#104 The Future of Fashion UX: Metaverse, AI & Authenticity with Rachel Rosenson
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Hello and welcome to the future of UX podcast. My name is Patricia Reiners and today we are diving into the fascinating intersection of fashion, innovation and the metaverse with Rachel Rosenson. She's the design leader at Zalando.

Rachel has built an incredible career working at the forefront of emerging tech from like Google X to AI driven mobility in Tel Aviv and now leading this studio at Zalando where she and her team explore the future of fashion e-commerce. In this session we will discuss the role of designers in shaping future facing strategies, how fashion and social commerce are evolving

We will also talk about the reality of the metaverse and what's high versus what's here to stay. And of course, we will also dive into the impact of AI on UX and digital fashion experiences. At the end, we will dive into why authenticity and storytelling are key in modern design.

This is an episode packed with insights for designers looking to stay ahead in an industry that's constantly evolving. So let's get started. Rachel, welcome to the Future of UX podcast. So nice to have you. Thanks so much for having me. Of course. I'm very, very excited to dive into the topic of the metaverse with you about fashion innovation at Zalando. Super interesting.

Before we dive into that, please do a quick intro and share a bit about your background and what you're currently doing. I'm a design leader based in Berlin. I've spent my career working on looking at new technologies and thinking about what's the product market fit and what's the kind of really human application as we're on the forefront of new experiences.

I've been really fortunate to work on this topic in different countries and landscapes. I started my career on a Google X project in San Francisco, thinking about the future of how we can design cities using big data. I got to work in Tel Aviv thinking about how we can use AI networks to think about safer driving for rideshare drivers.

And then I've been working in more of the e-commerce finance shopping space, both at Karna and Zalando the past six years.

in Berlin. Currently, I'm leading a team called the Studio at Zalando. It's a design innovation and strategy lab. We work as a centralized team within our design community, essentially a bit like an agency where we work on a project by project basis, helping to think about how to make the future tangible through strategy and design methodology.

super cool and very fascinating to see or to hear about all the different career steps or milestones that you already achieved i think super inspiring tell us a little bit more about how this work looks like at the innovation lab at salando yeah

So the studio is a team that's been around the past 10 years. I've been managing it the past two, but I mean, I think first off, I'm really lucky that I got to walk into a team that already had a really strong foundation and strong reputation. So the studio, like I mentioned, is one of our central design team functions. So in the same way that we have a research team, a content design team, so teams that are working on more of a project by project

project basis and also supporting our design community overall.

The studio works on three different main themes or topics, I would say. In general, we are always thinking about how to help our business succeed in the next three to five years. And so that's kind of the scope and timeline. But the three types of projects we might look at is one, what are new business verticals and opportunities that our leadership team might be interested in? So for example, when Zalando first wanted to start selling beauty products,

When Zalando first started thinking about sustainability, those were projects that kind of started within the studio. And as they grow and develop, they became their own teams, their own units. They got hired out, but they kind of started as a kernel here.

Another type of project we'll do is partnering with existing teams and business units to take kind of our specialty and our expertise as more facilitators, storytellers, futurists, partner with really domain experts and think about how can we come together to help bring new strategy, bring new thinking, bring a new way of addressing problems for some existing business units. And they were more of a supporter or a collaborator.

And then the third type of project we do is really thinking about some horizontal projects that maybe cut through so many different parts of the Zalando experience. But obviously, being a large company, being a large design organization, sometimes it can feel like topics that

Topics that affect many get addressed by none because it's unclear who owns this, who's thinking about this holistically. So for example, we had one designer who just led a great project for the past year around rethinking how do we communicate with users? How do we think about all of our communication touch points from notifications to CRM strategies? It touches so many different teams, but what's the kind of holistic story and patterns that we want to tell here?

So our projects vary really based on how can we kind of support the business and how can we support our leadership team in making strong design decisions to prepare us for the future. What do you think are the biggest trends there that you're seeing in maybe the design world, but focusing on like the fashion sector?

Yeah, I mean, I think a big topic that we've been thinking about for years now, and you see it in the way that Zalando has acquired high snobiety. And I think in a lot of our new features that we've come out with in the past couple of years is thinking about this relationship between fashion and social media and this relationship of social ecommerce.

Inspiration happens everywhere. And inspiration means so many things in the world of fashion. I mean, for example, when you look at some of your favorite creators, they're not just posting, this is what I got ready with today. They're saying, okay, this is my outfit today. And this is the coffee shop I go to. And this is where I'm on holiday. And this is my kind of diet and lifestyle trend. And

And there's a whole cultural lens. And so when we think about where does your fashion inspiration come from, we have to think about what's the kind of total story that in the package that you're really interested in? Who are you aspiring to be?

What are you trying to kind of accomplish? Are you trying to accomplish fitness goals? Do you want to change your style? Do you want to be super comfortable and confident in your own skin? And so there's a much bigger picture, I think, when it comes to trends than like, what's the latest kind of micro trend in fashion that we're trying to tap into and think about what does that mean for us to capture?

I'm super curious. Where do you find those trends? I mean, I assume you have the resources or do you discuss it in a team? But how do you come up with these kind of trends? Yeah, I mean,

I guess probably at Zalando, there's a lot of different ways it's happening. So I can't speak for maybe trend analysis at whole. I can speak to maybe the design, like why are designers part of this process? And I think that's really leaning into the designer expertise in research and how we really understand people's true wants. And I think that designers have this skill set of looking at the qualitative and quantitative and creating a story out of it.

And that's helpful when we design products, but it's also helpful when we want to look at trends of where's the market going, where's fashion going, where's technology going. So I think

our expertise and really how do we do market research? How do we do user interviews? How do we do a competitor analysis? And then how are we bringing all of those together into insights that are actually meaningful? I think that's something that designers are really expert at and that we don't always recognize as being as much of a superpower as it really is.

and for you this like bringing all those things together is basically the storytelling part where you tell the story of like you know the user you know this is the outfit you um she wants to go to a cafe and maybe post things on instagram but like telling the story then i like how how would you recommend bringing all the insights across yeah so

We always think that the process we use, the output we use is totally variable. It just depends on what are we trying to accomplish in this moment and what's the best way to do that. And I think as a designer, it's super important to be really flexible with processes and methodologies

Because who knows what problem you're working on, who knows what company or what operating model you're working in. And so for me, when I'm speaking with designers, I always get like maybe a little bit concerned when someone is so rigorous about, okay, I use the double diamond. I use this. I use that. It's like, no, no, no. You have to think about what's the right tool for the problem you're solving. Sometimes our output is a user research deck.

And sometimes our output is that we say, hey, we really need to work with a motion designer and we need to create a one minute video that kind of can tell the story in a super engaging way.

And sometimes the output is a vision prototype, and sometimes the output is a one pager. It really kind of differs based on the projects that we're working on. And so I think when we look for who are designers that we want to kind of work with and within the studio, the kind of things that I'm always looking for is curiosity, adaptability, and that you really are comfortable in ambiguity.

Because when you're kind of thinking forward and into these future projects, those are the kind of assets that you always need to be working within.

100%. And I think this is such a good point that also the assets always vary, depends on what kind of story you want to get across. And I mean, it depends. I'm seeing in most projects, it's always the same research deck that you share with your stakeholders. It's always the same. And there's not a lot of time of storytelling or exploration of how to deliver the results, unfortunately.

I don't know why it is like this. Maybe people are too scared to experiment a little bit. But I think this might be a good reminder for people or maybe an inspiration to dive into that. Think about this. Yes.

Completely storytelling, I think, is the most important skill that a designer can have, especially when we're thinking going forward. What's the future of design? AI tools, are we all going to be replaced? I mean, I know other episodes have discussed that. I think whenever you're talking about a designer, about the future of the industry, they're going to bring up what's our real role.

And to me, 100% it's storytellers. I think there's also this question I kind of always get of, oh, why would you have a design team working on strategic projects? Don't you have a biz dev team or wouldn't product be leading that? And for sure, there are business development teams, there's engineering R&D teams, we're by no means working in a vacuum. But I think that the reason that design is an invaluable asset and future facing strategy is because we can tell stories.

I think that oftentimes when I speak with other companies about how they're thinking through strategy, there's this

hesitation people get with looking forward about how do I pick the right bets? How do we know what to invest in? And with that insecurity of, oh, I might make the wrong decision. What happens is you clam up and you become super obsessed with the data because you're hoping that the data is going to be this magic key to give you confidence and therefore you can't be wrong. And the reality is when we want to think three to five years out, the data doesn't exist.

Sure, there's markers that we can, of course, look at, but is that super correlative to what the industry will look like in five years? No, things are going to be totally different. And so when there's such an emphasis on data, I think my kind of question and concern is, one, how relevant will this data be in the future?

And two, what data do we really have that no one else has? Can we really say that, hey, we have some kind of insight that a McKinsey report on the future of fashion is going to have? Or like, we have such a unique view that like ASOS's data could never imagine. And I think that's where it's like, hey, data plus storytelling is

is actually going to start uncovering real opportunities and is actually going to start helping us understand what's the real potential here and what can we explore here. And so having designers in that room thinking about strategy is so key to be able to come up with actually unique and meaningful ideas for your users that like the pure data alone in a vacuum isn't going to capture alone.

And then also like bringing the insights across, however this looks like, because data is data, but sometimes we just synthesize it. Exactly, because the problems people face stay the same. What changes in innovation is, okay, how can we solve those problems in better ways? How can we solve it more elegantly? How can we solve it more effortlessly? How can we solve it with more delight? Like,

Sure, the ability to solve will change, but at the root of it, the problem that people face with fashion, we know people want to feel confident. People want to feel comfortable in their own skin. People want to be able to aspire into something. We know what these kind of trends are.

And we also know that they haven't been solved. We know that, hey, when I shop online, it feels really stiff. I'm looking at products. It's hard for me to imagine what I might look like. It's hard for me to know if these jeans are really going to fit. How do I know if this sweater is super soft? Like all of these kind of problems in fashion that we know, it's just like, how are we going to be able to solve them in an even better way tomorrow? That's the real question that we need to kind of assess and explore.

And what do you think is the answer to this? So how does the future of fashion will look like? Will we all be in a metaverse space only wearing virtual clothes? I mean, this is like super extreme, but what's your take on the future of fashion?

Yeah, it's I mean, it's hard to say. I think I'm someone who works on future facing technology, but I also am like the most old school anti tech person. I think to me, that's like personally and sadistically why I find this really fun. I'm the kind of person who like has no apps on my phone. Like my ideal weekend is I want to read a book in the mountains and never see a screen again. And then every day during the week, I'm thinking about future tech. To

to me that's kind of the right relationship so this this is certainly like my opinion and my opinion only but when i think about metaverse and digital fashion i think it's really interesting i'm really curious by it um do i think it's going to be here tomorrow no not really i mean things are changing so much so who knows but what remains i guess again is what are these kind of core problems

there's still a huge challenge of diversity and representation within fashion. And, um,

Marketing and brand campaigns might speak a lot to these kind of core problems. But when I'm actually shopping online, do I really see different body types represented, different kind of people represented? No, not really. There's a couple of brands that do it well, but it's still super undervalued and underrepresented, I feel like when I shop online.

When I think about metaverse and digital fashion, to me, the thing that gets me most excited is, oh, can we finally start cracking this code of real representation of real bodies? That I get super excited for. Do I feel like we're all going to live in a simulation and use VR headsets? I certainly hope not. It's not a world I want to be a part of, but I do think that this tech is going to lock a lot of opportunities for the problems we still face today.

And as well as all the sustainability problems with fast fashion, right, that you just buy clothes for a certain event, for, I don't know, for something, for a day, then you throw it away. And digitally, well, we don't have the same problem. I mean, we still need energy to, I don't know, produce a digital asset of this item and then wear it.

But I think that's also something that could be an interesting answer, maybe to fast fashion. Yeah, completely. I've already started seeing startups that are really catering towards the creator audience of saying, we know you're only wearing this for the one photo that you need to post. And so can we rethink brand relationships and be using digital fashion so that you can have the asset that you need?

which I think makes a lot of sense. It's kind of in a way thinking almost about rent the runway where it was saying, hey, for these kind of big moments in your life, like going to a wedding or going to a prom, we know that you don't need a ball gown. You just need the ball gown for that weekend. So just rent it. We can have like a lot less waste and a lot cheaper opportunities. So it'll be really interesting to see how this kind of spreads. I think that this topic of sustainability and fast fashion is one of the ones that I find

the most challenging to wrap my head around because when we look at user research, when we look at surveys, we see complete contradictions. If you speak with Gen Z, they care about sustainability. That's super important. They want to be really eco-conscious. This is also the user group that shops fast fashion the most, that is shopping the most on Shein and Teemu.

So as a designer, you're kind of in this challenge. Hey, I want to create experiences that help you live up to the morals and the values you strive for. I want to give you all those tools. But where you place your money is different than the values that you talk about.

Who am I to judge? Dress how you want, shop how you want. I'm by no means the police or a judgment. And so we need to kind of put tools out there for all of those options. I think the reality is people have the way that they aspire and the values, and then there's also financial restraints.

And that's totally okay. I mean, I can understand that. And so how are we just helping you have all of the ways to make the best judgment possible without ever feeling like you're judged or pressured by having to kind of make decisions that fit your lifestyle and your needs. But it's a really tricky topic, I think, in sustainability and fashion.

And also such a good example of people telling you one thing in research and doing another thing. Of like, they actually want to be like that, but they're not. And they're not really living up to their own standards. I mean, something that every designer has seen in research, that only when people, only because they say something, it doesn't mean that they're actually doing that. And this is definitely a super big gap.

But thinking about like, is the metaverse and like the digital environment or the 3D space still something where you see generally a lot of potential also with like the Apple Vision Pro and everything? Or is it was it more like a hype with where, you know, we went through and in the end, nothing is left? Yeah.

I would say for me personally, it's hype. I mean, I think since Google Glass came out, there has always to me still been this question, what is the problem this is solving?

still really struggled to hear it. And I see, okay, whenever they launch a latest tool, there's the kind of flashy promo video. This is the scenario you'd use it in. Sure, sure, sure. I've seen all of the videos. Like, show me the meaning to it. I can see for technical jobs how there's certain applications. And I can see, of course, for gaming environments, how this is a lot more immersive and for content, things like that. But

Again, it's hard for me to see what's the real problem, and that's what has to be cracked at the end of the day. I think that when it comes to hype, so often we trip over our own feet because we say, oh, there's new technology, therefore we have to design for it. And what I would always encourage is, what is the problem that our users face? Does this new technology help us solve it better? If so, let's pivot, let's address it, let's incorporate it.

If it's not a match, then let's not get distracted by the latest flashy thing because there's always going to be another flashy thing. At the end of the day, real strategy and really looking into the future, you need to have

this combination of flexibility because you're going to learn constantly everything you predict is going to be wrong like that's part of the game that's totally fine but you also have to have a bit of conviction of like what's the thread i really want to see through because to shift strategy takes time and it takes a level of investment if every quarter you're changing your overall strategy you're never going to get anywhere because you're always going to be doing like cheap mvps that really don't kind of get to the the root of it so i don't know i'm not

metaverse I'm not so confident on but again I'm the person who wants like no technology ever which is I guess the contradiction of my life versus my job but

Yeah, but I think it makes total sense what you said, right? I mean, your personal take is something else than maybe the business perspective that you're having. And I think the metaverse, I mean, this was a huge hype. A lot of companies invested in it, in different projects. And in the end,

If there really was a use case for each project, probably not. And this is what is super important because in the end, if users don't use it, it doesn't bring any value. You know, there's no reason to build in the first place. So I think you definitely need to think about it first. So we talked about the metaverse, but what do you think are some of the trends that potentially could really make a difference, especially, you know, from you as a designer, so from a design perspective?

Yeah, I think, and maybe it also relates to why I think that the metaverse isn't going to take off the way it's hyped. I think that there's a mental shift that hasn't always taken place. And like, what does it actually mean to have internet that's connecting? I think, and I say this as a millennial, that there's, of course, this generational gap between millennial and Gen Z. I'm like, how are we actually using technology? And I think growing up in the era of like,

I'm on Facebook and I'm going to connect with every person I've ever met. And like all of my kind of middle school friends are still connected on Facebook, even though we haven't talked in, you know, 15 years, things like that. We see in Gen Z that there's this huge shift. There isn't this interest in, I want to connect with everyone. There's a,

a complete realization that we need to have more of a digital detox, that having too much screen time is bad for mental health, that there's too much peer pressure, that we don't want to overshare. We want more privacy. We want more intimacy. We want more real-world moments. And we see this reflected in the way that users are leaving from Facebook and Instagram and now having these more private spaces, that we see this uptick in be real, that people want, okay, my closest eight friends, how am I showing them my most authentic moment?

and not telling anyone else I'm up to. I think that that's a really important shift we need to recognize. I think we see in TikTok that it is so normal for people to have no friends and no connections on TikTok. They purely want to use it as content consumption, but it's not a place for them to represent themselves. It's a way for them to replace Netflix. We also hear all the time the way that Gen Z is using Pinterest. I've heard so often in user research

Pinterest is my happy space because it's beautiful content. There's no social, there's no peer pressure. I could just look at lovely images and I get to experience fashion and culture and great stuff without feeling like I have to be cool and present myself. And so I feel like there's this disconnect. People want great content and they want to connect with their friends and the people they care about. They want expert opinions.

They don't need everyone to see their every move. They don't need to connect with everyone they've ever seen. And so I'm really interested in exploring these kind of relationships around authenticity and intimacy and inspiration, as opposed to just how can we put all of ourselves out there in this kind of what I think is really an old school way of thinking about social media at this point.

Fascinating for me to hear how different Gen Z is actually seeing social media from millennials. I'm also a millennial, so I'm very different. I think it sounds very healthy, the way how they interact. And it sounds like they also learn from the mistakes that maybe past generations made. But how do you combine those very different ways of interacting with

technology with social media, if you're building a product like a fashion e-commerce site like Zalando or something else, if you have two very different parts basically and you don't have a certain target group that's just Zensi or just millennials, but basically everyone, it makes it very difficult, right? Yeah. I mean, in general, I'm a big believer that if you design for everyone, you design for no one. And so

I think like whenever there's a conversation of, okay, but is this going to address X and Y and Z? It's always a red flag of saying like, no, it won't. And that's totally fine. Our role as designers is not to make one feature that addresses everyone, but to make the right feature for the right user and make it really clear, like this is for you.

And for the person that it's not addressing, what's the right feature for their needs? So how are we thinking about entry points? How are we thinking about the flows? How are we making sure that the options that are meaningful are being surfaced in the right moments so that you can choose your own adventure and a product?

At least for when you're designing like us, when we have 50 million users, of course, there's going to be different opinions and something like fashion that's so personal. So it really varies. I think when it comes to how do you kind of address this kind of change in behavior and relationship?

I would say there's the split. There's how is tech addressing it? And then how is designers can we meaningfully address it? Of course, in the tech space, it's all about the best algorithm ever. How is AI making this more personal? Like more personal, more personal, more personal. Yes, designers can get involved. I do think there's also a ceiling in which how influential is a designer in that project versus it is about refinement from an engineering perspective.

What I do think is uniquely experiential that designers can really influence is this concept of authenticity and how are we making really authentic experiences and giving our users those kind of tools to understand what is real here. Because again, people don't want this peer pressure. Everyone's super aware of sponsorship and I'm being sold this and I'm kind of being manipulated. So how are we kind of creating honesty? And I think

That kind of human emotion, that's what designers excel at, is to say, hey, how are we infusing human emotion? How are we solving real problems? There's no one silver bullet. How do you design for authenticity? But to me, that's kind of the topic I'm most excited about looking into in the next couple of years. And I think that that's the shift that I'm most excited about. Yeah.

And I think especially in times of AI, where so many things are superficial, there's no authenticity in many tools or products or even content and resources that you find. I think it's very artificial. So I think this is something that even other generations might crave. You know, like real feelings, being human, making mistakes, being authentic somehow. So I think this is...

absolutely fascinating but like I'm I'm super curious like how can you like transform like this feeling into a product being authentic how do you do that it's so it's so difficult because like I wouldn't even know where to start yeah it's

It's always a challenge. I think the double-edged sword of authenticity is that if you want to kind of be real about trials and tribulations, it also means that you have to talk about the negative. If I want to give an authentic product review, it means I can't just talk about what I really like. I also have to talk about what I really don't like. And then how are you having this balance of not wanting it to kind of be like just a bunch of hate comments or tearing apart products, but giving something really real.

I think to me, when I think of what is the best kind of authentic experience, and this is also my own personal interest is, you know, I'm obsessed with all things skincare. Those are the influencers I follow. Those are the people I'm excited about. And I think about, okay, how can I map authenticity versus the kind of

new obsession with skincare that you see on social media. So like, what are the trends that we can see? First of all, this concept of who is expert and having expert opinions. We see more and more dermatologists who are becoming content creators. We see that people really want to talk about the medical and the science. It's not just this kind of like, you know, glossed over imagery. There's also people talking about, Hey, these are the products that work for me. These are the products that didn't work for me.

I think these are really interesting examples to think about, okay, how can I take maybe those topics and now bring them into a product design experience? How am I bringing expert advice into this? How am I bringing real responses to what this does and doesn't work for? You know, kind of to that first comment or earlier comment of, oh, how do you design experience that works for everyone? We should be honest. Experiences don't work for everyone.

Instead saying, hey, this is really going to work well for you and you're going to love this if you're looking for X, Y, and Z. And if you're looking for something else, we can serve you a great other experience, but it's kind of over here and we're going to move you there. And as designers, how are we telling that story in a way that doesn't kind of create drop off or create hesitation, but instead makes people feel like, oh, this product is on my side instead of just trying to kind of loop me in more and more.

yeah and um trying you to sell something just that you know you buy it and leave your money there i think that's a really good point authenticity means thinking about you know like the positive and the negative reviews sides of a product and then finding the best fit for the user basically i think that's a really good approach for people and it works for basically every industry and every product um like

Working in innovation especially, what are your thoughts on the future for designers? So a lot of designers are listening to this podcast episode, to the podcast in general, and they are all curious of where the future is headed. What do you think is important for designers nowadays to know, to learn, to understand? Yeah, obviously it's been a tough couple years for the design industry and the tech industry.

But I feel really optimistic about design in general. I guess I think about when I was in design school, my professors were talking about that their early careers was still working with exacto knives and cutting things out bit by bit. And then they were working in flash. And then all of a sudden it was Adobe Illustrator and then it was sketch and then it was Figma. So the design, I mean, the UX industry has changed

probably every five years since the term interaction design has come up. So yes, there's major changes in the industry, but I guess this kind of panic about it, to me, it was inevitable that things would change because historically it's always been that way. I think that design has done a disservice to ourselves. I guess, let me rephrase.

Designers I find are so helpful and so passionate and so excited about the industry. But I think sometimes that passion has done a disservice to ourselves about being realistic that this is a craft and this is challenging. So I think that what's happening right now is we wanted to tell the story that everyone can be a designer. And yes, everyone can be a designer, but if you put in the work to develop your craft and your muscle.

But we kind of just left it. Everyone can be a designer, do a six week bootcamp, do two sessions on ADP list. And now you're going to have a six figure salary and you can live wherever you want.

I love it to be that easy, but we are in a financial environment where that's not really the case. And so I think designers who are really struggling kind of need to ask themselves, like, am I expert and what am I expert in and finding that to me, the areas of expertise going forward in the same way that it used to be, there was UX and UI and then it became product design. And we're always shifting our titles and going through an identity crisis.

For me, the three categories are craft, strategy and growth. And these are the kind of topics that I would say, yes, call yourself a product designer. But are you a specialty in either of those? If you're a specialist in craft,

Are you an absolute UI guru? Can you do design systems? Are you doing motion design? Are you doing prototyping that feels real? How are you bringing visuals to life so that when you put something in my hands, my mind is blown? That is a huge asset. If it's strategic, those are the kind of skill sets that I talked about when it comes to the studio that we look for.

Ambiguity, storytelling, narrative. Are you super flexible with your process? You think through the business case studies of things. How are we really partnering with your product and your business leaders to think about designs role as you drive the company forward?

And then the third part is growth. This concept of how do designers work with data? Designers have gotten a lot better with data, but I think that the growth designer is the one who's super expert in it. Can you think about growth hacking? Are you an expert in working with dashboards and really working with data scientists or analysts to understand how are we using design to be super experimental and really kind of drive KPIs?

And I think that designers should really think about what's the kind of camp I want to be in and how am I positioning myself for that? Because the reality is, is this generalist product designer, the market is too saturated. There's just not enough jobs. And so if you're kind of fine at everything, how are you really going to stand out in the next job interview when you have someone else who's really checking the boxes that a team needs? 100%.

What do you say or what are the favorite resources that you could recommend maybe to dive into one of those three sections or maybe something else that's important for designers to check out?

Yeah, it's a, I would say, so I'm in the kind of strategy camp. That's how I would define myself. So I think for growth or for craft, there's probably much better people to ask. But for strategy, I think I'm looking a lot at what our kind of futurists talking about. So I think Amy Webb is someone I'm always really excited to see her kind of future reports from a pure like,

mind-blowing perspective, anything written by Jaron Lanier, who was kind of at the forefront of artificial intelligence and has such great books around who owns the future and what's the role of data. So I think really playing in these conceptual spaces and thinking about legislation when it comes to AI and what does data privacy mean? And when we think about the kind of political uncertainties between

you know, all different kinds of markets. What is that role going to play within technology? If you want to be thinking about future facing strategy, you really have to think about what are these kind of forces at play in addition to, okay, what's the kind of future of just design as a craft?

Awesome. Thank you so much for sharing those resources. I think super helpful. I know that strategy is a super important skill for the future, something that AI is not going to be able to replace the critical thinking that you need. So thank you so much for sharing those resources. If people would like to connect with you, maybe ask a follow up questions or just like follow your work or what you're doing, where can they find you?

Yeah, LinkedIn is always a great place. My name is Rachel Rosenson on LinkedIn. And then I also have a website. It's RachelRosenson.com where you can always shoot me a message. I'm always happy to chat.

Awesome. I'm going to link everything in the show notes so people can find you, check you out and connect. Rachel, thank you so much for being in the podcast. It was wonderful speaking with you, hearing your thoughts about the future of fashion, about the future of design, different trends, lots of learning. So thank you so much for being so open and yeah, don't gatekeep, but really sharing that with the design community. I appreciate that. Thank you. My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Thank you.

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