AI and Design

Dan and Nik talk about how to design for your next user being an agent, the impact of AI on team structure and dynamics, the challenge of memory and recall in conversation-based AI systems, and the shift towards AI experience design focused on constraints, not prompts.

Chapters
00:00 Your Next User is an Agent
12:23 Rethinking the Shape of Design Teams in AI World
17:03 The Impact of AI Efficiency on Team Interactions
24:39 The Forgotten Conversation Problem in AI
31:14 The End of Prompting: AI Experience Design with Constraints

LINKS
Your product has a new user. It’s not human.
https://www.elenaverna.com/p/your-product-has-a-new-user-its-not

Rethinking the shape of design teams in an AI world
https://uxdesign.cc/rethinking-the-shape-of-design-teams-in-an-ai-world-82f986bf9a27

The “Bug-Free” Workforce: How AI Efficiency Is Subtly Disrupting The Interactions That Build Strong Teams
https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2026/04/bug-free-workforce-ai-disrupting-teams/

The forgotten conversation problem in AI chat
https://uxdesign.cc/the-forgotten-conversation-problem-in-ai-chat-4d3d0c3ea525

The End of Prompting: Why the Future of AI Experience Design Is Constraint-First
https://uxmag.com/articles/the-end-of-prompting-why-the-future-of-ai-experience-design-is-constraint-first

Google's MC Dean, the author of over 100 AI skills for designers on everything from accessibility to moods, joins Nik and Dan to talk about Skills: how to make them, how to use them, and what the future of them could be.

LINKS

MC Dean on Substack
https://marieclairedean.substack.com/

MC Dean on Github
https://github.com/owl-listener

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman book
https://amzn.to/4sYGQek

Surprise surprise, Dan and Nik talk about Anthropic's launch of Claude Design. The Nik does a set of rapid-fire interviews from the 2026 CHI conference, featuring the latest HCI research in AI and Design.

Dan checks out a Fast Company interview with Anthropic's Head of Design Joel Lewenstein and finds reasons for hope. Dmitry Kargaev points out the flaws of AI UX and has some reasons for why is happens. A catalog of AI brand archetypes, and Dan applauds Patrizia Bertini's call to rethink Human-Centered Design to be less about "users" and more about "citizens."

Links:
Fast Company Interview with Joel Lewenstein
https://www.fastcompany.com/91519289/inside-anthropics-biggest-design-choices

AI Products Have Terrible UX: Here's Why
https://hackernoon.com/ai-products-have-terrible-ux-heres-why

Aesthetics of AI
https://www.acolorbright.com/en/insights/aesthetics-of-ai

Human-Centred Design has grown up. It’s time we did too
https://uxdesign.cc/human-centred-design-has-grown-up-it-is-time-we-did-too-766601c1fc7d

We're All Doing The Same Job Now
https://odannyboy.medium.com/were-all-doing-the-same-job-now-81924e0c80d6

The Existential Designer
https://odannyboy.medium.com/the-existential-designer-facilitating-meaning-through-interaction-8952c358ec52

Dan, Nik, and special guest Mike Kuniavsky ("Observing the User Experience") do a deep dive into the impact of AI on the traditional design practice and process. They get into the disappearing/evolving role of design artifacts, the influence of AI on design literacy, and the reevaluation of the design process in the age of AI. AI has triggered the democratization of design tools, a shift in organizational power dynamics, and ofttimes the complete disregard for of unknown unknowns. They also explore the changing product risk surface, the redefinition of scale in design practice, and the role of synthetic users in user-centered design.

LINKS:
Mike's article "Design practice assumes a world that no longer exists: what’s next?" https://medium.com/@mikekuniavsky/design-practice-assumes-a-world-that-no-longer-exists-whats-next-ca3f588ad4d8

Other recent articles on Design Process:
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/design-process-isnt-dead/
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/design-process-isnt-dead/
https://medium.com/@kristian.bjornhaug/the-design-process-isnt-dead-but-ai-is-changing-where-design-happens-220dce1b3acd
https://medium.com/design-bootcamp/the-new-design-process-2-6-2b5967507263
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/design-process-isnt-dead-its-only-thing-save-us-rick-starbuck-7pbmc/

“Cognitive surrender” leads AI users to abandon logical thinking, research finds https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/04/research-finds-ai-users-scarily-willing-to-surrender-their-cognition-to-llms/