Rephonic
Artwork for AI and Design
Figma
Artificial Intelligence
AI Agents
Design Process
Anthropic
Google
Openai Frontier
AI Coworkers
AI Integration In Design
Design Skills
Generative UI
User Experience Design
Microsoft
E-Commerce
User Research
Intuitive Designers
Design
Google Stitch
Google AI Studio
Claude

Two Carnegie Mellon faculty explore how artificial intelligence is reshaping the world of design. Each week, we'll break down the latest AI developments, dive deep into AI topics that matter to designers, and talk with fascinating guests who are right at the intersection of these fields.All views expressed are our own and not reflective of Carnegie Mellon or the Human-Computer Interaction Institut... more

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Artwork for AI and Design

Latest Episodes

This week we talk about Figma's new design agent integrated right on the canvas, the 2026 State of AI in Design Report, and Bain's experiment with synthetic customers. Then Dan interview Llewyn Paine about the future of UXR and design and gives a pre... more

When you collaborate with AI on a piece of work, whose thinking is it, really? That question runs underneath what a lot of designers and creatives are arguing about right now, and this week on AI and Design, Nik and Dan dig in.

We start with Giorgio... more

Wharton researchers fed people AI-generated answers, half of them deliberately wrong. The participants accepted them 73% of the time — and their confidence went up. They're calling it "cognitive surrender." Nik and Dan dig into what separates it from... more

Dan and Nik talk about how to design for your next user being an agent, the impact of AI on team structure and dynamics, the challenge of memory and recall in conversation-based AI systems, and the shift towards AI experience design focused on constr... more

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Recent Guests

Llewyn Paine
User researcher and curator of Designing with AI Conference
Rosenfeld Media / Designing with AI Conference
Episode: Episode 20 - Figma Design Agent, 2026 AI in Design Report, Synthetic Customers, Llewyn Paine on UXR
Thom Rimmer
VP of Product Design at FIN (formerly Intercom)
FIN
Episode: AI Originality, Bolt-on AI, Special Guest: Fin's VP of Product Design Thom Rimmer
Tom Groendal
Senior Product Manager, CACI's DarkBlue Intelligence Group
CACI's DarkBlue Intelligence Group
Episode: Cognitive Surrender, Speed isn't The Bottleneck, and special guest PM Thomas Groendal
MC Dean
Senior Design Manager on the Google Shopping Team
Google
Episode: Deep Dive: AI Skills (with Google's MC Dean)
Kirsten Kwan
Researcher presenting on multi-agent collaborators in design
CHI 2026 presentation
Episode: Claude Design, Innovative AI and Design Research from CHI 2026
Kihoon Sun
KAIST PhD student presenting tacit knowledge capture for designers
KAIST
Episode: Claude Design, Innovative AI and Design Research from CHI 2026
Max Praminski
Researcher discussing creative activity traces, design tool interactions
City University of Hong Kong
Episode: Claude Design, Innovative AI and Design Research from CHI 2026
Ray LC
Researcher discussing storytelling tools and human-AI collaboration in design
City University of Hong Kong
Episode: Claude Design, Innovative AI and Design Research from CHI 2026
Jerry Govers
Researcher on multimodal information presentation with LLMs
University of Melbourne
Episode: Claude Design, Innovative AI and Design Research from CHI 2026

Hosts

Dan Saffer
Host; CMU HCII faculty; design and interaction expert
Nick Martellero
Co-host; CMU HCII Institute faculty; design and AI tooling specialist

Chart Rankings

How this podcast ranks in the Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube charts.

Apple Podcasts
#120
United States/Arts/Design
Apple Podcasts
#109
Canada/Arts/Design
Apple Podcasts
#135
United Kingdom/Arts/Design
Apple Podcasts
#95
Australia/Arts/Design
Apple Podcasts
#198
France/Arts/Design
Apple Podcasts
#223
Germany/Arts/Design
Apple Podcasts
#27
Belgium/Arts/Design
Apple Podcasts
#31
Ireland/Arts/Design
Apple Podcasts
#37
Switzerland/Arts/Design
Apple Podcasts
#41
Spain/Arts/Design
Apple Podcasts
#44
Indonesia/Arts/Design
Apple Podcasts
#45
Argentina/Arts/Design
Apple Podcasts
#49
Netherlands/Arts/Design
Apple Podcasts
#50
South Korea/Arts/Design
Apple Podcasts
#62
Denmark/Arts/Design
Apple Podcasts
#72
Brazil/Arts/Design
Apple Podcasts
#83
Norway/Arts/Design
Apple Podcasts
#114
New Zealand/Arts/Design
Apple Podcasts
#119
Ukraine/Arts/Design
Apple Podcasts
#122
United Arab Emirates/Arts/Design
Apple Podcasts
#149
Sweden/Arts/Design
Apple Podcasts
#149
India/Arts/Design
Apple Podcasts
#158
Austria/Arts/Design
Apple Podcasts
#175
Singapore/Arts/Design
Apple Podcasts
#184
Israel/Arts/Design
Apple Podcasts
#218
Mexico/Arts/Design

Talking Points

Recent interactions between the hosts and their guests.

Cognitive Surrender, Speed isn't The Bottleneck, and special guest PM Thomas Groendal
Q: How is your organization approaching AI integration to maintain quality and velocity?
We use a combined approach: a low-friction, fast-cycle development pipeline (vibe coding), a strong governance layer (Product Brain with canonical docs), and an eval-driven testing framework to catch anti-patterns and ensure accountability before production.
Cognitive Surrender, Speed isn't The Bottleneck, and special guest PM Thomas Groendal
Q: What are the real-world risks of cognitive surrender when teams adopt AI in design work?
Cognitive surrender can lead teams to uncritically accept AI outputs, overestimate the system's understanding, and escalate false confidence, which can degrade design quality and safety, especially in unfamiliar domains. The fix includes designing interfaces and workflows that require human justification, offering multiple plausible options, and adding friction that prompts review.
Claude Computer Use, Product Intuition, Author Chris Noessel ("Designing Assistant Technology")
Q: I'm curious what's motivated you to come out with this book at this time.
Noessel explains that generative AI's rapid rise necessitated a practical framework for interaction design, building on prior work about agentive tech, while addressing the risk of de-skilling and the need to design assists that genuinely help users think and perform better.
AI Image Editors, Institutional v Individual AI, Author Louise MacFadyen ("Designing AI Interfaces")
Q: How should latency be treated in AI design, and is there a learning from slow AI?
Latency should be anticipated and communicated; designers can offer escape hatches (like smaller models) and design patterns that help users understand what is happening, especially when deep reasoning is involved.
AI Image Editors, Institutional v Individual AI, Author Louise MacFadyen ("Designing AI Interfaces")
Q: Can you talk about the middle piece of the input-computation-output framework and why it's confusing?
The middle piece—the computation—has historically been opaque; designers must articulate what happens under the hood since engineers often don't fully understand it either. This is where clear UX and explanations matter most.

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Frequently Asked Questions About AI and Design

What is AI and Design about and what kind of topics does it cover?

A thoughtful exploration of AI's impact on design, featuring CMU HCII faculty plus leading researchers and practitioners. Episodes commonly probe how AI tools reshape design processes, collaboration with AI agents, and the ethics, governance, and craft questions that arise when AI augments creative work. Notable threads include the evolving role of designers as AI ecosystems grow, debates over openness versus proprietary tooling, and practical case studies from industry players (Google, Anthropic, Figma) and academia. The show often blends hands-on tool analysis (stitching, design skills, UX patterns) with broader reflections on design literacy, provenance, and the future of design practice in an AI-enabled world. A standout trait is the ca... more

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AI and Design launched 5 months ago and published 21 episodes to date. You can find more information about this podcast including rankings, audience demographics and engagement in our podcast database.

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What guests have appeared on AI and Design?

Recent guests on AI and Design include:

1. Llewyn Paine
2. Thom Rimmer
3. Tom Groendal
4. MC Dean
5. Kirsten Kwan
6. Kihoon Sun
7. Max Praminski
8. Ray LC

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