Podcast ¦ CX Passport: The One With AI Product Design – Jon Deragon E242

Key Take Aways

1. Demonstrating respect through comprehensive presentation, walkthroughs, and QA sessions with stakeholders significantly enhances relationships and results in more polished outcomes.
2. Leadership in large design organisations involves centralising teams to streamline processes, foster collaboration, and ensure consistency across diverse product domains.
3. Organising design functions into competency units that span multiple industry sectors and technologies enables scalable, high-quality outputs.
4. Building integral relationships with developers by promoting transparency, involving them early, and fostering ongoing communication is vital for successful implementation.
5. The design organisation’s role is not to provide code but to understand technological capabilities and collaborate effectively with technical teams.
6. Deep user research combined with engaging, meaningful design elevates products from merely functional to impactful and soulful experiences.
7. The rapid pace of AI development necessitates continuous learning and gathering insights from diverse sources such as conferences, books, newsletters, and thought leaders.
8. Staying abreast of advances in multimodal interaction and guiding users to leverage different input modes enhances user experience in AI-driven products.
9. Cross-organisational design literacy contributes to better understanding, richer discussions, and more effective collaboration, without expecting everyone to become expert designers.
10. A culture of respect and transparency between design and development teams mitigates adversarial dynamics, promotes shared goals, and results in more refined deliverables.
11. Organisational structure should facilitate shared knowledge and collaboration, especially in fast-changing technological environments, by centralising design functions.
12. Building a strong relationship with stakeholders, fostering mutual respect, and understanding the full context behind designs are key to creating impactful customer experiences.

Key Statistics

• The organisation has built and leads a team of over 140 designers across diverse global functions.
• Design involvement covers a wide spectrum, including mobile, desktop, spatial computing, and automotive infotainment systems.
• The design team operates close to all stages of the product lifecycle, ensuring comprehensive oversight and input.
• The keynote speaker highlights the coming publication of Josh Clark’s book on sentient design scheduled for 2026.

Key Discussion Points

• The evolving landscape of AI design, incorporating multimodal input such as video, images, audio, and sensors.
• The importance of designing intuitive guidance to build user confidence in new, unfamiliar AI interactions.
• How leaders can keep pace with the rapid development of AI technology through broad sources like conferences, publications, and thought leaders.
• The analogy of everyone being responsible for the customer and the importance of fostering design literacy across organisations.
• The distinction between enabling design literacy versus expecting everyone to perform design work or coding.
• The benefits of a centralised design organisation, providing scale, consistency, and a shared knowledge base.
• Strategies for fostering effective collaboration between designers and thousands of developers to prevent misunderstandings and conflict.
• The significance of participation, transparency, and detailed documentation in the design-to-development handover process.
• The role of respect as a foundational element for productive cross-team relationships.
• The impact of organisational structure on the speed and quality of output in complex, technology-rich environments.
• The role of ongoing external learning through conferences, books, and thought leadership to stay relevant in AI-driven design.
• Practical approaches to integrating new AI capabilities into product experiences responsibly and intuitively.

Podcast Description

This podcast explores the intersection of customer experience, design leadership, and emerging technologies such as AI. It features insights from industry leaders who share strategies on organisational structuring, fostering collaboration, and staying ahead of technological change. With a focus on creating meaningful and impactful user experiences, the series offers actionable advice for senior managers in financial services seeking to enhance their service design and innovation capacity amidst rapid technological advancements.