#91 Ioana Teleanu on AI, Career Tips, and the Future of Design
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Hello friends and welcome back to the future of UX podcast. My name is Patricia Reiners, I'm your host and I'm an innovation and UX designer currently based in Zurich, Switzerland. And in today's very special episode, I have a wonderful guest with me, who is Ioana Telliano.

I know her for I think like five six years now from the early days of Instagram because she is better known as UX goodies on Instagram with a huge following now she's the AI lead at Miro working on all these interesting AI features that Miro is releasing so very very inspiring

I got to know her like as I already mentioned in the early days of Instagram and back then no we both really shared content on your ex we supported each other I also invited her to my your ex after work drink live stream session on Instagram back then maybe some of you will remember it but it's like ages ago

And Ioana is such a rock star in this space. She's also very excited about AI, the future. And in our conversation, we are covering a lot of different things, a lot of insights and tangible tips for you.

We are talking about how does working at Miro in the AI team as an AI designer looks like. Ioana also talks about some career advice, what she would recommend people who would like to get into the space to really stay up to date with the tools, with the methods, everything that's going on. But we are also talking a little bit

the pitfalls and the problems that are currently out there. So we also have some, I would say, more critical views on certain topics. And I think this is super important. I can highly recommend to watch, to listen to this episode. And now buckle up, my friends, get a nice tea or coffee and enjoy this wonderful and very, very inspiring episode with Ioana.

Awesome. Welcome, Ioana. I'm so excited that you are finally here in the future of your ex. Thank you so much for coming. So first of all, welcome. Hi, I'm very happy to be here. I know that I've actually been very...

much waiting for this moment because we've had a lot of conversations. We know each other for a long time in the creation, content creation space. So now we both share the interest and passion for the AI space and the future of AI. So it's like this conversation was

was so due, right? 100% way overdue. And I think this is something that I also really love that we started basically together, this whole like social media phase, like years ago, I invited you to the UX Afterwork Drinks. We talked about the future and research and all these things. And now things are evolving. The industry is changing. And I'm so, so happy to have you in the future of UX to chat with you. Yeah.

And to get started, I assume that most listeners already know you, but in case some people have never heard about you, please give a quick intro and tell us what you're currently doing, what you're up to. Sure, sure. So hi everyone, thank you for tuning in. I am Ioana and I am a product designer for AI at Miro currently. So I've joined Miro one year ago to work on the

AI experience of collaborating on a canvas, which is very exciting, as you can imagine, for a designer to work in their own problem space, right? How do we collaborate? How do we build products better? How do we innovate together? And so on. So I'm very grateful for the experience I've been having for the past year as the AI product designer at Miro. And before that, I worked on a product called Clipboard AI as part of UiPath. And

That was also a very AI heavy product where actually my initiation in the AI space happened. And that product also won Time Magazine's Best Invention of 2023 award. And so it was pretty, yeah, it was pretty revolutionary in what it did and the problem space it was tackling, which was essentially how can we copy paste better? And so it's,

It's really a fascinating journey into AI. And then also, yes, I've been doing a lot of content in the AI space. Of course, with Interaction Design Foundation, AI for Designers, and doing talks about the intersection of AI and design. And so, yeah, and also running UX Goodies, which is my channel for discussing design and my insights and my knowledge and my experience.

lessons. So yeah, I think that's it in a nutshell. That's awesome. You're such a rock star in the industry. And this is something that I find so inspiring about you. You're also sharing a lot of

things online, right? Like you are someone who really wants to also like educate and help the community. And I think this is super important and we need that, especially right now with AI and all the things that are happening. And I can imagine also working at Miro

must be super fascinating so i went to the leader summit this week actually and got a little sneak peek into the new ai features so excited about it first of all so pretty cool maybe you can tell us a little bit about how does like working at my room looks like especially in the ai team how does like a typical day look like so take us a little bit behind the scenes yeah absolutely um

Well, I joined Miro as the first product designer for AI. Up to that point, there was a very talented team of engineers and a very ambitious and talented and smart PM working on the product. And they were kind of getting support from the design team here and there, but there wasn't anyone to support.

really act as a design partner and how they're thinking about the future of AI and Miro and the strategy and the philosophy behind everything we're doing. And so when I joined, it was a lot of

let's say, discovery work that we have been doing together. Like, what is the right framework for design and when it comes to this very ambiguous space in a way, right? And then what are the first problems we should tackle with AI? Because the last thing I would want in my career as a designer for AI is to just do AI for the sake of AI. Just do something that shows that we have AI. And I mean,

I think the value of what this technology is now surfacing for us and the way it's changing the world, the value lies in how you employ it to actually

bring meaning and value to our users' lives. And it's very easy to get swept away in, let's just build something that's technologically possible. Let's just start from what technology can do and surface it and see what people do with it. But that's in a way not lazy, but not necessarily very effective or very meaningful.

And so what I've been trying to do as the designer for AI and also what myself and the PM and everyone around me working, because it's not just me, you can imagine, I am the official AI designer, but we do have leadership that's thinking about AI heavily. Every designer in Miro is in a way now exploring AI.

their problem space and if AI is an instrument that could improve that problem space or address certain friction points or yeah, just are there things in there

particular area, right? Let's say comments in Miro or workshopping or templates. Is there anything, is there any opportunity to solve a problem that they've mapped out in research with the help of AI? So everybody's thinking about it. It's not just me. But I think one of my main roles as an AI product designer is to always ensure this intentionality, always drive the conversation in the direction of

Is this meaningful? Is this valuable? Is this real, right? Is this what we should be doing? And then what will everything amount to? Where are we going with this? Which is very hard to answer in the AI age. I think you know very well. It's not just that the technology and how we use it and the patterns and interaction models, everything has this kind of

layer of ambiguity attached to it. But even figuring out how the world will look in three years from now is a very...

ambitious exercise, right? We don't really know how technology will leap because we're looking at leaps essentially with everything we're witnessing around us. Everything is changing so quickly that you can't really project the ideal experience three years from now. So we're defining it one step at a time. So we're essentially trying to answer one question and then the next question and then the next question. And I mean design questions or research questions or like...

what is the valuable experience that AI can surface in a mural first? Or what is our first bet? And how do we learn about it? How do we experiment with it? And even, yeah. So, I mean, it's just,

mostly disambiguating something that's very big ambiguous by nature. So the AI industry, and I think every designer working in the space now kind of has even more like design is ambiguous in itself. This is what we're supposed to do. Just de-risk design decisions, learn about them, find the right path.

But in conventional systems, there are some things that feel clear by now, right? So patterns and so on, how elements come together, behavior, what is intuitive? We kind of know how to answer that when it comes to, I don't know, a checkout flow. But when it comes to an AI experience, there's that non-deterministic aspect that kind of leaves us all, even people working in the space, in somewhat of

dark right and so we're trying to shed light on what's working what's valuable how people are interacting with the experiments that we're doing and just learn a lot I think it's even more learning that that I've been doing for the past year than in any other previous experience I've had so yeah fascinating and I think like you mentioned a lot of super important topics like first of all

finding the right use cases for AI, right? That it's not a chatbot, right? Or like, let's create something with AI just because of AI. But really trying to solve a problem. I think this is super fascinating. And I also really love that you emphasized the ambiguity, like the uncertainty of the way how you approach things that we are all learning.

And it's so different compared to the typical UX process with a static flow, right? That's not changing. So I think this is pretty fascinating, especially for designers. And another thing that you mentioned that I found super, super important to highlight is AI is something that we all need to learn and to see if we can integrate it somehow in our workflows to see how we can use it

and not just like leave this to other people because we need designers who are really speaking up and finding the right use cases and coming up with good recommendations basically so when it comes to designing these ai products right like especially with myro you mentioned like you need to find a good use case and the flow flows are basically changing all the time what is the typical pro i mean like of course all the processes are changing but what is like a typical process

that kind of worked for you in the past to coming up with these amazing products or the features that you are currently working on?

Yeah. Well, I think we also experimented quite a lot with the process itself, right? So it's been a long year of trying to figure out what's the best path to addressing AI opportunities, problems solved with or even without AI. But I think some of the, let's say, overarching themes or the common points in every kind of experiment around a feature or like a concept itself,

What was always there was this kind of trying to trace it back to Research Insights. So start from Research Insights. We're lucky enough to have an extremely talented research team of very senior, seasoned professionals that are really

incredible at surfacing insights and so the findings the insights that matter and so we also use Miro a lot so we have a lot of Miro boards with customer journeys and the pain points and so on so it's really easy to like understand what's not working what's ideal what are and I think AI isn't necessarily about solving things that don't currently work like I don't think that's the

stake or the bet for AI. I think it's just improving some friction points, some points where people get stuck with the help of AI. I think that AI can essentially help you jump from one stage to another in your workflow, whatever that is. So I think what we essentially keep coming back to is what is the workflow that people tend to have in different roles or in different capacities or in different contexts?

And like, is this a design sprint? What do people do in a design sprint? What are the points where they feel they're making progress very slowly or not at all? Is that an opportunity for it? So I think what I'm trying to highlight here is that we always start from these, let's say, journey maps or research insights or user problems. And then so we do this as...

Sometimes they sing, sometimes in workshops. It's just like a team effort where we try to map out what are the next things we want to look into from a resource standpoint. So in that aspect, I think it's pretty ideal because many times I've been in companies or in projects where things were very top-down, right? So we need to make more profit with I don't know what, and then everybody was working on that I don't know what. But we really have the freedom of understanding

what are important problems that the users are experiencing or and then starting from that and so we're looking at these problems we're looking at research quite a lot and then we are also thinking about how can we improve the concepts that

seem to bring value. So what I've been doing for the last year is try to look at whatever we built and launched and experimented with. We had a chat at some point. We had a creation panel. We have sidekicks. So we're looking at these, let's say, I wouldn't even call them experiments at this point. We're looking at the features that were shipped and seeing if they bring value. If they're not bringing the value we were hoping, why not? Is it because of the design, the way they were implemented? Is it because of...

the technical limitations, the quality is not there yet. And so what are the reasons for something is working or not? And how can we improve the things that we've been doing? And also on a different layer, we're trying to think of the future and which is might mean radical departures, a complete new world. Like what if the,

Canvas is AI driven. What if everything happens from AI begins and ends with AI, right? Which is a pretty brave way of interfering with the current workflow that people have in Miro. And you don't want to break the experience. Miro is a great product. When I joined them, I was like in this kind of fangirling state for three months. I can't believe I'm working at Miro. I've been dreaming about it ever since it was real time board many years ago. So I was...

I'm very excited about this product. I think it's an amazing product and just the nature of it, like being so open-ended, it's there. You come with other people on this canvas and then you can go in any way, like the potential is huge, the open-endedness, the

the creativity. And so you don't want to interfere with that. You don't want to be use AI to become prescriptive, like here's what you can do and here's what you can do. And so you don't want to interfere with human creativity. You just want to support it in a way. So we're also looking like

part of the process to answer your question is figuring out how can we use AI in the subject of good? Like how can we responsibly design AI interactions that don't interfere with the magic that Miro already has in it, right? You don't want to ruin the real magic with AI magic. And so it's just a lot of reflection work and brainstorming and conversations. And sometimes it's just intellectual work. And other times it's just

prototyping and aligning around these designs. So yeah, and I don't know, it's pretty much close to the classic.

design process, but I feel what's different in AI in general, and I've also experienced it in working on Miro, AI is that, and you know it probably very well. So prototyping in the age of AI, in some way it's easier, like let's look at Miro's prototype launch, recent launch, right? So you can now prototype design with AI.

But the problem is if you really want to learn if something is working or not, you have to build it because the success of an experience in the age of AI is not just about design anymore. It's not usability based, right? So, okay, so people can actually get to the end of the flow without any major setbacks or roadblocks. It's not just that. It's that can the output or can the AI, right?

Yeah, outcome, whatever the AI is generating, creating, doing, executing, is it at the level of quality that the user was hoping for? Or did it really respond to the user's goal? And did we understand, did we capture the intent and deconstruct it well enough so that we delivered something that's relevant with the help of AI? And there's also the problem of not knowing if what you produced with AI is

is what the user was looking for. So you're also going in the dark in terms of measuring the quality of whatever you've put out there or whatever you've executed with the help of an AI agent, let's say. And so

My point is that prototyping now is much more sophisticated and you really have to see if the technology supports the design and the aspiration you're going for, right? So now you want to put this thing in there, like let's say, I don't know, generating images. Sure, the UX flow is pretty clear. You have a prompt field and then you select styles and then you click generate and then the image is being produced. But then to really test if users are happy with this experience and learn about it,

shipping it or not, in a way you have to ship it first because there is also the layer of technological capacity and quality that needs to be met. And so, yeah, it's different in many ways, but it's quite

similar in other ways, if that makes sense to the classic design process. Yeah, I think super interesting to get a little sneak peek into how you guys are working at Miro. And I love that you talked about prototyping, such an important topic. Actually, today I shared a post on LinkedIn about the new prototyping feature in Miro. Pretty nice. Like for everyone who hasn't seen it, I'm going to link it in the show notes. You basically write ideas on Post-its,

You basically select them all and then you click on prototype and then it generates a clickable prototype. Super easy, super simple. And I got a lot of comments as well. Like most people were, of course, very excited about it. Me as well. Like I'm seeing this in workshops with my clients with non-designers. Awesome. And some people were a little bit cautious or afraid of like, hmm.

Now we might skip the whole design phase. Now we might move over to development like super quickly when we start with high fidelity prototypes from the beginning. And I think, you know, putting this a little bit into perspective, what you just mentioned, right? Like designing is changing 100%.

The flows are changing and AI products are changing the whole space. It's not linear anymore. And the product learns from us. We are learning from the product. So it's like a two way street now. And I think that's fascinating and what a lot of people need to understand. So you can't just ship it, right? Like it's not possible. You can, but then you will lose a lot of money because things are probably not aligned. So this is only the first step. And this is also why our tools need to become better.

Otherwise, no chance, right? Like we can't really hold up with the speed. Yeah, that's crazy. So what is your take on tools generally? I mean, you're working for one of the coolest AI tools out there with amazing features. What other AI tools could you maybe recommend? Maybe you're using yourself. I'm super curious to get a sneak peek into your workflow. How does it look like?

Yeah, well, it's a very interesting question because I'm going to give a very odd answer to it. I guess I feel that I'm ultimately biased when it comes to using AI tools because I spend a lot of time just experimenting with other AI tools to understand if there are any emerging patterns, if there's anything groundbreaking in terms of how AI surfaced in other tools. So I'm always in this kind of

research academia mode when it comes to other tools, just experimenting with them and trying to build an understanding and knowledge internal model of what AI can do in different products. So I'm biased in that aspect. And so I'm

For me, it's not so much about how can I employ the AI value for myself, but it's more about just learning and experimenting and trying out things and so on. But I feel that, to be completely honest, we haven't seen something fundamentally revolutionary, fundamentally super powerful when it comes... Except I've had only one experience that really blew my mind, and it's Notebook LM.

I fed it my newsletter and it produced a podcast that was extremely human in how it was delivered. But also I feel the nuance of the questions that so not only took the content and delivered it in a meaningful way,

Not generic, but it took it further, like really asking philosophical questions that were relevant, interesting. So it was not just gibberish, typically generic things. It was really, really compelling. Like, oh, my God. Yeah, that's an interesting angle. Thank you, AI. So it was like this feeling of surrealness. And that was the only moment where experimenting with all the AI stuff out there, I really felt like this is bigger than I thought.

understood up to that point. It was just like overwhelming in a way. I cried. It's really, I'm honest. I mean, it was emotional in a way, like technology is just so powerful that it changes the world and we are part of it. We're participating, we're experimenting, we're using GPD, we're using mid journey and whatever, whatnot. So we're playing with these tools, but some, that was the moment when I realized very deeply on an individual level that, um,

Nothing will ever be the same. So on this very apocalyptic note, which is in a positive tone delivered. Yes, I think our roles are changing. And I'm, again, not using AI so much in my work yet, because the reason being it's not really there yet for most of the things that it tries to do today. Let's say, I don't know.

generating designs. I don't need to generate designs at Miro. We have a design system. We're sketching things. And of course, AI can help me take it to the next level, like from a wireframe with the help of the wizard technology that we just acquired. And so, sure, I can do things with AI, but that's not where AI brings me value just yet, right? So I think how our roles will be changing is when the technology will be there.

I don't even know what's going to happen to Figma, to be honest. Unless it's like producing UI

will be externalized to AI eventually. I mean, sooner or later, we will not have to produce UI unless we like it, or it's a hobby project, or it's the classic way of doing things, like this kind of nostalgic use of pixel pushing and so on. But AI will produce very good UI. And if you like

train it minimally on your design kit, on the principles, on the goals that you have, I think it can do a better job than you will, than a junior or mid designer would do in the future. The differences or the revolutionary things that we can do with AI will be like just the vision of a senior designer, the vision of a principal level of where I see coming in hand in hand with AI and then guiding AI in with this articulation of a vision of like,

So there will still be breakthroughs, right? Creative breakthroughs. But they're going to be just orchestrated by the experience and knowledge and vision that a person has. But it will be executed by AI. So in a way, I think what I keep saying in my talks, we have to prepare for the world where we become curators of design. So...

AI generates 10 versions of a landing page and then we choose the one that we feel represents best, whatever goal we have from that landing page. And we tweak it and refine it and everything like refinement iteration can be also powered by AI. So what will make us valuable? And the answer is the vision, right? So just understanding what do we want to do with that thing? What is the problem we're solving?

How would this be a better experience than... Right? What are the questions or directions or how should... Where's iteration taking this AI output? Where am I trying to go with it? And so...

That human inform, like the humans informing AI, that's where we will still bring a lot of value. Like what are we informing AI with? What are we asking AI to do? Those are the questions that will make us competitive or we're still relevant in a way, right? So knowing...

what to instruct AI to do in order to create something that's, I don't know, whatever our goal is, unique, that sells, that's fun, that's beautiful. So what are we trying to achieve? And then how do we use these technologies to achieve that? And again, that's where the magic will happen and how we instruct these technologies to do things and to what end.

But yeah, so our roles are changing. It's pretty exciting. And I don't know, in the beginning, I was like, stop fearing AI. We're going to be fine. But sometimes I do have like this internal voice that says, this is going to be so fundamental. We don't even understand the full implications just yet. Like, maybe it's not good. Right.

Yeah, we'll see. But we need to be smart now because I totally agree. And I think this is what a lot of people don't want to hear. Maybe Figma will vanish at some point. We can't think about it. We don't want to think about it. We rather want to do another Figma course now to learn more pixel pushing. But this is not what really helps us.

If we are smart, we need to be strategic and really rebuild our roles also as designers. And I am a little more positive on this. I think hopefully this will push us all into the roles we always wanted to be in. More like the consultant who's at the table.

I feel like most designers hate pixel pushing. I personally absolutely hate it. I always hated it. Me too. Right? So we shouldn't pretend that we like it, right? So maybe this is a good opportunity for us, but we need to scale up a little bit because the problem is if we don't have any idea about AI, can't talk about terminologies, can't talk to data scientists, don't understand the implications of AI for basic design principles,

who wants to listen to us? No one, right? Like they will like throw us out again. So I think we need to level up a little bit. What do you think, right? About the new role? What like also from your experience, you're sharing a lot of content. You're also a podcast host, by the way. I think you forgot that in your intro, something else that you're doing. Yeah. What do you think from all the experience, from all the input that you're currently getting and sharing?

What are some of the key skills that you see designers need to have to be really be successful in the future? Yeah, well, I'm also evolving the definition of the, let's say,

the skill structure that we need to hone. But I always talk like my most recent newsletter episode is called Critical Thinking in the Age of AI. And critical thinking sounds very abstract, but it's like essentially just questioning things all the time and then making sure that things are intentional and they have meaning and you're not just doing random things

you're not reactive to the world, but you're intentional and you're leading and you're going somewhere and you're measuring if you're going that way. So this aspect of critical thinking, like asking the right questions, understanding what's a good problem to solve for your users. Like AI can't, I mean,

It's tricky, right? I was about to say that AI can grasp very complex systems of relationships, like understand a person's background, their childhood, their relationships, the way they go to work, the way they work in their everyday life and so on. And so just this kind of system of connected elements that make someone's life and how you can

inject yourself and making it better for certain parts. It's like just understanding that ecosystem is something that's beyond the AI scope currently, at least, right? So just for us as designers, understanding this, the complexity behind

a person or a group of people or just let's say i don't know if i'm still a fan of calling them users like just understanding the human experience of someone or a group of people and then figuring out what are opportunities for making their lives better and then how do we leverage those opportunities with or without ai maybe we don't need ai in everything like we can still solve problem in the traditional

paradigm right but so it's this this this skill of in a way i would call it systems thinking like just connecting the dots in a very complex environment of relationships right so

Where is society going? What is the current experience of culture that we have? What are our needs that in the age of AI aren't being met enough? Like the need for nature, the need for art. What are all the things that we're experiencing? And what is a product or a design solution that really responds to something that's human and is not yet solved for? So like these opportunities of making the world better

I mean, AI can come up with generic ideas, but as humans, we are uniquely positioned to empathize in a way, to understand the complexity, that level of complexity and navigate it and understand

what's a good thing to do in the world. So I think that this is, if we hone this skill of really putting things together, the puzzle of product design, which is what we were doing anyway, but now we have to do it even more and be more responsible and be more intentional and be more, I wouldn't even argue philosophical, right? Like every design decision that we make today is shaping, like the shape of AI is changing

being defined by how we use it today. We're making small decisions, small increments, small surfacing, small patterns for surfacing AI, but they're essentially maybe going to just become

the reality of a person five years from now and the way we use technology and there's so much opportunity in that. And so that intentionality, critical thinking, systems thinking, and yeah, just orchestrating all of this, the ability to connect the dots. And then also, I think what will make us valuable even in the age of AI is

And this is going to be probably another biased angle, but it's just being good collaborators. So people will still be working together. We will still need, like, I think it's really weird. We are working so much digitally, right? And then like post-COVID and in the Zoom era and in this age we're in and with AI, probably even more remote teams and so on. So we're getting used to our brains are,

shaping in a direction where we're optimizing for written communication. So we don't even know how to communicate with one another in person as well as we used to. Like if you foster those human skills, collaboration, empathy, asking questions, helping someone surface their ideas, help facilitating thinking for others, facilitating creativity for others, for groups,

That's super unique. Like AI doesn't really understand quirks of the people in a workshop so well as to not give a generic thing like you should try a icebreaker exercise. Sure. But you can go beyond that. Like, OK, someone from my group may be shy or someone from my group might be very outspoken and someone is the CEO. So they're having a different experience.

Their words weigh more. And so, right, how do we balance that? How do we collaborate well with one another? Because design and building products and the future of work is multidisciplinary. It's this idea of bringing different perspectives and different fields and disciplines in the room and then doing something that has value. And that will forever be the case. Even if we bring it with the help of AI, it's still bringing different angles together.

to build something, right? And so like marketing, business, research, psychology, whatever, UI motion. So bringing all these things together to create something coherent. If you are an agent of culture, if you're an agent of collaboration, you will always be needed in a way, right? So if you know how to have those conversations, we still want to work with each other. Like we won't replace people, right?

With AI, we don't want that, really. We don't want to replace. Nobody wants it, right? We're just trying to optimize tasks that, to your point, like I don't want to push pixels anymore. I don't want to do paperwork or just create invoices or I don't know what. I don't want to do that menial work. I want to do more creative work. I want to create art or whatever. So we don't want to replace people. We don't want to replace collaboration. And so if you are still good at that, you're going to be fine.

yeah and you can still learn if you're not 100 good right um and i think i really love the whole topic about collaboration and working with people because this is something that i'm noticing for or actually since i'm freelancing because i'm working with so many different people so many different designers and some people are amazing to work with they're proactive they are smart they are loyal they're just like amazing thinkers

awesome. These people are great. And some people are just very, very difficult to work with. They're always the blocker in a conversation. And unfortunately, some designers feel like they always need to be the person who says like, no, we need more research, we can move forward. So they are more the blocker in the conversation instead of Okay, what can we do? We can do research now. Okay, what can we do? Like, how can we make sure that we can do research ASAP?

And I think this is super important. And unfortunately, a lot of people are not aware of the importance of that. It's already defining teams right now and how successful they are. But I think most people are not really aware of it. So I think, great that you emphasize that. How can people learn that? I don't know.

Well, I think it's also an observation exercise, right? So I think it's a combination of observing what doesn't work in teams and then self-reflecting. And then you observe what happens on the outside and then you reflect on what's going on on the inside. And you try to be better. Like after 10 years in design now, I can say I understand everything.

The typical themes that don't go well in teams, in collaboration, right? So ego, someone who has, I don't know, is being pushed too hard by leadership to deliver on, I don't know what,

ineffective metrics right and so I feel that then there's also the system of incentives like what do we want incentivized in the world in our company in our teams right is it like competition or is it collaboration right so it's like what are we setting ourselves where what's the system

surfacing from us as a team, as a group on an individual level and then just being able to reflect on whatever like the thing is that we don't spend enough time talking about how our personalities and our childhood and our like we are very much

still people with emotions at work as we are in our personal relationships and those feel so difficult and then work is supposed to be something that's completely isolated from the rest of our personality but it's not. I mean what I see at work is still that kind of unhealed trauma that someone has and that so the key to that is just self-awareness and self-regulation and self-exploration and reflection.

And that's what you can do more of, like therapy. It sounds prescriptive, but it is what it is. Just know yourself. And the better you know yourself, the better you understand others and the more tolerant or the better team player you are in a way and just a better human. So I think...

If we're worried about being replaced by AI, let's just be better humans. Like we're going to be harder to replace if we're good humans, right? Let's just make it hard for AI to replace us. I love that. I think this is so nice. I didn't need to remember that.

If you're afraid to be replaced by AI, be a better human. That makes so much sense. And I think it also puts everything in perspective, right? Like we are so worried about like keeping up with everything in design, all the trends.

But no, what we should actually do is focus more on ourselves. I mean, of course, learn about AI, but also reflect and become a better person, a collaborator, someone who understands people, who reads people, who's great to talk with, who has a perspective, who knows an opinion about things, right? Like someone who is not a blocker, but a supporter, right? Who's a driver. I think this is...

totally necessary. And yeah, doing therapy, doing coaching, I think is a very good first step. Instead of focusing on the next Figma design library course or something like this, invest that money into a coaching or something like this and really dive a little bit deeper into yourself. I think like, yeah, you said that super well. A good reminder, I think, for all of us. That's awesome. So for people who are

especially excited about AI, the future, right? Like we are both like passionate about these topics. From your experience, what would you recommend people who want to maybe get a position in as an AI designer or someone who's a bit more at the edge of the future, basically? What is your...

what is your take on that especially because you're already working at a really great company so what are maybe some hiring tips or so that you have because i assume it's not that easy

Yeah, it's very interesting how things are very, I don't know, like, how does Jung call it? Synchronicity. Like, there's a synchronicity with the fact that my next newsletter that goes out next week is called How to Find a Job in AI as a Designer or Product Manager. That's perfect. So you can give us a little sneak peek. And also, I'm going to link the podcast.

the newsletter in the show notes so in case you want to sign up and I will make sure that this episode goes live ASAP so that you can still sign up and get the newsletter yeah yeah and you can also really read it retroactively at the link so that that's fine but still we had to catch it while it's hot so this is the the theme I'm reflecting on these days and this weekend I'm

set aside time to just sit and process, like what are all the insights that I gained in the past couple of years working in the AI space and teaching the AI for designer scores on interaction design foundation, building it and so on. So what have I learned about? And I think it's also very similar or it intersects a lot with how a product manager might want to find a job in AI. So I think it's, then I had a lot of product management experience

friends who were like, how do I transition in AI? I need to get myself in AI fast or I will become irrelevant. And so there is that kind of FOMO or like obsessing over this space. But the first thing I want to say is chill because AI will probably not even be

called AI in a couple of years. We won't have to say that something is AI. We will go back to solving problems and AI will be one of the tools that's available for solving those problems. But it's not going to be, I don't imagine products

for a long time still saying, this is AI, use this AI feature. It's just going to be a feature. It's going to be a value proposition, which is backed by AI in its kitchen. There's AI. But like at some point it might just be yelling AI everywhere. So we will have to stop doing that. I don't think we will label things as AI features or normal features. It's just a feature that solves the problem.

in whatever way. So to that point, you'll still find a job. If you know how to solve problems, you don't have to be specialized in AI or stuff like that. But if you want to go on that path and it's understandable, I think you should expose yourself to the technology first. So

start from the most basic playing around with what GPT can do today, like generate images. Now it has the canvas component and so on. So play with these tools. Play with Notebook LM. It's going to blow your mind. Just play with them. Gemini, whatever. Play with the tools and understand

the potential, the limitations, the current limitations, what they can do, what they might replace, play with them and reflect and just play more and reflect more. And that's a good starting point. If you want to position yourself as someone who is in the space, you might also want to add some sort of side project.

That could be fully independently generated. So it's just you doing something with the help of AI. Maybe you want to build a GPT. Maybe you want to do, I don't know what automation project that involves AI for whatever passion you have. Maybe you want to design a full app with the help of AI and then tell a story about it. Write a Medium article. Record an AI podcast with Notebook LM. I don't know. So just...

do projects on your own if that's not available in your company. If it is available in your company, just to this day, I had a very nice conversation with someone who recently joined Merrill and they reached out because, uh,

They had some experience previously working in AI at a big company that I admire. And now they're not in an AI position anymore, but they want to contribute to the space. And I'm like, sure, we can get all the help, all the talent, all the new perspectives and angles. Like AI needs diversity of angles, of perspectives to make sure we're not biasing it or limiting what we can do with it. So

This person just showed up and said, look, I'm interested in what you're doing and maybe I can contribute in my free time or like maybe I can tell my manager I want to spend 20% of my time every month collaborating with an AI team. If AI projects are available in your company, and I think we're going to see more and more companies have that kind of initiatives internally.

just go hang out with those people tell them hey look can i help you can i contribute what are you doing like most people need the help because it's a very high effort area to disambiguate all the things that are going on and so volunteer inside your company if that's an opportunity and if not

Pursue it outside of your current job and just build an AI little project, which could be anything. Start from a problem that you are experiencing, like, or your friends or your mother or I don't know, whomever around you and try to see, hmm, interesting problem. Is there any way in which AI could help with I don't know what, right? So you can do that on your own. And then there's also the last part, which is

not just experimenting with tools and trying to build something with them, whatever that is and whatever resonates with you, but also doing some learning like enjoy Patricia's AI for Designers cohorts and learn. And then, I don't know, maybe you want to take Google's path to generative AI

series of videos and learn what generative AI is all about. And so you can also educate yourself with the theory and content. Now there is like an overwhelm of content in the AI space. I personally feel

exhausted. Like I have AI fatigue all the time, but just there's so much free information out there that you can start learning from and educating yourself. And then there's a label there. The last layer is just personal branding. So label yourself as a person who's excited about AI, who's interested in AI, who's doing AI experiments in their free time. Just communicate yourself as

an AI enthusiast, and then you're going to be seen. So my career in AI, well, I got the Clipart AI job because I was already in UiPath and I've been working on different products. And so when this project appeared and it was the juiciest project because it was the first consumer graded product that we were building in a B2B company,

Sure, I had that job. But then I said, you know what, why don't I talk and reflect more on AI? And I started talking about it. And then I started being perceived as the person who does AI. And so it's as simple as that. Talk about the things that you want to do. And then you're going to get more of that, right? It's like in your portfolio, design portfolio, show the projects you want to do more work

So if you want to work in an industry and you have projects in that industry, show them because then they're probably going to get you more of that. It's the same with AI. Yeah. I think this is such a good career advice. I think for everyone who's working anywhere, right?

Really dive into the space, be proactive, reach out to the people you are interested in, offer to do things for free, give something first before you expect people to give something to you. This is also something that I find so important.

And then present yourself as someone who's not maybe not an expert. You don't need to say like you're an expert, like even on LinkedIn, you can just say, I'm super curious about AI. I want to learn more. You know, I found this cool new tool, experimented with it. So no one expect you to be an expert yet. It's totally fine to just be curious what you mentioned, right? Absolutely. And this is how I start my talks.

Three years into the space, I still come up on stage and say, look, problem scoping. I'm a designer. My disclaimer, I'm not an expert in AI. I've just been doing work for different problems in the AI space.

I've been reading a lot. I've been reflecting a lot. I've collected interesting ideas and concepts and patterns and stuff, but I'm not an expert. I don't consider myself an expert. So you don't have to feel like an expert in order to share. And it was the same in building UX goodies, right? When I started, I was...

pretty much a junior designer two years into this career. And so I didn't feel like I have the wisdom and knowledge and experience to share, teach people what they should do. And everything was framed in, hey, here's look what I learned.

here's what worked for me on this project. And here's what I'm curious about. And here's what I don't know and have researched recently. And here's what I found. And so it doesn't have to, because many people are afraid of positioning themselves as an AI something because they're like, what backs that up? It feels so...

non-legitimate, right? It feels like imposter syndrome vibes. What am I saying here? I haven't worked on an AI product in my life. How can I brand myself like that? But your point is very important. You don't have to be an expert to be passionate about something. Like I'm passionate about art and I've never studied art properly. I've never even, I would say, created significant art in my life, right? I never had an exhibition yet.

But I am passionate about that topic and I could talk about it, like my experience of that. And so that's also that that's very

acceptable yeah yeah I think so important to highlight that and especially like your example with your ex goodies which is now I don't know how many followers you have like 100 000 probably on Instagram or maybe more I don't know but like it how far it got you right like this this like perception of like I'm just sharing what I know it got you very very very far right like it sometimes this is a door opener I think like

for both of us, social media has been a huge door opener with just sharing what we're doing, being open about like, this is what's going on. I mean, some things we learn, we can say like, this might be something that we could recommend. Some things we're like, let's see, this worked out for me. Don't know if this is working out for you. And I think especially with AI,

there are not a lot of experts out there because AI is changing all the time, right? Like maybe they found a nice framework or like a method or any rules and then it's changing all the time. And you're seeing this also with AI patterns and everything. This is

changing all the time. Those are not the rules that you should follow. This is a little guideline that you can use. But if you come up with better ideas, perfect. So it's very different to like the UX rules that we all learned basically, right and follow pretty much. Yeah. Fascinating. The space is I think like it's so excited to be alive as the designer right now, right? Like all the change, all the ambiguity. I think we are born for this.

Isn't it? Right? I feel so excited about it. It's our revolution now. It's the first revolution I really experienced. I mean, I was too little when internet was the first original tech revolution in our lifetimes. And then there was the mobile revolution as well, like going from desktop everything to mobile everything, the mobile first mantra.

But this is the biggest thing, I think. I mean, if you think about early days of the internet, we didn't realize back then how much the world will be changed by it. And it was so silly and it was so rudimentary and it was so limited and it was like you couldn't do a lot of things with it, but now you can do everything with it, right? Everything we know digitally, online, connected.

And so I think it's the same for AI. We will understand what the hell went on many years from now, reflecting back. So we're part of our evolution. We can participate. We can contribute. We can experiment. We can expose the limits of these systems. We can understand the potential. We can have conversations about them. We can, I don't know, it's just very exciting to be part of this phenomenon in a way, right? It's just really interesting. I agree. And the world also needs designers, right?

people who are thinking about all the ethical consequences, the biases, who are still designing for the user. Because one trend that I'm a little bit worried about is moving too much into A/B testing, not doing all those things that are not 100% aligned with the user, just to push conversion rates. And I feel like we need designers who are

Also consulting people and like it's still about the user and the long-term plan, like the roadmap basically, right? It's not so much about like the conversion that you're having right now, but the relationship that you're building with your clients in the long-term. Great user experience, which is not just a button, which is like the whole experience around a brand and everything. So I think we definitely need designers for that.

And honestly, I think like we could continue probably forever. Maybe we have like a second part at one point. You're always invited to come back if you have time. But to close the episode, would you like to share your favorite resources that you would recommend designers to check out or where they can learn?

Yeah, well, my favorite resource is my newsletter, which is called AI Goodies. And it's essentially a place where I share all my favorite resources twice per month. So it's not overwhelming. It's not going to feel like more noise in your life. It's I think the perfect cadence and for me to actually have the time to reflect on what I'm writing because I'm it's I think my most personal exercise in content creation so far, like on goodies,

It's the wheels and I don't know, for a long time it was carousels that had no personality, like face, no face to them. So it was just information on a bunch of images, screens, right? With the newsletter, I'm putting in like heart when I write everything and it's a very interesting and very different content exercise. So yeah, that's where I share my favorite resources.

pattern libraries for AI, AI tools, AI interactions that I feel are here to stay and what other thing excited me recently. Like one of the newsletters I recently sent out is essentially at the end, it has its podcast version generated with Notebook LM and it's essentially the newsletter. It's very meta if you think about it. So at the end of the newsletter, you can listen to the newsletter as Notebook LM generated the content based on the content and it's just

you can see AI magic in it like it's tangible it's almost tangible so yeah the AI goodies newsletter and then you can take it from there because that's where I share the rest of the things I like uh without taking forever okay no I think that's perfect I'm going to link in the show notes so people can check it out sign up and then receive your monthly newsletter get up to date

and people would like to reach out to you ask questions what's the best place instagram or linkedin or something else yeah it used to be instagram because that was my main channel but now i think i'm more hooked into linkedin for some reason i think on linkedin i have my my network a bit i got it a bit better like i understand my audience like instagram is so big like i have

230 000 followers i don't know i i can't it's like that probably the diversity is huge and so and because it's a very long-standing project like it began in 2018 by now many people that are there are not even into ux anymore so it's really interesting because you accumulate this kind of uh yeah many people who's interested in but linkedin is more recent so i think it's more updated and more relevant

So yeah, connect with me on LinkedIn and we take it from there. I'm totally as much as I can answer to all the messages I'm getting. I try to answer and I try to be present and yeah, let's let's connect. I'm very excited to meet new people. Perfect. Awesome. I'm going to link it in the show notes so people can reach out.

And Ioana, thank you so much for coming, for being in the podcast. It was amazing to chat with you as always. So nice that we can finally do this public in my podcast. Usually we just have basically one on ones when we see each other at conferences or something like this or in Berlin. But it's also nice to have that like available to the public, basically. So thank you so much for coming. Thank you for having me. And I really, I really enjoyed our conversation once again.

Awesome. Thank you. Bye. Bye, everyone.

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