Updated October 31, 2025
Designing with AI 2025
After speaking at the first-ever Designing with AI 2024, I was delighted to curate the conference in 2025. Our focus was twofold: sharing AI best practices, and looking ahead to the future of design with new AI use cases. In the five months since the conference, we've seen AI and UX evolve rapidly, but the guidance of our DwAI25 speakers remains relevant. We're looking forward to continuing the conversation at Designing with AI 2026–planning is already underway!
13 items
by Llewyn Paine, Ph.D.
Tuesday, June 10, 2025 • Designing with AI 2025
Day 1 Using AI in UX with Impact
by Llewyn Paine
"When we began planning the agenda for Designing with AI 2025, we recognized that the industry was in vastly a different place from a year earlier. AI was past the point of pure experimentation for UX practitioners–companies were expecting real-world implementation, and that was creating some UX risk, as well as AI fatigue. We structured DwAI25 to address these two concerns: on day 1, using AI in UX with impact, and on day 2, looking ahead to cutting edge AI opportunities. This was the introduction to day 1, which focused on implementation, with experienced practitioners sharing AI best practices. They covered topics around org-wide adoption, frameworks, as well as risk mitigation, all from a human-centered lens."
Tuesday, June 10, 2025 • Designing with AI 2025
Managing the Human Engagement Risks of AI
by Ovetta Sampson
"Ovetta Sampson was our featured speaker for Day 1, speaking about the human engagement risks of AI.
She was a favorite of attendees, and her metaphors stuck with all of us –
AI as a “souped up mad lib,” not thinking but filling in the blanks.
AI as a toddler, who needs moral guidance from discerning designers.
It was an unvarnished look at the realities of designing for AI systems that aren’t as sophisticated as they appear!"
Tuesday, June 10, 2025 • Designing with AI 2025
AI-Readiness: Preparing NASA for a Data-Driven, Agile Future
by Erika Flowers
"Erika's an amazing storyteller–she put together multiple versions of this talk, all of them great. But I love where it ended up–emphasizing that AI readiness is not about moonshots, but about getting AI safely integrated into the everyday operations that keep things running at every organization, whether it’s a small business, or a sprawling government agency like NASA. "
Tuesday, June 10, 2025 • Designing with AI 2025
Optimizing AI Conversations: A Case Study on Personalized Shopping Assistance Frameworks
by Kritika Yadav
"One of the things that stood out to me about Kritika’s case study is its reliance on real business metrics. Her team developed a conversational framework that had quantifiable impact on profit.
It’s a wonderful model for all of us in UX as we seek to redefine our roles against AI automation. Efficiency is no longer an effective metric–we need to understand our true business impact, like Kritika demonstrates here."
Tuesday, June 10, 2025 • Designing with AI 2025
Fishing for Real Needs: Reimagining Journalism Needs with AI
by Patrick Boehler
"Patrick’s talk offers learnings from the world of journalism research. He introduces the concept of confidence ratings that get visualized alongside AI-generated insights, communicating at a glance what’s established fact, and what’s speculation.
I’d love to see more researchers and research toolmakers adopt this approach. AI-powered research isn’t going anywhere, but visualizing uncertainty makes it easier to make smart choices about how to use it."
Tuesday, June 10, 2025 • Designing with AI 2025
Who does the math: A designer’s journey in building an AI-based tutoring app
by Aras Bilgen
"“AI is like plastic.” Even if you didn’t attend Designing with AI, you may have seen Aras’ fantastic metaphor shared across social media after he gave this talk. He shares a cautionary case study about using AI to replace design craft. Aras is one of those rare individuals who deeply understands AI, but hasn’t jumped headfirst into hype. This is a can’t-miss talk."
Tuesday, June 10, 2025 • Designing with AI 2025
Day 1 Panel: Up to the Minute: The latest in AI’s impact on UX
by Bria Alexander, Brittany Hobbs, Christopher Noessel
"We ended day 1 with a candid discussion of the rapidly changing AI landscape over the first half of 2025. Along the way, our panelists discussed problems of uneven AI access, work automation, and global AI regulation.
This was our toughest event to program because it meant finding UX practitioners who are not only exceptional at their craft, but also deeply in touch with the latest developments in AI. But I’m so pleased with the final result. Our panelists have worked at prominent AI companies; they’ve authored books on AI design; and they host AI podcasts. These critical insider perspectives resulted in a unique discussion of where the industry is headed."
Wednesday, June 11, 2025 • Designing with AI 2025
“Feels Like Paper!”: Interfacing AI through Paper
by Lukas Moro
"Lukas kicked off Day 2 of the conference with his stunning material explorations of AI and paper. If you love mixed reality, spatial computing, or internet of things, this is not one to miss.
But there’s value for all of us in seeing how Lukas explores integrating AI into the physical world. Because AI will not stay in chat windows forever–many companies have begun exploring physical AI and world models, and Lukas’ prototypes are a great entry point for seeing how design can inform this work."
Wednesday, June 11, 2025 • Designing with AI 2025
Latent Scope: Finding structure in unstructured data
by Ian Johnson
"Ian convinced me that the future of AI for researchers is not automating qualitative analysis: it’s using LLM embedding space to directly explore connections in our data.
Ian developed Latent Scope, a tool to visualize the connections in unstructured data. That includes everything from text fields on surveys to digital doodles and multimedia. In this talk he shares his own powerful stories about how this approach has helped him build better features and even remove unsafe content online. And he also provides step-by-step instructions for how to get started yourself."
Wednesday, June 11, 2025 • Designing with AI 2025
Sentient Scenes and Radically Adaptive Experiences
by Josh Clark, Veronika Kindred
"Josh and Veronika share some impressive experiments in what might be called “generative UI.”
They envision a future where designers take on a new kind of role: one of director, where they’re “guiding how the AI should behave” instead of crafting and laying out UI elements.
The “sentient scenes” they create through their method are also just delightful and feel like a whole new direction in design. "
Wednesday, June 11, 2025 • Designing with AI 2025
Shipping your code generation experiments to production
by John Donmoyer
"If you’ve ever been curious about vibe coding and how it can work for designers, John’s talk is a great place to start.
We received several great submissions on this topic, but John’s stood out because of how he explores different AI coding tools across the full spectrum of complexity. John makes easy to understand the types of tools available to designers and where to use them, as well as how this fits into the larger engineering context."
Wednesday, June 11, 2025 • Designing with AI 2025
Day 2 Panel: Looking ahead: Designing with AI in 2026
by Tom Armitage, Carla Diana, Kanene Ayo Holder
"Three exceptional design technologists debate what it looks like to co-create with AI. The insights from this panel are ones that I continue to share with other UX practitioners regularly:
You must use AI in order to be able to effectively critique it.
Your job as a designer is more than producing assets.
AI works best as a creative partner, not a one-stop production shop.
30 minutes wasn’t enough–I’d love to do a round 2. "
Wednesday, June 11, 2025 • Designing with AI 2025
Context Window: Five Futures for AI
by Matt Webb
"We wanted to end the conference with a note of inspiration. AI is changing design in ways that can feel scary, even existential.
So we brought in Matt Webb to do what he does so well: talk about the future, and the role design plays in it.
He does a fantastic job of inspiring us with the possibilities that AI enables for designers.
But this talk also ended up reframing how I saw the conference. For each case study, I found myself asking, “What future does this enable? What does this mean for design?”
It’s a powerful framing, and I use it now whenever I speak about AI. Because it reminds us to make decisions not just for today, but to create the human-centered future we want to live in and design for."