Calvin Arterberry

During yesterday’s Futurespaces session, someone asked Emily Bagdatli (from NBBJ | ESI Design) what her experience design team looked like. Her answer was great, it was honest and specific and it got me thinking. At Bluecadet, our team is structured a bit differently. We have three core disciplines - design, narrative and technology. Having a hosted a fair number of agencies at Futurespaces I know our team structure isn’t the same across the board. We definitely have more focus on narrative and content strategy than many, and we lean heavily into technologists, while other teams might prioritize different disciplines. And that’s the point, there’s no one way to build an experience design team. It’s less like assembling a formula and more like forming a band. Some are five-piece rock bands. Some have two drummers. Some are orchestras. Some are solo acts. The “right” team is the one that can execute your vision. It was a great reminder that experience design, like any creative practice, resists rigid definitions. Different approaches can lead to equally interesting outcomes. Posting the recording on our site shortly for those who want to diver deeper into this and other fun XD topics. 

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“Is AI going to replace designers?” Google just dropped Stitch and it’s kind of insane. You can sketch something messy or just describe it, and it turns it into a clean UI. You can talk to it, ask it to change elements, generate new screens, connect flows, and it understands the whole design without you manually guiding every step. Of course, this can also produce a lot of slop. Fast does not always mean good. Giving everyone the power to generate screens in seconds also means a lot more average work, lazy work, and generic work will flood the internet. But this still changes everything about how designers (and everyone else) work. Basic, task-based design is fading. The kind where you wait for instructions, move things around, and deliver what you’re told. A lot of that can now be done by anyone with a prompt. The shift is that the best designers will be the ones who get very good at working with AI, moving faster, thinking broader, and taking ideas from rough thought to final result. Now it’s not designers vs non-designers. It’s great designers vs other great designers who know how to use AI well. You can move faster, iterate quicker, and focus more on decisions... The bar keeps moving higher. Credits to X/samtwtss for the image. Follow Endrit Restelica for more.

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AI is transforming the UX design landscape—not by replacing designers, but by enhancing our workflows. In a recent UX Planet article, Haze illustrates how integrating AI tools can streamline tasks like research synthesis, persona drafting, wireframing, and usability testing. By automating the mundane, designers can focus more on strategy and storytelling.​ Uizard Explore how AI can elevate your UX workflow: https://lnkd.in/eSktrvV6

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Scale is often mistaken for complexity, yet true expansion is fueled by simplification. When every design choice—from visual identity to user interface—is direct, it allows the brand to grow without the friction of technical or cognitive debt. Strategic scaling requires aligning the smallest aesthetic details with your largest business objectives. By maintaining this alignment, you ensure that as your reach expands, your brand remains coherent, manageable, and profitable. Shop Loma Studio A brand assets: https://lnkd.in/es_k4mud

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Hot take for designers experimenting with AI + legacy systems: You don’t have to pick one AI tool and hope it integrates perfectly with your design archive. If you can get to the code, you can make it work. I’ve been testing different AI platforms for strategy and prototyping. What I realized: You can use any AI tool you’re comfortable with to think, prototype, and generate UI — as long as it outputs code. Then: 1. Copy the generated code 2. Paste it into Figma Make 3. Let Figma rebuild it using your UI/style library 4. Edit, refine, and share inside your real system That means: • Strategy can live anywhere • Prototyping can move fast • Your design system still governs the final output AI becomes a thinking partner. Figma stays the system of record. For teams sitting on years of legacy designs and wondering how to bridge that with AI experimentation — this is a practical path. #DesignSystems #AIforDesign #Figma #ProductDesign #DesignOps

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The power of "nothing" In digital design, what you don't show is just as powerful as what you do. White space isn’t emptiness but strategy. It shapes focus, builds trust, and transforms user behavior. Every pixel of space supports your message and strengthens conversions. Discover how to guide attention with intention. Read the full blog: https://lnkd.in/eThWnKjv #WebDevelopment #WebsiteOptimization #DigitalMarketing #UserExperience #TSIDigitalSolution #WhiteSpaceOptimization #MinimalistWebDesign #WebDesignTips #ConversionStrategy #UXDesign

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Q1 2026 observations on hiring designers: 1. AI fluency is no longer a “nice to have” 2. The need to hire based on potential 3. Steady increase in remote roles 4. SF is dominating 5. Output over everything 6. Brand and visual design demand is accelerating. 7. The divide among some Designers is real Conclusion: We need to hire on potential more than ever. We're all figuring this out.

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Jenny Wen from Anthropic was on Lenny's podcast recently talking about how design is changing & I've seen it shared a lot with very little pushback and lots of hyperbole so I want to add some balance. There are 3 things in here that are genuinely worth sitting with. 1) She puts numbers on the time allocation shift - she's gone from 60-70% of her time mocking & prototyping down to 30-40%, with the rest now spent pairing with engineers & shipping code directly. That's real data from her context & it marries with anecdotal evidence I see from others who've found genuine efficiencies in their personal workflow - but what you do with that reclaimed time is going to vary dramatically depending on where you sit, what you're building & who you're building it for. 2) She talks about vision horizons compressing - no more 2 or 5 year design visions at Anthropic, they're working 3 to 6 months out & the output is a prototype that points a direction, not a polished deck. 3) Her three hiring archetypes super interesting - the block-shaped generalist who's 80th percentile across multiple skills, the deep T specialist who's top 10% in 1 thing, & the craft new grad who learns fast & isn't weighed down by old process. That last one I'm a huge advocate of - the value of a graduate with strong foundational skills who hasn't yet been told how things are supposed to work is massively underestimated. However I think the conversation around this episode has been a bit uncritical. Jenny says the traditional design process is dead. But when it comes to what replaces it the answer is essentially... be flexible, pair with engineers, set short-horizon vision. And in my opinion she hasn't offered an alternative process with any real detail. I don't think she's claiming to, but the way people are sharing this you'd think someone just handed us the new playbook. She didn't. That vision compression, that faster prototyping all only works if your entire company is oriented to working this way and again, lets not fetishise the single domain product design/dev challenge. I think it's important to say - this is one designer's perspective from inside one of the fastest moving AI labs on the planet. If you're a design lead at a bank or an insurer or a healthcare company, where you've got regulatory constraints, slower release cycles and engineers who aren't running seven Claude instances... there is nothing in this episode that is going to dramatically change your Monday morning. The frontier is useful context. It is not a universal strategy. Take the main points but don't fall for the 'XYZ is dead' or 'XYZ role is no longer needed' The hard work of figuring out what the new process actually looks like for your team, your constraints, your product - that's still yours to do. You can dramatically shift how fast you move between value gates in your work. Saying that the double diamond is dead (not what she said) shows you never understood design in the 1st place.

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Most redesigns focus on visuals. The meaningful ones focus on systems that aligning design, technology, and user experience into one framework that can scale. I break this down in my latest Forbes Agency Council piece: Design as a System: How Strategy Shapes Every Experience. https://lnkd.in/gekgMZyr

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