Design Leader Roundtable | Facilitated by Cal Thompson
Our industry is going through a tools transition that it thinks is an everything transition and Design leaders are getting it from all sides. Eng and Product are getting crushed too, but not in the same way as Design. We know/feel/speak quality and AI isn’t fully delivering it right now. Our teams are usually the canaries in the coal mine; often the most honest, observant, and able to name what’s happening. It’s part of our training.
What's happening?
We started the year with “AI will replace designers” and are already at “well no, turns out you definitely still need designers.” CEOs have gone from AI for everything to “oops that’s expensive” and 12 page AI-generated PRDs, lengthy AI-written “briefs,” and copious Claude Design prototypes adding more noise than clarity.
Design leaders are bushwhacking through that jungle of noise but often without much support. They’re leading their teams, navigating stakeholders, influencing their organization’s roadmaps, all while in the midst of changing their tools over to half Figma half Claude, and in some cases navigating all company “builder orgs” where sloppy features are shipping, resulting in unhappy users and incoherent products.
In other companies, things are more rational and new processes have been created to “air traffic control” the bevvy of new features everyone wants to toss into the experience.
The concern is that we're seeing the entire design process often get skipped except the very last step: hi-fidelity design and coded prototypes. Claude Design tests the code quality, but doesn’t test whether there’s a real problem to solve, doesn’t test the idea quality, doesn’t test whether anyone would really want it, and doesn’t test whether the new feature breaks the existing user journey in your product.
So, let’s get together and TALK SHOP.
Agenda for the hour:
Welcome
Share from Cal on design team workflow trends across our industry right now, what Cal is seeing consulting across the US and Europe
What's working and what isn't right now especially in product design teams but also design and product generally
Open forum to share what you're struggling with/seeing/doing as we work through this tools change in tech
Q&A and guidance from Cal
Optional small breakouts to meet and dive deeper with people at your same level in other companies
Cal is going to run this as a facilitated moment, more design leader roundtable than teaching session. Cal will also have a few slides to structure the conversation so you walk away with a few nuggets of inspiration you can take back to your teams.