Late last week I started writing a three-part series about the power of decision-making in design and design leadership. Even as I wrote most of the first part of that series, I found myself being pulled toward something else. Something more exciting (at least to me).
That something is OpenClaw, which is the (current) name for the newest/shiniest/most interesting breakthrough in autonomous AI agents yet. In short, OpenClaw can and does work alongside people 24/7, sometimes without even requiring specific “triggers” or prompts.
I’ve posted about OpenClaw a couple of times on LinkedIn, with this week’s post being the idea I keep going back to. So…rather than continue down the path I started last week, I decided to pivot and write what I believe is perhaps more interesting and top of mind.
— Justin Lokitz
Design Deep Dive
Murderbot Was Right
For those who know me well, you’ll know that I am a rabid fan of sci-fi. Though my personal taste tends to gravitate toward cyberpunk, like just about anything authored by William Gibson, and gigantic sagas, like Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy, I will read anything futuristic. Full stop.
One of my favorite newer series is The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells, which follows a kitted-out, military-style cyborg named SecUnit as it tries to live among humans and human-made systems.
What sets SecUnit apart is not brute strength. It’s orchestration. It runs a swarm of drones as extensions of its perception. When those drones go offline, it feels exposed. Underpowered. Incomplete.
GenAI version of SecUnit and its drones.
Rewind to today’s job market…
If I were hiring designers or design leaders right now, I wouldn’t be looking for lone operators who can manually grind through every task. I’d be looking for people who arrive with their own “drone swarm.” People who know how to design, prompt, and supervise agents. People who understand when to delegate to AI and when to step in themselves.
Mind you, this is not theoretical. According to Capgemini’s 2025 report Rise of agentic AI, AI agents could generate around $450 billion in total economic value by 2028, with a significant impact in marketing, product development, software engineering, and customer operations. Design and product leaders sit directly inside those value pools.
What’s more, according to PwC’s 2025 Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey, 54% of workers worldwide have used AI in the past 12 months, yet only 14% are using generative AI tools daily at work, highlighting a gap between awareness and habitual use. The report shows workers are more curious and optimistic about AI than fearful, with 50% feeling curious, and 41% feeling excited about AI’s impact on their roles, compared with 26% who feel worried. Attitudes are shifting as we speak/write/read/listen/watch.
Even IBM has been explicit about hiring for AI fluency. CEO Arvind Krishna has publicly stated that AI will replace some roles while creating others, and that companies must prioritize skills that complement AI systems. When IBM doubles down on Gen Z hiring for entry-level roles with AI expectations baked in, that is a strategic workforce bet, rather than the cultural experiment (or clickbait PR stunt) some believe it to be.
So what should design leaders actually ask candidates? And…if you’re a candidate, what should you be thinking about?
Your first question should NOT be, “Do you use ChatGPT?” That’s table stakes at this point.
Instead, ask candidates to describe their AI stack.
Which tools are they using daily? Are they chaining large language models with research tools? Are they using vibecoding tools to generate prototypes? Are they building lightweight agents with frameworks like N8N, Make, or Zapier? Have they experimented with autonomous task loops? If they can’t articulate their setup, they likely don’t have one. That may be okay! Look for curiosity, though.
Ask: “Walk me through a recent project where AI changed the scope, speed, or quality of your work.”
Like any case study, you’ll want to look for specifics here. Did they reduce synthesis time from three days to three hours by clustering qualitative research with embeddings? Did they generate multiple UX concept directions and then critique them using a self-built evaluation rubric? Did they create an internal copilot to surface design system patterns automatically?
One of my favorites is to ask: “What tasks do you never do manually anymore?”
In my experience, strong candidates will have clear answers. They will have automated repetitive research summaries and may have delegated documentation drafting. They will have offloaded first-pass usability heuristics to structured prompts.
Ask: “How do you verify AI output?”
This is where maturity shows up. According to OpenAI, hallucinations and factual errors remain persistent risks. If a candidate blindly trusts outputs, that’s clearly a liability. If they have a clear validation loop (cross-checking sources, using multiple models, stress-testing outputs), they understand stewardship. In fact, with both students and candidates, I like to ask how they add human-ness to anything they generate using AI. I sometimes even ask them to show me an example ;-).
Ask: “Have you built an agent workflow or prompt library that someone else can use?”
Individual productivity is one thing. System design is quote another. The best design leaders will not only use AI personally; they will operationalize it for their teams. They will have built prompt libraries. They will have created internal copilots for research ops. They will have defined governance guardrails.
Ask: “Where do you think AI should not be used in your design process?”
Both thoughtful leaders and individual contributors understand tradeoffs. They know that user trust, sensitive data, and early-stage exploratory interviews may require tighter human control. They have opinions about bias, privacy, and over-automation.
Ask: “If I gave you a messy problem and one week, what agent team would you assemble?”
Do they describe a research agent, a synthesis agent, a prototyping agent, or a critique agent? Do they think in parallel streams instead of linear workflows? Do they think in systems? Even if they don’t (yet) know how to build such a team, understanding where and how they think a team could expand their work is the key here.
Again, this is NOT about replacing humans. It is about redefining leverage.
In SecUnit’s world, competence is about knowing when to extend your perception through machines. When to distribute cognition. When to coordinate.
Design leaders who can orchestrate humans and agents together will not just be extra productive. They will be force multipliers. And…that kind of leader is not easy to replace.
Having started to prototype this inside my own OpenClaw instance, I can say firsthand that the real unlock is not just speed. It is scope, writ large. Via my own small prototype, which I have named Phil, I have begun to ask my agents to take on problems/tasks that previously felt too complex to hand over to a single tool or node. In fact, even when I have hired humans to take on some of the tasks I am (experimentally) handing over to Phil, describing them with enough detail or making it enjoyable was always the rub.
The question for hiring managers is simple: Are you bringing on individual contributors, or are you bringing on conductors?
In a world where agents are table stakes, the future belongs to the latter.
Subscribe to Design Shift for more conversations that help creative professionals grow into strategic leaders.
Stop Drowning In AI Information Overload
Your inbox is flooded with newsletters. Your feed is chaos. Somewhere in that noise are the insights that could transform your work—but who has time to find them?
The Deep View solves this. We read everything, analyze what matters, and deliver only the intelligence you need. No duplicate stories, no filler content, no wasted time. Just the essential AI developments that impact your industry, explained clearly and concisely.
Replace hours of scattered reading with five focused minutes. While others scramble to keep up, you'll stay ahead of developments that matter. 600,000+ professionals at top companies have already made this switch.
What did you think of this week's issue?
