Summary
A 30-minute deep-dive into the building of the Rosenbot. We’ll get both hands-on practical and likely a bit philosophical. What does it take to build a useful AI assistant? What does it mean for a business, strategically? And how do we make sure we are building the future that we want, while doing all this? Take-aways: What does strategy look like in an AI world? What does eval-first mean? What the hell is going on deep inside an LLM? And what does all that mean for the future we want to build?
Key Insights
-
•
Generative AI is a new design material requiring fresh approaches distinct from prior UX methods.
-
•
Rose Bot leverages retrieval augmented generation to semantically search Rosenfeld’s extensive UX content.
-
•
Conversation logic beyond the LLM is essential to route, classify intents, and ensure safe responses.
-
•
Evaluation (eval) of AI is fundamentally challenging due to its non-deterministic input and output.
-
•
Effective evaluation requires combining human expert and end-user feedback alongside automated tools.
-
•
A third of a project’s budget and time should be dedicated solely to rigorous AI evaluation.
-
•
‘Prompt deep dive’ usability testing spends extended time on individual prompts to deeply understand interactions.
-
•
New tooling is emerging specifically for tracing conversations, prompt engineering, and observability in AI.
-
•
UX roles remain vital in AI development by inventing new research techniques and ensuring user-centered design.
-
•
Co-creation between users and technology defines how AI applications evolve and succeed or fail.
Notable Quotes
"When GPT came out, my kids immediately adopted it at school and couldn’t pry it from their dead hands."
"This AI stuff is a new design material, just like the internet or mobile was before."
"The Rose Bot has read everything—every piece of Rosenfeld’s knowledge—to help users access it."
"Building generative AI tools is not scary, it’s just very different from the last 20 years of building products."
"There’s a lot of steps behind the scenes to make conversations useful and safe."
"Eval is the engineering word for evaluation, but also what researchers and UX designers naturally do."
"Without proper evaluation, you’re just building a demo – demos are easy, quality production is hard."
"We invented the ‘prompt deep dive’ technique to spend lots of time on one prompt to deeply understand it."
"Co-creation between users and technology determines if this AI evolves to be useful or harmful."
"We should feel okay to throw away old assumptions and tooling and invent new techniques for this new world."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"We are truly in a golden age for our profession."
Doug PowellClosing Keynote: Design at Scale
November 8, 2018
"Kids are not little adults. You can’t just simplify the text and call it for kids."
Mila Kuznetsova Lucy DentonHow Lessons Learned from Our Youngest Users Can Help Us Evolve our Practices
March 9, 2022
"Every parent we talked to had some variation of the question: this exists, can I use it right now? Where was this when I needed to apply?"
Sarah GallimoreInspire Progress with Artifacts from the Future
November 18, 2022
"We can’t complain about not having a seat at the table if we don’t offer one of our own."
Lada Gorlenko Sharbani Dhar Sébastien Malo Rob Mitzel Ivana Ng Michal Anne RogondinoTheme 1: Discussion
January 8, 2024
"It is our job to lead and transform with empathy and heart because there’s fear in everyone."
Alnie FigueroaThe Future of Design Operations: Transforming Our Craft
September 10, 2025
"Meaningfulness is linked directly to what your organization cares about in terms of goals and priorities."
Landon BarnesAre My Research Findings Actually Meaningful?
March 10, 2022
"Sometimes we have to murder our darlings—let go of favorite parts to let the story or design grow."
Emily EagleCan't Rewind: Radio and Retail
June 3, 2019
"Re-platforming is transformative not just for the product but also for the people, teams, and organization."
Malini RaoLessons Learned from a 4-year Product Re-platforming Journey
June 9, 2021
"Design is not just aesthetics; it’s about what the product feels like, sounds like, and how it differentiates in the market."
Asia HoePartnering with Product: A Journey from Junior to Senior Design
November 29, 2023
