Design Leadership

Notes from the future of design

A few months ago, I had the pleasure of attending a small gathering of design leaders in San Francisco to discuss how AI is reshaping the design industry. Dubbed the Design Futures Assembly, it brought together maybe 50 or 60 people who are deeply immersed in this world: folks from the major design tool companies, heads of design from the big AI labs, senior people from well-known tech companies and consultancies, along with a few people who have been thinking about design for a very long time.

So you want to be a strategist? I'm not sure it means what you think it means!

I meet a lot of designers who say something like, “I’m okay at UI design, but what I really want to be doing is strategy.”

I get it. In large organisations with mature design systems, visual and interaction design can start to feel like assembling someone else’s product from pre-approved parts. It’s easy to crave something higher up the food chain — a seat in those mysterious meetings where “strategy” supposedly happens.

In Defence of Enshittification

Every designer has felt it: that pang of frustration when you’re asked to make a product worse. Maybe it’s hiding a feature behind a paywall. Maybe it’s adding extra steps to the sign-up flow to capture more data. Maybe it’s cramming in additional ads in places you know will annoy people, just to squeeze out more revenue. It can feel like the opposite of what we signed up for. We’re here to improve things, not to degrade them.

Should Designers be Paid the Same as Engineers?

What I’ve Learned Coaching Dozens of Design Leaders: The 5 Most Common Challenges—and How to Navigate Them

Over the past few years, I’ve coached dozens of design leaders—from newly promoted heads of design to seasoned VPs across a mix of fast-growing startups and more established brands. Different industries. Different team dynamics. But time and again, the same patterns emerge.

Why Founders Should Think About Design from Day One

One of the most common mistakes I see founders make is thinking about design too late. They’ll bring in a designer to “make things look nice” after the product is built—when the features are locked in, the UX is baked, and the real strategic decisions have already been made.