Taste, Teams & Craft. POV of Design & UXR Leaders on What AI Is Changing
🤍 The recording is shared with everyone who registers within 24 hours after the event.
Everyone is saying these three words:
Taste. Senior. AI-native.
Everyone is using them. Nobody has redefined them. And work is being shipped, people are being levelled, and whole roles are being cut on the strength of all three.
So we guess. And the people who actually decide — who approve the work, own the rubric, sign the req — you rarely get to hear them think out loud.
This time there are three of them.
A VP Design building SAP's agentic AI studio.
A Head of Design running a 40+ person organisation at Meta.
And the Researcher who led Trust & Safety research for Instagram's two billion users.
Here's the part nobody hands you: they are not going to agree with each other. I haven't sent them most of the questions.
THREE THINGS WE'RE ASKING
👁️ Taste — is taste a real skill, or is it seniority? When you tell someone their work isn't good enough, can you always say why? And what happens when you try to write that down as a levelling rubric?
👥 Teams — what does "AI-native" actually mean in a job description, and who does it screen out? What happens to junior talent? And why are research teams being cut in some companies and put front of brand in others?
🛠️ Craft — everyone can build a product now. Good trend or bad, and what's missing from what gets built? What has each of them refused to ship — and what have they shipped that they'd now call plausible rather than good?
❌ How these conversations usually go: broad takes on where AI is heading, and nobody names anything specific
💚 What you'll get instead: three people who ship, hire and level, being concrete — what they built, what they killed, what their job descriptions filter out, and where they think this lands in twelve months
💛 For designers and researchers who'd rather hear how the decisions actually get made — and for the leaders making them.
WHAT YOU'LL WALK AWAY WITH
→ Four working definitions: senior designer, junior designer, senior researcher, junior researcher, today, in their words
→ What "good" means to three people who approve work they didn't make — and the thing each of them refused to ship
→ What "AI-native" really means in a job description, and who it quietly screens out
→ Why research is being cut in some companies and put front of brand in others — and what would make a leader invest instead
→ One role each of them expects to exist in a year that doesn't exist now
THREE THINGS WE'RE ASKING
👁️ Taste — is taste a real skill, or is it seniority? When you tell someone their work isn't good enough, can you always say why? And what happens when you try to write that down as a levelling rubric?
👥 Teams — what does "AI-native" actually say on a job description, and who does it screen out? What happens to junior talent? And why are research teams being cut in some companies and put front of brand in others?
🛠️ Craft — everyone can build a product now. Good trend or bad, and what's missing from what gets built? What has each of them refused to ship — and what have they shipped that they'd now call plausible rather than good?
❌ How these conversations usually go: broad takes on where AI is heading, and nobody names anything specific
💚 What you'll get instead: three people who ship, hire and level, being concrete — what they built, what they killed, what their job descriptions filter out, and where they think this lands in twelve months
💛 For designers, researchers and leaders who are looking for more clarity and alignment on essentials of design and uxr.
WHAT YOU'LL WALK AWAY WITH
→ Four working definitions: senior designer, junior designer, senior researcher, junior researcher, today, in their words
→ What "good" means to three people who approve work they didn't make — and the thing each of them refused to ship
→ What "AI-native" really means on a job description, and who it quietly screens out
→ Why research is being cut in some companies and put front of brand in others — and what would make a leader invest instead
→ One role each of them expects to exist in a year that doesn't exist now
🎤 Who's presenting
Daria Tarawneh — VP Design, Joule Studio @ SAP, ex-Miro, ex-AWS · LinkedIn
Daria leads design for SAP's agentic AI studio. Before that she built enterprise and growth design at Miro and ran UX for eight developer services at AWS, after starting out as an architect and picking up an MBA on the way. She has founded companies in Japan and New Zealand and advised leaders at McKinsey. Her line on leadership is that design is everyone's job — an interesting thing to believe in the year the industry decided taste was scarce.
Ani Avanian — Head of Design, ex-Meta · LinkedIn · Website
Ani led a 40+ person global design organization at Meta across two distinct areas: the developer platform that enables third-party developers to build on top of Meta's ecosystem, and the experiences people have in Horizon Home on Quest.
She holds an MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and taught foundations design at Tufts, which makes her an unusually good person to ask what "good" actually means.
Kathryn Campbell — Research Partner @ Sprig, ex-Meta, ex-Warner Music · LinkedIn
Kathryn led the well-being research pillar supporting Trust & Safety for Instagram's two billion users, then led research at Warner Music Group during the crucial period of AI adoption. She trains research managers and research ops teams, and wrote an essay called "Failing Fast is Fatal."
Lena Kul — Founder @ PATHS, ex-Design Recruiter & UXR · LinkedIn · Substack · Youtube · Website
After 8+ years hiring designers, UXRs, and leaders at Miro, and 5 years teaching designers how to move through their careers, Lena brings the top insights to her 60,000+ audience. Having hired 100+ top talent across the globe, supported hundreds of students and private clients, and signed their offers, she's built methodologies that convert in 2026.
LOGISTICS
🗓️ Thursday, October 6, 2026 · 6:00pm CEST 9:00am PDT / 12:00pm EDT
⏱️ Recording included for everyone who registers
💻 Zoom link sent after registration
🎟️ Free
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