategies, and the importance of preserving human judgment and values in the face of increasing automation. The talk concludes with a call to action for designers to become technologically literate, ethically engaged, and to actively shape the trajectory of AI to benefit society.

Key Insights

  • Designers have a professional obligation to consider not only users but also society and their own profession when creating AI-driven products.

  • Human judgment remains essential in AI-assisted design, as current AI cannot reliably make complex ethical or strategic decisions.

  • There is a real threat of designers losing influence as companies might opt to replace human judgment with cheaper, AI-driven decision-making.

  • Commoditization of UX work through automation and componentization has weakened designers’ power in the industry.

  • Effective design leadership requires a deep understanding of business, technology, and the broader organizational ecosystem.

  • Collaboration between designers, data scientists, and other disciplines is crucial to address AI biases and ensure high-quality data inputs.

  • Designing for AI requires anticipating infinite error states and building capacity for ethical mitigation, which demands organizational space and time.

  • Middle management silos present a significant barrier to cross-disciplinary collaboration necessary for responsible AI integration.

  • The best designers move upstream, becoming product strategists rather than focusing solely on surface interaction design.

  • Technological literacy for designers is critical to maintaining relevance and effectively shaping future workflows with AI and beyond.

Notable Quotes

"Designers have obligations not just to users or employers but also to society and to their own profession."

"I fear some company leaders will soon cut designers out of decision loops, believing AI can do it better."

"Garbage in, garbage out risk is very real when using AI for user research synthesis."

"There’s more to being human, even in business, than quickly answering questions or summing up data."

"If you don’t understand the business, you don’t deserve a seat in the C-suite."

"We’ve done a lot of self-commoditization by componentizing our work and making it easier to automate."

"It’s not about dropping human judgment, but about augmenting it responsibly with AI."

"Error states are essentially infinite in generative AI, so we need to design and test proactively for them."

"Middle management often preserves the status quo, making collaboration difficult in large enterprises."

"Now is the time to engage, understand, and influence AI’s trajectory before it’s too late."

Ask the Rosenbot
Melinda Belcher
Bridging the Gap: Making the Most of the Differences Between Agency and Enterprise
2024 • Enterprise Experience 2020
Gold
Shawna Hein
Create a Cohesive Civic Design Practice Across Agency, Vendors, and Contracts
2022 • Civic Design 2022
Gold
Amy Jiménez Márquez
The Atypical UX Manager Path (Videoconference)
2020 • Enterprise Community
Robert Fabricant
Industry junctures: Paths forwards for UXR and the critical decisions that get us there [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]
2024 • Advancing Research Community
Iain McMaster
Design and Product: from Frenemy to Harmony
2023 • Design in Product 2023
Gold
Farid Sabitov
Automatization for Large Enterprise Teams
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2020
Gold
Robin Beers
Beyond Insights: Researchers as Organizational Change Catalysts
2024 • Advancing Research 2024
Gold
Katy Mogal
But Do Your Insights Scale?
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Sarah Brooks
Fireside chat with Sarah Brooks and Jen Pahlka (Videoconference)
2021 • Civic Design Community
Abbey Smalley
Today’s Design Ops and Programs Landscape & Career Paths
2023 • DesignOps Summit 2023
Gold
Erin Weigel
Get Your Whole Team Testing to Design for Impact
2024 • Rosenfeld Community
Natalia Radywyl
Co-Designing New Power in Australia's Public Sector
2022 • Civic Design 2022
Gold
Mike Brzozowski
UX in everyday products: Empowering climate conscious choices (Videoconference)
2024 • Climate UX Interest Group (Rosenfeld Community)
Vincent Brathwaite
Opener: Past, Present, and Future—Closing the Racial Divide in Design Teams
2020 • DesignOps Summit 2020
Gold
Peter Van Dijck
Coffee with Lou #4: Taking a Peek Under the Rosenbot's Hood (Videoconference)
2024 • Rosenfeld Community
Saara Kamppari-Miller
DesignOps for Inclusive Design and Accessibility (Videoconference)
2022 • DesignOps Community

More Videos

Zariah Cameron

"Share everything, own nothing but credit everyone."

Zariah Cameron

ReDesigning Wellbeing for Equitable Care in the Workplace

September 23, 2024

John Cutler

"Ownership means belonging to the person who anticipates, observes, or monitors the prioritization process—not distributed ownership."

John Cutler Harry Max

Prioritization for designers and product managers (1st of 3 seminars) (Videoconference)

June 13, 2024

Nick Cochran

"Treat every conversation as an opportunity to learn and to make connections."

Nick Cochran

Growing in Enterprise Design through Making Connections

June 3, 2019

Deanna Smith

"Managing change well is about the experience and buy-in of your team, not just frequency of change."

Deanna Smith

Leading Change with Confidence: Strategies for Optimizing Your Process

September 23, 2024

Magdalena Zadara

"Don’t automatically dismiss paper forms—they often contain simplifications that accelerate digital service design."

Magdalena Zadara

Zero Hour: How to Get Far Quickly When Starting Your Digital Service Unit Late

November 16, 2022

Nova Wehman-Brown

"Thousands of users were clicking on a text that wasn’t even a link—it looked like one, but wasn’t."

Nova Wehman-Brown

We've Never Done This Before

June 4, 2019

Liwei Dai

"Close collaboration with AI researchers, including attending interviews and call center sessions together, blends human empathy with technical expertise."

Liwei Dai

The Heart and Brain of the AI Research

March 31, 2020

Gordon Ross

"We made changes in the last three weeks that would normally have taken three years. Could we expect a COVID dividend?"

Gordon Ross

12 Months of COVID-19 Design and Digital Response with the British Columbia Government

December 8, 2021

Tutti Taygerly

"Ruthless prioritization tells us to be more efficient, but it feeds into a punishment culture."

Tutti Taygerly

Make Space to Lead

June 12, 2021