Rosenverse

Log in or create a free Rosenverse account to watch this video.

Log in Create free account

100s of community videos are available to free members. Conference talks are generally available to Gold members.

From AI to Zeitgeist: Theory as the design antidote to AI hype
Thursday, March 27, 2025 • Rosenfeld Community

This video is featured in the AI and UX playlist.

Share the love for this talk
From AI to Zeitgeist: Theory as the design antidote to AI hype
Speakers: Uday Gajendar and Adam Richardson
Link:

Summary

In an environment of UX staff reductions, a focus on tangible design skills and tool expertise, quarterly profits, and angst over what AI means for the future of everyone’s jobs, what place does “theory” have? As designers and researchers we engage in theory every day by hypothesizing: “If we design it like this, then we will have outcome X.” The bigger the problem you’re trying to solve, the more important it becomes to have a theoretical framework about why you’re doing what you’re doing. The breathless parade of AI releases present the biggest challenges (and potential opportunities) in many years. As designers we should have a posture on how to shape how AI is used and its impacts. Much as the mid-century modernists developed coherent frameworks for understanding the relationship between form, function, and human needs, using novel technologies coming out of World War II, we must now articulate theories that help us make sense of this new landscape where intelligence itself has become a design material. Join UX researcher/strategist Adam Richardson and UX design leader Uday Gajendar for an exploration of how we might develop the theoretical foundations designers need to thoughtfully shape AI interactions.

Key Insights

  • Design has always been a form of theory, predicting outcomes and unintended consequences of design decisions.

  • Historical design movements, like Arts and Crafts and Bauhaus, were driven by social, cultural, and humanistic ideals, not just aesthetics.

  • Victor Papanek framed design as a conscious effort to impose meaningful order against mass consumerism and ecological damage.

  • Dick Buchanan viewed design as a liberal art of technology and a form of rhetoric shaping how people live.

  • Many foundational UX theories, such as affordances, are being neglected in favor of short-term growth and efficiency.

  • The current design profession lacks a shared, hopeful ideal or movement that is sustainable and collective.

  • Craft involves intentionality and care, extending beyond physical making to digital micro-interactions that convey human presence.

  • AI introduces knowledge as a new material in design, complicating notions of authorship and human touch.

  • Systems thinking and participatory design remain crucial for understanding trade-offs and unintended consequences in AI-driven projects.

  • Individual designers often struggle to enact humanistic values within large organizations driven by investor and capitalist pressures.

Notable Quotes

"As designers, in many ways, we are theorists, even if we don’t think of ourselves that way."

"The Arts and Crafts movement tried to recapture the artisan’s humanity lost after the industrial revolution."

"Mass production is here to stay; modernism asked what we can do to make it more humanistic."

"Design is a rhetorical statement, an argument for living your life a certain way."

"You can’t develop a career just mastering a tool; those become obsolete as technology evolves."

"We don’t need more tactical skill training; we need a movement with shared ideals and collective purpose."

"Good designers can shift scale fluidly between the big picture and craft-level details."

"AI means knowledge is now the material we’re working with in design, not just pixels or code."

"AI-generated imagery feels too perfect and shiny, lacking the flawed human presence we appreciate."

"Trying to figure this stuff out inside your day job is nearly impossible; we need spaces for slower thinking."

Ask the Rosenbot
Sam Proulx
SUS: A System Unusable for Twenty Percent of the Population
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Jennifer Kong
[Case study] Journeying toward AI-assisted documentation in healthcare
2024 • Designing with AI 2024
Gold
Randolph Duke II
War Stories LIVE! Randy Duke II
2020 • Advancing Research 2020
Gold
Shipra Kayan
How we Built a VoC (Voice of the Customer) Practice at Upwork from the Ground Up
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Mac Smith
Measuring Up: Using Product Research for Organizational Impact
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Roberta Dombrowski
5 Reasons to Bring your Recruiting in House
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Milan Guenther
A Shared Language for Co-Creating Ambitious Endeavours
2023 • Enterprise UX 2023
Gold
Sharon Bautista
Time to Make the Donuts: How User Research Helped Bridge Disparate Teams
2024 • Enterprise Experience 2020
Gold
Ellie Krysl
Planned Right. Managed Right. Designed Right.
2023 • Enterprise UX 2023
Gold
Peace is waged with sticky notes: Mapping Real-World Experiences
2018 • Enterprise Experience 2018
Gold
Alla Weinberg
People Are Sick of Change: Psychological Safety is the Cure (Videoconference)
2023 • DesignOps Community
Ryan Rumsey
Business Influence Without Losing Your Soul (Videoconference)
2021 • Enterprise Community
Research Operations at Scale
2017 • DesignOps Summit 2017
Gold
Sam Proulx
Understanding Screen Readers on Mobile: How And Why to Learn from Native Users
2023 • Enterprise UX 2023
Gold
Maggie Dieringer
Creating Consistency Through Constant Change
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2020
Gold
Steve Portigal
War Stories LIVE! Steve Portigal
2020 • Advancing Research 2020
Gold

More Videos

Jemma Ahmed

"Without shared organizational goals and customer-focused OKRs, democratization efforts fragment and fail to scale."

Jemma Ahmed Steve Carrod Chris Geison Dr. Shadi Janansefat Christopher Nash

Democratization: Working with it, not against it [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]

July 24, 2024

Nina Jurcic

"Great design doesn’t happen in isolation; it’s subject to power dynamics within organizations."

Nina Jurcic

The Design System Rollercoaster: From Enabler and Bottleneck to Catalyst for Change

October 3, 2023

Nathan Curtis

"Almost all the non-adopters were in engineering — they were more interested in their power within the organization than efficiency for users."

Nathan Curtis Nalini P. Kotamraju Jack Moffett Dawn Ressel

Discussion

June 9, 2016

Saara Kamppari-Miller

"Our KSPs don’t change yearly because they’re fundamental to the core business; changing them often would be very disruptive."

Saara Kamppari-Miller Nicole Bergstrom Shashi Jain

Key Metrics: Comparing Three Letter Acronym Metrics That Include the Word “Key”

November 13, 2024

Malini Rao

"You have to give the dust some time to settle when managing resistance."

Malini Rao

Lessons Learned from a 4-year Product Re-platforming Journey

June 9, 2021

Mackenzie Cockram

"The website redesign is much more than a redesign; it’s a complete change in content and design strategy."

Mackenzie Cockram Sara Branco Cunha Ian Franklin

Integrating Qualitative and Quantitative Research from Discovery to Live

December 16, 2022

Bria Alexander

"Sponsor sessions are not sales pitches but truly high-quality content that you won’t want to miss."

Bria Alexander

Opening Remarks

June 9, 2021

Jackie Ho

"Growth boards enabled direction change sooner by objectively evaluating team health and strategic alignment."

Jackie Ho

Lead Effectively While Preserving Team Autonomy with Growth Boards

January 8, 2024

Dan Hill

"Private cars are parked 95% of the time, making them highly inefficient in urban environments."

Dan Hill

Designing for the infrastructures of everyday life

June 4, 2024