Designing in the Age of AI: Reflections from NN/g’s UX Podcast

I’ve been listening to the NN/g UX Podcast (episode 51: The Future of Service Design in the Age of AI with Erika Flowers) and found myself nodding so hard I nearly spilled my coffee. Erika’s perspective on service design isn’t just refreshing—it’s grounding. She reminded me that design has always been about choreography: not the hover state of a button, but the dance between humans, systems, and the stories we tell through them.

“We shouldn’t be thinking about designing software. We should only be thinking about designing malleable, unpredictable human experiences.”

For me, that hits home. AI is my editor, my thought partner, my brainstorming buddy. I have dyslexia, so while I can write (hello, 300+ page MA thesis), it’s always been a struggle. AI helps me polish, expand, and sometimes even fight through the blank page. That makes it a collaborator.

It’s also a threat—because as much as we fantasize about friendly AI companions, there’s the looming reality of war robots. I’m a pacifist at heart, and the idea of AI weaponization terrifies me. Still, I believe in humanity’s potential to wield these tools for good, not distraction.

And finally, AI is a tool. You can’t talk to AI like it’s a person—it doesn’t think in the same way. The rise of “prompt engineering” courses shows exactly that: designing the question is half the design challenge. Just like with humans, context and framing are everything.

“The service blueprint is closer to making a movie—script, previs, budget—than it is to drawing diagrams.”

When I worked on a KPI dashboard with the Port of Oakland, I saw firsthand that design is not just about arranging pixels—it’s about conducting a symphony. Drivers, dispatchers, port staff, policy—all moving parts that needed to be visualized in one interface.

AI could crunch the data, sure, but deciding the orchestration of widgets, priorities, and workflows? That’s human work. That’s design.

Blueprints, to me, are sacred—but they’re also flexible. Built on empathy and research, they serve as a script for an experience. But humans are never static, so the script has to be written with adaptability in mind.

“Words and language are going to be the top design skill of the future.”

Erika made this point, and it really stuck with me. Words will power conversations with AI, define prompts, and shape interactions. As designers, storytelling is our oldest tool—and it’s about to be our sharpest one again.

But here’s my hot take: don’t skip the pixels. Vibecoding is fun, but you need to understand why a hover state matters, or why button contrast must balance accessibility with aesthetics. Those details may feel tedious, but they’re what separate “a nice experience” from “an inclusive, resilient, human experience.”

“What excites me most is moving away from being the best at operating a computer, and into solving complex human issues out in the wild.”

That’s the future I’m excited about too. From logistics to healthcare, from dashboards to AI agents, we’re not designing software—we’re designing trust, choreography, and human connection.

And honestly? That’s the kind of design challenge I live for.