Shows
The AI podcast for product teamsWhat Happens to Your Product When You Don’t Control Your AI?AI was supposed to help humans think better, decide better, and operate with more agency. Instead, many of us feel slower, less confident, and strangely replaceable.In this episode of Design of AI, we interviewed Ovetta Sampson about what quietly went wrong. Not in theory—in practice. We examine how frictionless tools displaced intention, how “freedom” became confused with unlimited capability, and how responsibility dissolved behind abstraction layers, vendors, and models no one fully controls.This is not an anti-AI conversation. It’s a reckoning with what happens when adoption outruns judgment.Ovetta Sampson...
2026-01-1348 min
The AI podcast for product teamsWhen AI Isn’t the Answer, It’s the ProblemIn Episode 48 of the Design of AI podcast, we unpack why the most common AI promises are collapsing under real market pressure. AI was meant to unlock strategic work, expand opportunity, and elevate creativity. Instead, UX and design roles are disappearing, agencies are cutting creative staff while buying automation, and freelance work is being devalued as execution becomes cheap.This episode is not about panic. It is about reality. Value still exists, but it is concentrating among those who can integrate AI into real systems, navigate ambiguity, and own outcomes rather than outputs.🎧 Apple Podcasts
2025-12-2230 min
The AI podcast for product teamsThe Creativity Recession and Why Product Leaders Must Reverse It NowOur latest guest is Maya Ackerman — AI‑creativity researcher, professor, and author of Creative Machines: AI, Art & Us (Wiley), as well as founder of WaveAI and LyricStudio (View recent colab with NVidia).Maya’s perspective is not just insightful — it’s a necessary reality check for anyone building AI today. She challenges the comforting narrative that AI is a neutral tool or a natural evolution of creativity. Instead, she exposes a truth many in tech avoid: AI is being deployed in ways that actively diminish human creativity, and businesses are incentivized to accelerate that trend.Her resear...
2025-12-0546 min
The AI podcast for product teamsThe Real Reason Tech Products FailOur latest episode features Jessica Randazza Pade, Head of Brand Activation & Commercialization at Neurable. Named to Campaign US’s 40 Over 40 and ELLE Magazine’s 40 Under 40, Jessica is an award-winning global digital marketer, business leader, and storyteller. She explains why AI is not a value proposition, how to turn vague use cases into measurable outcomes, and why making technology invisible is often the strongest competitive advantage.“If the user can’t articulate what’s different in their life because of your product, you’re selling a vitamin—not a painkiller.”Listen on Apple Podcasts | SpotifyShape Our 2026...
2025-11-1844 min
The AI podcast for product teamsDesigning Agents That Work: The New Rules for AI Product TeamsOur latest episode explores the moment AI stops being a tool and starts becoming an organizational model. Agentic systems are already redefining how work, design, and decision‑making happen, forcing leaders to abandon deterministic logic for probabilistic, adaptive systems.“Agentic systems force a mindshift—from scripts and taxonomies to semantics, intent, and action.”🎧 Listen on Spotify🍎 Listen on Apple PodcastsAnd if you want to go deeper, check out Kwame Nyanning’s book, Agentics: The Design of Agents and Their Impact on Innovation. It’s the definitive field guide to designing agentic systems that actually work...
2025-10-2944 min
The AI podcast for product teamsPlay, Prompts, and the Perils of IncrementalismIn our latest episode, Michelle Lee (IDEO Play Lab) makes the case that play unlocks the next billion-dollar AI market. She reminds us that kids don’t stop at answers—they ask what if and turn shoes into cars or planes. That divergent mindset is exactly what product teams have lost.“Play is one of the best ways to challenge the norms, to think wide, imagine new possibilities.”Michelle shares:* How IDEO discovered billion-dollar opportunities (like PillPack, later acquired by Amazon) by staying curious.* Why teams should sometimes use older, glitchier versions...
2025-10-0141 min
The AI podcast for product teamsAI Product Strategy FAQ, Minus the Bullsh*tOur latest episode features Nicholas Holland (SVP of Product & AI at HubSpot) and explains how AI is actually changing go-to-market teams:* AI cuts rep research time and turns calls into structured insight* “AI Engine Optimization” (AEO) is becoming the new SEOThis conversation isn’t speculative—it’s a blueprint. Listen to Episode 42 on Apple Podcasts🚨 Upcoming Workshop: Sept 18 — AI Product Strategy for Realists Use promocode pod30 at checkout to get 30% off your registration!Join us for a live 90-minute workshop that goes beyond the hype. We’ll walk through r...
2025-09-1646 min
The AI podcast for product teamsThe End of Product Teams as We Know Them🎙️ Listen on Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTubeI recently spoke with Maor Shlomo, founder of Base44—the platform that lets anyone build apps, tools, and games just by describing them to an AI. In six months, he built Base44 solo and sold it to Wix for $80M. It’s the clearest signal yet: the rules of building have changed, and most teams aren’t ready.We dug into:* Why vibe coding crushes the myth that innovation requires big teams and big funding.* How cross-domain generalists will thrive while narrow specialists get sidelined.* Why...
2025-09-0941 min
The AI podcast for product teamsFrom AI as Tool to AI as Teammate: Lessons from Atlassian & What’s Next for Product Leaders🎙 Episode 40: Atlassian’s Secrets to Successful AgentsIn this episode, Jamil Valliani (VP & Head of Product AI at Atlassian) shares how they embed AI across Jira, Confluence, and Trello through intelligent agents that blend into workflows—far from mere “+AI” buttons. He emphasizes starting small with tangible prototypes to build momentum and leadership alignment, showing that AI gains stick when they're experienced, not explained.Highlights from the episode:* Hands-on AI adoption at Atlassian: transforming workflows, not just products* From friction to flow: how prototypes bridge skepticism and trust* AI as teammate...
2025-08-1447 min
The AI podcast for product teamsThe Risks & Research of Over Reliance on AIAfter a frustrating week of trying to wrangle AI outputs, we decided to explore the risks of overreliance on AI. It’s good for us to question our tools. It enhances our processes and challenges us to find the right tools.Listen on Spotify | Listen on Apple Podcasts | Watch on YouTubeIn this episode, we say the quiet parts out loud. Not only are LLMs often feeding us incorrect information, but over-trusting these systems poses a serious risk.We can look at this Rolling Stone article headline and immediately laugh it off. It is...
2025-05-0539 min
The AI podcast for product teamsAI Promises us More Time. What Should we do With it?When reports like Adecco’s Global Workforce of the Future survey find that the average saving for workers using AI is 1 hour a day, we should question this. * What did those workers do with their time savings? * Should that time savings benefit the employer or the employee?* Can we trust such a hard-to-measure stat?Our latest episode tackles this and other disruptions happening to the creative and production processes. Matthew Krissel is the Co-Founder of the Built Environment Futures Council and a Principal at Perkins&Will. For over two de...
2025-04-2255 min
The AI podcast for product teamsAI's Predictive Powers will Change how we Live & WorkAs much as image generation is fun, the power of GenAI is prediction. The technology operates very similarly to people you might meet: * Some people have studied and are experts in a single topic for a decade. They’re experts in that topic and can easily infer, correct, and complete tasks. They’re unreliable for everything else.* Some people are generally knowledgeable and have a good understanding of many topics. They aren’t experts but can reliably assist you in many ways. But they’ll also be wrong sometimes.OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.— ar...
2025-04-0849 min
The AI podcast for product teamsPrepare Yourself for AI to Increasingly Change Our Jobs“The future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed” Science fiction is inspiring, frightening, and often the best lens into the future. Many ideas about the future are b******t —just like this quote being misattributed to the ever-amazing William Gibson— but even the wildest idea shares truths worth discussing.This week’s newsletter is an exercise in imagining how AI will transform the way that we work. The future will impact us differently because some already live with a future-centred mindset, while others prefer to shift their thinking daily. One s...
2025-03-131h 07
The AI podcast for product teamsImplementing AI into creative workflows: How to prepare yourself and protect your jobThere are many reasons to debate the ethics and implications of AI. But while we do that, hundreds of the world’s biggest brands are rushing to implement the technology into creative and coding workflows. At a time when shareholders are being unforgiving and policy making is volatile, business leaders are looking to AI to gain any advantage possible.Jan Emmanuele is one of the experts that these Fortune 500 corporations rely on to identify and build GenAI creative workflow augmentations and automations. He works for Superside —whom you might remember from our episode with Philip Maggs (Listen here...
2025-03-0358 min
The AI podcast for product teamsHow Can we Design a New Relationship with AI?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...
2025-02-191h 25
The AI podcast for product teamsAI is making Knowledge Work cheaper & easier— some will benefit hugeThere’s little debate that AI will change the world. What we’re not so sure about is if AI’s expected disruptions to how we work will be outweighed by the benefits of accessing a super-intelligence.David Boyle thinks of LLMs as an electric bicycle for the mind, one that enables us to go farther than we ever imagined with much less effort. His opinion comes from being one of the first market researchers to experiment with LLMs and subsequently turn his learnings into the PROMPT series of books to help marketers, startups, researchers, musicians, and other...
2025-02-0653 min
The AI podcast for product teamsChallenges of leveraging AI in existing products + Implications of DeepseekUp until recently Miro was the innovator’s defacto collaboration platform. In recent years a long list of apps added similar functionality to eat away at the online whiteboard segment. Our latest episode with Ioana Teleanu, Miro’s former Lead Product Designer for AI explores the challenges and opportunities of leveraging AI to enhance an existing product.Listen on Spotify | Listen on AppleKey takeaways:* When a product experience is already good, do we need to add AI?* AI makes it easier for more products to enter your category and...
2025-01-2850 min
The AI podcast for product teamsWe're too obsessed with AI's potential that we forget the challengesHealthcare is constantly highlighted as the industry that will benefit the most from AI. The prospective opportunities are endless: Improve access to services, improve quality of service, patient outcomes, and medical research. An analysis predicts that the healthcare could save up to $360B a year by implementing AI.That’s we invited an expert to discuss what other industries can learn from healthcare’s massive AI opportunity. Spencer Dorn, the Vice Chair and Professor of Medicine at the University of North Carolina. He is a contributor to Forbes and one of LinkedIn’s Top Voices speaking on Health...
2024-12-0452 min
The AI podcast for product teamsAI is reshaping business & shaping a new future | Author of "AI Value Playbook" joins usIn our latest episode, Lisa Weaver-Lambert dispels the belief that is incapable of delivering impact in her book "The AI Value Playbook." She also lays out principles for succeeding in your implementation of AI:1. Your tech stack determines winners: Orgs that already were built to process and leverage data as part of core decision making are at a huge advantage. Especially those that are focused on leveraging insights to learn and iterate.2. Leadership and strategy matter: The vision, guiding principles, and culture matter. They will dictate the strategy or lack of a cohesive strategy.3. AI shouldn’t be...
2024-11-2252 min
The AI podcast for product teamsHow AI mature is your organization? And what are the implications of it?The last two years have been extremely stressful for anyone working in tech. There’s been a consistent sense that we all need to do more with less. That our jobs are on the line. And now AI is being touted as the cheat code that will unlock productivity and profit gains.In our latest podcast, Peter Merholz (add him on LinkedIn) doesn’t see AI helping much in the short-term because teams are too over-tasked to believe they have the time to try new models of working. He also believes that most organizations don’t have cultur...
2024-11-131h 02
The AI podcast for product teamsPhillip Maggs maps the future of design + 20 lessons from our first 20 episodesSpeaking to Phillip Maggs on Design of AI had so many💡 moments:1. Want to use AI to get a career advantage? Consuming AI content isn't enough to get ahead, you need to experiment with the new material. Stretch what you believed was possible and you'll gain new capabilities.2. New careers and role are being defined right nowGenAI makes it possible for anyone to quickly learn about a topic or skill. You might think you're average but can quickly put together a unique skill profile that makes you a unicorn, especially if you're more committed to being curious about new tec...
2024-10-251h 01
The AI podcast for product teamsSentient Design: Should we be chasing weirdness and divergent ideas?GenAI’s promise is that digital experiences will become more intelligent. Big Medium Founder Josh Clark and his daughter, Veronika Kindred, are the authors of the upcoming book “Sentient Design” and the latest guests on the podcast. They see products that are radically adaptive to our situational needs and collaborate with users in ways that seemed insane a few years ago. Listen on Spotify | Listen on Apple PodcastsBut what struck me the most were three things:* Veronika, a GenZer who figuratively grew up inside of tech because of her father’s work, sees the...
2024-10-151h 08
The AI podcast for product teamsPlaystation's Kristie J. Fisher + Guide to designing a GenAI productIn this newsletter:* Podcast episode with Kristie J. Fisher, PhD, the Sr. Director of Global User Research, PlayStation Studios.* Guide to designing a GenAI product: From vision to content strategy* Poll for the AI communityThe biggest challenge facing AI products isn’t whether they would use your product, it’s whether you’re delivering reasons to convince them to switch from their existing solution. This is extra difficult when leveraging an emerging technology, like GenAI, because of key factors:* GenAI tools ask users to give up contro...
2024-09-2649 min
The AI podcast for product teamsSpotify’s former data alchemist: Evaluating when & how to use GenAIEpisode 17. Our guest is Glenn MacDonald who was Spotify’s Data Alchemist, building it into an algorithmic powerhouse.We’re critically evaluating algorithms' effectiveness and why GenAI probably isn’t the best technology for many problems.Some key insights:#1. As Spotify's former data alchemist, I expected huge advocacy for hashtag#ML & hashtag#AI as a predictive technology. Instead, we must not play god with algos. They should be assistive tool to get people to where they're headed. Prediction leads to errors.#2. You must be able to evaluate algorithms. Too often we're deploying fancy tech w...
2024-09-1859 min
The AI podcast for product teamsService design of AI: Designing the first Copilot w/ Microsoft & OpenAIOur guest is Yasemin Cenberoglu, who was the first designer to work on Microsoft’s Copilot, all in secret, before the world was exposed to ChatGPT for the first time.Yasemin is a Principal Design Manager at Microsoft, leading the Copilot product for Teams Meetings, Calling, and Devices. She’s the first designer to shape what Copilot is today. Previously, she served as the Director of Design at Digitalist. Yasemin is an advisory board member at IDEA School of Design at Capilano University. She studied in Germany and then at Cal State, in the Bay area.00...
2024-09-0551 min
The AI podcast for product teamsFutures design: Build AI products that customers want & finding use casesHow should product teams be leveraging GenAI? Product teams are struggling to find the use cases which deliver the most value to customers and where the technology can be effective. And teams that have built AI products are finding that there’s often a mismatch between what customers find valuable and what the technology can do. Our guest is Arpy Dragffy Guerrero, the founder of PH1 Research where he has consulted Spotify, Microsoft, Mozilla, National Football League, to research and strategize how to best leverage emerging technologies. He’s worked on products across AI, personalization, Web3, location-sensing, and...
2024-08-0846 min
The AI podcast for product teamsResearching & building responsible AI within tech’s biggest platformsWhat is the path to building responsible AI products? We have a special guest: Jess Holbrook, the Head of UX Research for Microsoft AI.We discuss:‣ Responsible AI: What it is and how orgs need a clear vision for it‣ Data transparency: Ensuring you are communicating appropriately‣ Becoming one of Google’s first user researchers working on machine learning‣ Philosophical differences to user research at Google, Meta, and Amazon‣ Bridging academic research and the practical development of AI products‣ The paradigm shift that big tech is expecting A...
2024-07-181h 00
The AI podcast for product teamsUnlocking AI product success: Coaching teams through uncertainty & design risksAI is changing the role of the designer and shifting how product teams succeed. We have a special guest: Scott Jenson, formerly from Apple, Google, and Frog Design.We discuss:* Why designers feel like their entire job will go away* What advice he offers to the teams and individuals he coaches* How AI is over--hyped and where it will have impact* Lessons from working at the forefront of mobile technology* Why Google, Apple, Meta, Microsoft are all racing to get there first* Recommendations to build...
2024-06-2856 min
The AI podcast for product teamsContent design: How creatives are leveraging prompt engineering to innovate ecommerce platforms & improve brand-buildingThis conversation is a deep case study into what the capabilities of the technology are today and how product teams must leverage both creative experts and these emerging technologies, side-by-side. Our guest is Trisha Causley from Shopify.Topics we discuss:▪ Why Trisha went from an AI skeptic to a champion▪ What types of creative tasks GenAI is best at▪ Tactical lessons for leveraging GenAI across product experiences▪ Why prompt engineering must become part of your toolkit▪ Shopify’s plan to leverage GenAI to scale & personalize brand-building▪ Why GenA...
2024-06-1945 min
The AI podcast for product teamsInnovation lessons for brands and product teams investing into AIWhy are brands investing into AI? How can they succeed? What can we learn from how experts in the field of innovation lead transformation projects? Where will AI actually deliver impact in the near term? Joining us is Nick Sherrard, who is involved in these conversations across Fortune 500, government, and startups.He is a co-founder of Label Sessions, the global innovation expert network, and Label Ventures, the venture studio. He is also a board member at Substrakt, the digital agency, and Collective art gallery in Edinburgh. Nick is often said to be the only person to have...
2024-06-1253 min
The AI podcast for product teamsAI is disrupting the design & product delivery process [Lessons for startups, enterprise & UX]Building products with GenAI brings powerful new capabilities but also a whole new set of uncertainties. Teams can't rely on best practices because the technology is changing so quickly and users are cautiously adopting change. Designing and shipping products can no longer be thought about as a linear process.Alexandra Holness, Senior Lead Product Designer at Klaviyo, joins to share lessons, cautions, and a path forward to help product teams build AI products that customers want. She sees that successful product teams will depend on designer, data scientists, engineers working more closely than ever because it is...
2024-06-0448 min
The AI podcast for product teamsAI can innovate behavior change strategies & transform personalizationDr. Amy Bucher literally wrote the book on behavior change.She joined the podcast to discuss how hashtag#GenAI can transform what tech is possible of achieving on a human outcome level:- How AI can open entire new possibilities for behavioural change and lead to monumental outcomes- Opportunities and risks of leveraging AI personalization- Reinforcement learning and what it is- Objective-driven AI and how we should start focusing more on outcomes - Why wearables may open new possibilities- Considerations around proprietary vs. commercially-available AI- And - Why having a AI scientist will be critical for any team and...
2024-05-2856 min
The AI podcast for product teamsCase studies: Leveraging AI to build conversational bots & analyze conversations [Design of AI podcast]How can AI make our workflows and products more effective? It’s a question every product team is asking itself as they decide to invest into developing or licensing products. Let’s learn from two building and leveraging AI today.Two case study presenters from the upcoming Rosenfeld Design with AI Conference (June 4 & 5) will be with us to detail out how they leveraged GenAI. Savannah Carlin, Staff Product Designer at Marqeta, will detail how to design conversational interactions with AI. Weidan Li, the Design Research Lead at SEEK.com, will outline AI’s performance in analyzing qualitative data...
2024-05-2153 min
The AI podcast for product teamsThe secrets to researching potential emerging tech productsBuilding products using emerging technologies is more difficult. As we’re seeing with building AI products today, teams are often chasing which use case and customer profiles to focus on. It’s harder because the new technologies make us obsess over what’s possible rather than what people actually need. Dr. Llewyn Paine joins us to share lessons and strategies from her advising teams working on spatial computing, virtual reality, and robotics. Her expertise is helping teams make better product decisions through research. We’ll discuss how to identify your best potential customers and design higher-value products and services they’ll...
2024-05-1549 min
The AI podcast for product teamsThe secrets to researching potential emerging tech productsBuilding products using emerging technologies is more difficult. As we’re seeing with building AI products today, teams are often chasing which use case and customer profiles to focus on. It’s harder because the new technologies make us obsess over what’s possible rather than what people actually need. Dr. Llewyn Paine joins us to share lessons and strategies from her advising teams working on spatial computing, virtual reality, and robotics. Her expertise is helping teams make better product decisions through research. We’ll discuss how to identify your best potential customers and design higher-value products and services they’ll love to...
2024-05-1449 min
The AI podcast for product teamsVenture building: Taking AI product ideas from 0 to 1There are so many new GenAI products coming to market that it is hard to believe even a fraction of them will become sustainable businesses. Ben Yoskovitz, Founding Partner of Highline Beta and author of Lean Analytics, joins us to discuss how many of these startups will fail to find a product-market fit. By rushing to get to market they’re likely skipping key steps that would typically improve their likelihood of success. We discuss the process his venture studio uses and where he sees opportunities for AI products to deliver more value to consumers.Ben’s news...
2024-05-0851 min
The AI podcast for product teamsVenture building: Why AI products may fail w/ Ben YoskovitzThere are so many new GenAI products coming to market that it is hard to believe even a fraction of them will become sustainable businesses. Ben Yoskovitz, Founding Partner of Highline Beta and author of Lean Analytics, joins us to discuss how many of these startups will fail to find a product-market fit. By rushing to get to market they’re likely skipping key steps that would typically improve their likelihood of success. We discuss the process his venture studio uses and where he sees opportunities for AI products to deliver more value to consumers.
Ben’s newsletter: https://www.focu...
2024-05-0751 min
The AI podcast for product teamsGenAI's copyright problem: Training & derivative copiesAI has the potential to be a transformational technology. But how is it trained and how can you track authenticity? Virginie Berger, Chief Business Development and Rights Officer at Matchtune, joins us to discuss the developments with copyright issues related to creative fields in hopes of shedding light on what this means for other industries. A particular issue is what happens to business models when you can get replicas elsewhere and have no clarity on how they were derived?We explore how product teams can and should adapt. Important is protecting the rights of your users and leveraging...
2024-04-2338 min
The AI podcast for product teamsHow AI is reshaping UX and the new role for designersEmily Campbell joins us to discuss the future of UX. Her Shape of AI newsletter and community have become the go-to resource for AI product design patterns. She sees AI products getting to market with far less involvement from design than they should have. Design will undoubtedly experience shocks —with roles changing, and anti-patterns emerging— but also entirely new opportunities for design to shape adaptive experiences that offer users new capabilities to personally interact with products. We discuss what comes next after prompt-based, text interfaces. Episode of hosted by Brittany Hobbs & Arpy Dragffy Guerrero. Please subscribe to the Desi...
2024-04-1648 min
The AI podcast for product teamsThe future of music in the era of generative AIMaarten Walraven-Freeling, co-editor of MUSIC x and the co-CEO of Symphony Media joins the Design of AI podcast to discuss how AI will impact the music industry. We look at how digital streaming platforms and algorithmic discovery have already led to monumental changes to the business and what to expect now that generative AI tools, like Suno, are making music creation easier and more accessible. It is clear that music is one of the first and most important battleground where we see the potential of AI as a creative tool but also where concerns are growing about GenAI platforms being...
2024-04-0948 min
The AI podcast for product teamsDesigning AI products: Building effective products with LLMsPeter Van Dijck, Founding Partner of AI agency Simply Put joins us to discuss how his team designs and builds AI products. Peter —formerly of Huge and Work & Co— share insights from how his background as an information architect and designer enable his team to see opportunities to discover and build the right product for orgs. We discuss the growing potential of LLMs to take on more use cases and the ways in which human-centred design inform decisions that need to be made. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or g...
2024-04-0148 min
The AI podcast for product teamsHow AI is changing ad agencies & the creative processAd agencies have always had to be ahead of their curve. They need to predict what clients need tomorrow. But AI has the potential to change everything about their workflows, business models, and value. We speak with JP Holecka, CEO of POWERSHIFTER, to find out how agencies will need to adapt. He's spent the last year training agencies on GenAI capabilities, as well as pushing the limits of the tools in his own projects. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit designofai.substack...
2024-03-0546 min