Eric Parsons

If your personas describe users in isolation, you’re limiting impact. Real work is collaborative, constrained, and increasingly shaped by automated systems. Our design artifacts need to reflect that reality. This piece explores what it means to expand personas beyond the single user, and why relationships between actors matter just as much as the actors themselves. https://lnkd.in/g4dxrrHx #designexcellence #designleadership #userpersona #AIintegration

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Forrester reports that companies investing in design-driven innovation see a 228% ROI. As someone who advocates for design to have a seat at the table, I love this stat! But companies evolve… and so should design. It’s no longer *just* about securing a seat; it’s about questioning if you want a seat at *that* table. Maybe it’s about building a new one. One that welcomes the voices too often left out. ❤️

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Design is evolving fast. We’re no longer just shipping artifacts, rather, we’re shaping intelligent systems that learn, adapt, and co-create with us. This next era asks more of us:
more judgment, orchestration, contextual intelligence, and the ability to guide systems that won’t stay static. Our work now is to design conditions for emergence and to keep humanity in the loop. Here’s my take on what’s ahead: https://lnkd.in/gjbey3nZ #designexcellence #designleadership #humancentereddesign #designingwithAI #enterprisedesign

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With Outset unlocking new research methodologies comes understanding new UX terminology. Hear Aaron Cannon explain what “tokens” are and how they relate to evaluating generative UX.

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Slick screens don’t scale products. Smart UX does. This chart nails it. Great design isn’t just how it looks..It’s how well it works. Beginner teams: “Make it pretty” Advanced teams: “Make it work and matter” The result? —Better retention —Faster growth — Real impact UX isn’t decoration. It’s direction. Design with intent. Win with impact. #UXDesign #ProductDesign #UserExperience #DesignSystems #Figma #SaaS #DesignThinking

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This is what investing in AI in design looks like. As with many other job families, the design industry focuses on what might the impact of AI be: will it lower the quality with slop? Will it replace humans? Etc But I don't see much focus on to understand and really capitalise on the potential AI brings to design. We are largely treating it as any other tool: a way to get incrementally better. At best it's a short course for the designers, at worst it's expecting designers to already know how to use it. But AI has the potential for making radical shifts and leaps. I'd love to hear, and learn, from anyone who is making significant strides to drive AI transformation in design.

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A worthwhile read from the ever-insightful mind of Michael Winnick "Your job as a UX leader isn't to pretend the ground is stable. It's to create footholds—small spots of clarity that give people something to stand on while everything else shifts.” "The skills that got us here—making sense of ambiguity, understanding people, guiding decisions through uncertainty—are not obsolete. They're more necessary than ever." https://lnkd.in/ekWbJAm3

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GV (Google Ventures) have a long history of hiring former designers and design leaders to support their portfolio companies. Folks like Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky, Kate Aronowitz, Daniel Burka, Braden Kowitz, Vanessa Cho, and Tom Hulme. In my latests podcast interview, Kate Aronowitz explains why this is, and what designers bring to the table. Interestingly it's not about craft, but rather the way they see the world with a beginners mind.

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Are IC enterprise designers unintentionally sabotaging their portfolios in this AI-obsessed market? If you’re a Product Designer updating your case studies… you’ll probably want to read this... I’m actively hiring two Sr-to-Lead Product Designers, and after reviewing a lot of portfolios recently, a pattern keeps repeating: 👉 Too many portfolios are leading with AI chatbot projects. Not sprinkled in… leading with them. Often multiple ones in the same portfolio as Case Study #1 and #2. Here’s the problem👇 AI chatbots are important, but they’re not the center of gravity for most enterprise / SaaS product teams. In the last six-nine months, many of these patterns are already shipped and commoditized. And now with agentic flows, the UI work becomes more about reviewing, validating, and confirming work AI has already completed behind the scenes. Which means… “Old school” multi-step, end-to-end product flows are still valid – with a twist. Because every IC job post right now is calling for “high craft” or “consumer-grade design” – it’s no longer acceptable for flows to simply “get the job done.” Hiring panels want to see refinement and polish in the final output.  Otherwise you’ll get the feedback we give far too often: “The design thinking is great… but the visual design is just… [sigh/meh]… not quite there.” Visual craft always matters. Everywhere. At every company. Whether D2C or B2B or Enterprise. So if you’re refreshing your portfolio, here’s my ask as someone hiring in this tough market: Don’t over-index on AI chatbots just because they’re hot right now. Show me your complex, nuanced, multi-stage flows—the kind that prove you can handle the real product work most teams need. Just make sure they’re polished (ie. That “high craft” buzzword again), intentional, and tight. Because that’s what will actually differentiate you in 2025 and into 2026. And now the proverbial 🔌: If you’re a high-performing Sr. or Lead looking to innovate in the HR and Comp tech space, holler at me in my DMs or Comments. Thanks! 🙏

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