As AI accelerates creation and collaboration becomes global, what remains distinctly human about design?

Sid Vanchinathan has spent his career exploring the question above. As a founding partner of Design Squads and Hibrids, he helps organizations design smarter, faster, and with more empathy…blending strategy, systems thinking, and hands-on creativity. In a conversation that originally started over a mid-week (post-hike) late breakfast/brunch, Sid unpacks how AI is reshaping product creation, why nearshored teams are outperforming traditional studios, and what it takes to lead meaningful change when technology outpaces culture. I find his perspective completely pragmatic and optimistic: technology may amplify our reach, but it’s still people who give design its purpose.

In many respects, this is a conversation about building tomorrow, without losing what makes us human today:

Read on for my main takeaways from our conversation. 🎧 And…listen to the recording of our full conversation on the Design Shift podcast on Spotify and Apple and the Design Shift YouTube channel.

— Justin Lokitz

My friend and longtime collaborator, Sid, calls himself a builder of “tomorrow, today.” Though it wasn’t until recently that I noticed this description he gave himself, I can tell you that this fits him completely.

Having built several companies from the ground up, Sid is also a builder’s builder. Today, through Design Squads and Hibrids, he helps organizations reimagine how they conceive, prototype, and scale digital products in an era shaped by AI, distributed teams, and accelerating change.

Our conversation explored three shifts he sees defining modern design leadership: the rise of AI-powered creation, the strategic use of nearshore teams, and the human side of transformation. Enjoy!

Although Sid comes from an engineering background, he doesn’t romanticize AI or think that it’s going to take over the world (necessarily). He treats it like a really smart intern or perhaps a very capable technical co-worker: fast, eager, occasionally wrong, but capable of incredible output when guided well. In fact, when I first asked Sid about his thoughts on AI, and specifically vibe coding, he recounted a story about how he vibe coded (and vibe designed) the entire underlying operating system for HiBrids, called HiOS.

No, really. He has essentially built an end-to-end operational system for his agency, using mostly prompts. Check out the podcast or YouTube video (at about 17 minutes) for the full story.

And…just like Sid used Replit to start fleshing out his ideas for HiOS, his teams at HiBrids use AI to blast through the foggy early stages of design, exploring directions, generating variations, and stress-testing assumptions. The payoff is both speed and perspective.

In the past, a product sprint might have taken days of sketching and critique to reach a handful of viable options. Now, AI tools let his designers surface dozens of possibilities in a single afternoon. But Sid’s emphasis is clear on this: AI doesn’t replace designers, it reframes their focus. They spend less time pushing pixels around the screen and more time deciding which pixels actually matter…via prototyping.

At Hibrids, AI is woven into the creative process as a partner in a sense. Designers still define the questions, frame the narrative, and choose what moves forward. Sid likes to say the best work happens when “humans stay in the pilot seat and let the tools do the heavy lifting.” It’s pragmatic, not poetic, but it works.

And while AI’s growing list of capabilities can feel overwhelming, Sid’s advice to teams is to stay playful. Try things. Break things. Learn by doing. The only real mistake is waiting for permission to experiment.

Takeaway: AI stretches the boundaries of what’s possible, but meaning still comes from people. The future of design belongs to those who can choreograph both.

If AI is changing how we work, nearshoring is changing who we work with and how we stay connected. Sid helped shape Hibrids from a merger between Propelland and Genetsis with one goal: to make global collaboration feel local again.

Instead of far-flung, asynchronous outsourcing, Hibrids built cross-regional “squads” that share overlapping time zones and creative energy. Designers in Mexico City, Madrid, and San Francisco work together in real time…sharing rituals, running stand-ups, and building culture through consistent communication. “Distributed” doesn’t mean disconnected. It means designing for rhythm.

What’s more, Sid has spun up Design Squads to help other organizations engage in nearshoring designers and design teams in the same way they may nearshore engineering teams.

The nearshore model flips the usual logic of remote work. Instead of minimizing costs, it maximizes connection. The benefit is as much cultural as it is logistical. Designers bring their regional context, language, and lived experience into the work, making it richer and more adaptable.

Sid loves how different perspectives collide in these teams. The result is a blend of efficiency and empathy: fast cycles without the soullessness of a production line. “When collaboration feels alive,” he says, “you get better ideas and better relationships.”

Takeaway: Nearshoring is both a budget and creative strategy. Done right, it creates teams that feel close, think wide, and move fast.

Sid sees design as a form of change management disguised as problem-solving. He’s worked with enough large organizations to know that technology never fails because of the tool; it fails because people don’t use it.

That’s why he approaches transformation like a designer, not a consultant. Before launching new systems or workflows, his teams start with empathy. They interview employees, map their journeys, and identify where frustration or confusion sets in. Then they co-create small experiments—pilot programs, prototypes, test runs—that allow people to experience the change and shape it as it unfolds.

This approach makes adoption a conversation instead of a command. When people participate in designing the future, they’re far more likely to embrace it. Sid describes it as turning fear into curiosity. In this, he and his team are helping their clients see experimentation as an act of progress, not risk.

And…leaders play a key role in this shift, too. Those who model vulnerability—asking questions, showing they don’t have all the answers—create permission for others to do the same. Sid believes this kind of leadership will define the next era of creative organizations.

Takeaway: Change sticks when it’s co-created. Design gives people ownership of the journey, not just the destination.

If you peer in on Sid’s LinkedIn posts, you will see more than just business stuff. His curiosity often spills into play. His AI-driven design experiments online, like the AI Action Figure challenges, started as a way to explore generative tools without pressure. They turned into a masterclass in creative learning.

“Play is how we learn fastest,” he says. The more you experiment for fun, the more you understand the boundaries of the medium…and your own instincts within it. He encourages teams to keep “AI sketchbooks” where they test tools, document surprises, and share what they discover.

He’s also vocal about systems thinking as a design foundation. Products, teams, and organizations don’t exist in isolation; they’re part of larger feedback loops. Understanding those loops—economic, social, cultural—is how designers build responsibly.

What’s more, as he has written about, as Sid has seen, breaking down organizational silos speeds delivery, improves system quality, and creates consistent user experiences.

Teams with narrowly siloed roles ship slower and end up with fragile, inconsistent products. Cross-functional squads that collapse the walls between design, engineering, and product build better experiences faster…especially as AI amplifies integrated workflows.

For Sid, the future of design leadership looks less like control and more like orchestration. Less about the artifact, more about the ecosystem.

Want more? Connect with Sid and tell him Justin sent you! You can also follow Sid’s work at Design Squads and Hibrids.

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