This video is featured in the Designing with AI 2025 playlist.
Summary
With the constant influx of new AI models and tools, it can be hard to distinguish hype from true value. Learn from experienced design practitioners where AI has delivered on its promises, where it hasn’t, and the processes they’re using to leverage AI to its full potential.
Key Insights
-
•
Designers have faced ongoing layoffs through 2025 even as AI tools proliferate.
-
•
The past year saw a shift from experimental AI use to validating dozens of AI design tools across the process.
-
•
AI can increase efficiency and unlock new capabilities but may devalue or dehumanize design work.
-
•
Human-centered design is questioned when AI can generate designs without human insight.
-
•
Many AI UX 'authorities' promoted tools and courses without direct practical involvement.
-
•
Real-world company practitioners, not marketers or consultants, provide the most valuable AI-UX case studies.
-
•
Speakers like Erica Flowers focus on organizational-wide AI adoption and opportunity identification.
-
•
Patrick Boer explores user and community research requirements when integrating AI.
-
•
RS Kin investigates how AI changes the nature of design materials and adaptive responses.
-
•
Oveta Sampson emphasizes adapting design processes to remain human-centered despite AI acceleration.
Notable Quotes
"It’s been a really challenging year for the design profession with layoffs continuing in 2025."
"At last year’s conference, we were still scrambling to figure out where AI might be useful in our work."
"Now a year later, the landscape is completely different with dozens of new AI design tools for all stages."
"It’s a love-hate relationship with AI because it can make us more efficient but also devalue our work."
"If you don’t need a designer to create designs, what happens to designers?"
"Are you really practicing human-centered design if you stop designing around insights from real humans?"
"It can seem like all the AI UX authorities are trying to sell you something without real skin in the game."
"Today’s speakers come from real world companies facing real consequences for their choices about AI."
"Where in your design process is your biggest opportunity for AI adoption?"
"Let’s all advocate for AI products and processes that keep the human at the center."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"The fast layers get all the attention, but the slow layers have all the power."
Sha HwangThe Lost Year
June 11, 2021
"The 'stay in your lane' mentality is a red flag signaling silos and turf protection instead of cross-functional collaboration."
Frances Yllana Kaaren Hanson Husani Oakley Dan OlsenDesignOps Exposed: What do our peers really think of us?
September 11, 2025
"Widgets are more than UI; they combine front end code, back end services, and analytics into a reusable package."
Dawn ResselFull-Stack User Experiences: A Marriage of Design and Technology
June 9, 2016
"We all say empathy is foundational for good design, yet contemporary research often remains oddly distant from real human experience."
Daniel GloydDesigning From the Inside Out: How Method Acting Can Inspire Design Research
February 12, 2026
"How we are at the small scale is how we are at the large scale—our personal care practices scale to community care."
Sahibzada Mayed Lauren LinCultivating Design Ecologies of Care, Community, and Collaboration
October 4, 2023
"Design futures are not always in the future; sometimes they reflect constraints of budget, resources, or political will."
Victor UdoewaRadical Participatory Design: Decolonizing Participatory Design Processes
December 10, 2021
"Tool use lets the model decide itself when to call external APIs or services to get needed information."
Peter Van DijckBuilding impactful AI products for design and product leaders, Part 3: Understand AI architectures: RAG, Agents, Oh My!
July 30, 2025
"Participatory research always seems like something you're either doing or not doing — more often than not, not doing."
Chris GeisonTheme Two Intro
March 28, 2023
"Employees with exceptional onboarding are 2.6 times more likely to be extremely satisfied with their workplace."
Dante GuintuHow to Crush the Talent Crunch
September 8, 2022
