Episode Details

Whether we admit it, like it, or believe it, we’re in a relationship with AI.

That’s the first of many powerful reflections made by Sara Vienna, Metalab’s Chief Design Officer, in her must-read manifesto about how design and product must evolve.

Unlike the design leaders who speculate about AI's impact, Sara and her world-class team are years ahead. They are designing disruptive AI product experiences and leveraging AI to elevate their workflows. Sara’s episode is one of the most important conversations we’ve had about the future of design and products.

Listen on Spotify | Listen on Apple Podcasts

She believes that AI will change how we work and what we build. Those who embrace the potential of AI will succeed in the oncoming disruption. But most importantly, the future of product+AI will be in making five mindset shifts:

They’re fundamentally principles for humanizing experiences.

The hope is that AI will finally bridge the divide so products can deliver the value we’ve always wished was possible in the most humanized way possible.

But there will be challenges in accomplishing this:

* Most product orgs are built around the concept of delivery, not design excellence

* Unlocking user data: Getting access to valuable data and knowing how to use it in a meaningful way are still more fantasy than reality

* In every direction we turn, trust is being diluted

* Design as we know it will need to be reborn to adapt to move from creating pixel-perfect interfaces to ones that adapt and spawn based on user interactions

Again, I highly recommend listening to the entire episode.

Thanks for reading Design of AI: Strategies & insights for product teams! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Envisioning the future of design & product

If we extrapolate on Sara Vienna’s vision of how design should change, a couple of core reality checks come to mind:

* Today, we can’t even conceptualize what products will be able to do tomorrow. Just like new AI tools are being released faster than we can read about them, more teams than ever are competing to deliver the use case & interaction model that will redefine a category. It’s a race to an undefined & moving finish line.

* The underlying models may be the heartbeat of future products, but design will always be the brain. Products plug into whichever model suits them best at a particular moment, usually based on cost and accuracy. But just like each of our minds brings a different lived reality and way of using knowledge, the models are less important than the strategy that’s been designed into the product.

* Fewer designers and product managers will yield immense power. AI automation platforms —like Make and Loveable— can effectively replicate more than half of products today. This percentage will grow until such a point that any product will soon be able to be cloned, undermining its competitive advantage. The designers and product managers working on the future of design will have the funding th