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From Craft to Curation: Redefining Design Leadership in the AI Era

As AI-native tools rewrite the rules of creation, designers are no longer just visual problem solvers. They are becoming orchestrators of systems, composers of behavior, and curators of intelligent experiences.

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A New Creative Era

The designer’s role is being fundamentally reshaped. Today, intelligence is the new design material. As AI-native tools rewrite the rules of creation, designers are no longer just visual problem solvers. They are becoming orchestrators of systems, composers of behavior, and curators of intelligent experiences. In this issue, we explore the profound shift underway and some provocations for what it means to lead design in the age of intelligence!

From Execution to Direction 

Design is no longer the glossy, static finish on a product. In AI-native environments, what we traditionally considered "interface" is now a constantly evolving, intelligent system. As Rachel Kobetz writes, "Intelligence is the interface." Design leaders must move upstream, shaping not just how products look and feel, but how they think, behave, and evolve. 

Design has always been a lens to go super deep in a space and really understand what’s going on with people and users.

James Song, “Intent Made Real: Why Designers Are Built to Be Founders,” Design Shift, 2025.

Designers now operate as architects and curators of intelligent interactions. They must define system behaviors, ethical guardrails, and adaptive flows. This also means influencing product roadmaps and architecture, not just Figma files.  We shouldn’t think of AI as a feature; it's a foundational capability baked into how teams think (i.e., culture) and build. 

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1. The Workflow Has Changed: From Making to Curating

Jon Friedman, Microsoft’s head of design, put it plainly: "My role has shifted to being more like an editor-in-chief." AI tools like Copilot, DALL-E, and Galileo aren’t here to replace designers, but to change their mode of operation as collaborators and curators.

Rather than starting from a blank canvas, AI-native workflows begin with a conversation, a prompt, a draft. The role of the designer becomes one of intent and curation: directing the output, editing it for coherence, and steering it toward user and business goals.    

Ross Lovegrove, who uses AI to augment physical product design, echoes this idea. For him, working with AI is like "having a conversation with a very intelligent friend." And in this case, it’s about knowing how to direct the interaction; the capability to lead and drive the AI conversation.  The designer is no longer just the maker, but the composer of intelligent systems.  More like a producer shaping a song than a musician playing every note; AI becomes the studio, and the designer guides the composition.

Designers must now be fluent in how AI works, even if they’re not building models. Understanding what generative tools can and should do is key to shaping them responsibly. That includes knowing how to steer AI with prompts, evaluate its responses, and detect when it drifts from the intended outcome.

2. Sketching with Words

Charles Owen, a professor of mine and one of the founding thinkers of systems design at the Institute of Design, used to say that critical thinking was about "sketching with words." That insight is more relevant than ever. As generative tools increasingly rely on language as both input and output, language becomes the material of design. Prompts, instructions, critiques; these are the new form of sketching.

In this context, design leadership is about more than workflows or wireframes. It’s about clarity of thought, precision of expression, and an ability to use language to direct, edit, and shape intelligent systems. Prompting is not just a skill, it’s a form of systems orchestration. And with it comes the need for renewed emphasis on critical thinking and critique culture, not as add-ons, but as central to how we shape the design process.

3. Radical Collaboration and System Design

AI-native product teams are breaking traditional workflows in fundamental ways. Designers now work with and resolve two core inputs: business problems and model capabilities. In this new context, traditional design logic—where the problem precedes the solution—is sometimes flipped. Teams can begin with a technical capability, then explore where it can create value quickly.

Rather than insisting on starting from a specific end, teams are learning to let the problem and solution evolve in tandem. This has given rise to a demo-first culture, where prototyping is not just a testing tool but a discovery engine. Teams build to explore and test what’s possible and desirable before locking into design or strategy.

Even non-designers are building functional demos using AI-native tools, thanks to lower technical barriers. Ciara Peter’s team at Robin recently evaluated seven AI prototyping tools here that can help teams quickly get started!

The act of prototyping has become central to how teams frame opportunity, test feasibility, and align cross-functionally.

Design is no longer the only starting point for ideas. In AI-native workflows, language models often are the starting point, generating possibilities that design then shapes and refines.

Runway’s evolution follows the AI-native workflow: it began with the model, and design has shaped and refined it through each generation (Gen-1 through Gen-4).

Designers can no longer wait for requirements to land in their lap. They must help shape and frame ambiguous opportunity spaces, exploring both the problem and the potential simultaneously.

This demands a mindset shift: from gatekeeping design quality to facilitating creative ecosystems. The most effective leaders foster a culture where AI-native creativity can thrive across disciplines.

4. Ethics, Explainability, and Human Trust 

When designers shape intelligent systems, they also shape social, ethical, and psychological realities. What is surfaced? What is omitted? What patterns are reinforced?

Human-centered design is no longer just about usability. It’s about governability. As intelligent systems evolve through interaction, designers must bake in transparency, explainability, and fail-safes from the start.

Tools like confidence indicators, rationale previews, and ethical boundaries must become standard design elements. This is not decoration—it’s core to how people decide to trust (or reject) an AI experience.

When misused, generative tools can cross ethical and legal boundaries, particularly when they replicate copyrighted content without permission! The release of Kara Swisher’s memoir, Burn Book (a fascinating read, by the way!), was quickly followed by a flood of supposed AI-generated knockoffs on Amazon, exploiting her name and likeness to sell misleading imitations.

A search for “Kara Swisher burn book” on Amazon surfaces the real book first, followed by pages of unauthorized biographies hoping to ride the hype of its release.

5. Leading Through Ambiguity and Acceleration 

Design leadership in the AI era is not about having all the answers. It’s about framing better questions, faster. Leaders must get comfortable with ambiguous briefs, shifting constraints, and new forms of value. At the same time, leaders must clearly define the outcomes that matter, anchoring teams in user needs, business goals, and the jobs to be done.

Elizabeth Eagle-Simbeye urges design leaders to "relinquish control" and empower teams to explore. The future belongs to those who can decentralize decision-making and catalyze bottom-up innovation.

Rather than a sudden transformation, the shift to AI-native ways of working may unfold as a steady acceleration. Design leaders must prepare for a long-term evolution, not a one-time re-skilling. That means cultivating adaptability, ethical foresight, and systems literacy as enduring leadership traits.

Conclusion: Directing What Matters 

We are entering an era where designers shape not just products, but intelligent partners. The tools we design will learn from users, adapt in real-time, and participate in decision-making.

To lead in this era, designers must move beyond their screens. They must orchestrate across disciplines, systems, and time horizons. They must become strong advocates and facilitators of intent, trust, and impact.

The future of design is not about controlling pixels. It’s about directing intelligence with purpose.

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