Experience Leadership in the age of GenAI
Between hope, erosion, and a chance to reclaim influence
Generative AI is currently on the mission to change the way we work. Benefiting from the days of data, what we’ve built over the years: Our silos, our knowledge, our tools and reassembles them into something new. Something faster, more efficient, sometimes surprising. It cuts through the layers of our workflows and touches places we’ve long considered protected.
The loudest voices in this shift aren’t always our own. People talk about how everything will change. I’ve heard that before. But this time, it feels different. The speed. The confidence. The certainty. And maybe because it’s not coming from within design, but from the people who usually watch from the side. Or manage from above. It feels like grown-ups are entering our space. At least it feels like it.
That’s why I want to unpack what’s beneath the surface: the emotions, the predictions, the loss, and the return of influence. And how GenAI might not just change how we design, but why we’re needed in the first place. Think of this as a collection of my thoughts, shaped by what I’ve read, the people I spoke to, and my experience.
The opportunity: A return to strategy?
There was a time when design moved closer to the center. Service design had its moment. Design was discussed as a structure for complexity. To connect things. It gave us language to discuss systems, about how things connect, about how we might help teams understand complexity instead of just decorating its outcomes. We made the whole offering visible the way though it, and visualized them with our tools of prototyping. Creating artifacts to make discussions tangible and creating stories that try to catch the full pictures of organizations, their customers and its dialog for internal and external.
Later, the term »strategic design« entered the conversation. It served as an umbrella term to combine cross-functional work from us and others, which we borrowed and used methods before to create clarity. For a while, it felt as we design could become a translator of ambiguity. Instead of the producer of output.
But that moment passed quickly. The framing and the language were there. But the mandate was missing. We could talk the talk, but in many places, the decisions were already made elsewhere. The tables were full. Other roles had the mic.
It’s important to acknowledge that this played out differently depending on where you stood. On the agency side, in consultancies and innovation-driven environments, design often had more air. It could act visionary, push into new spaces, create frameworks to explore what was possible. But in product-driven organizations, especially in startups, design was more tied to making, to execution, to the next feature. The gap between ambition and reality stayed wide.
Some companies bridged that gap. Often thanks to design co-founders or leaders who intuitively understood the value of experience beyond aesthetics. In those cases, design had a seat at the table. It shaped direction. It informed decisions. But these cases were still the exception.
And then came the pandemic. The restructurings. The budget cuts. Many design leaders lost influence, some lost their teams. The progress we had made felt fragile. In difficult times, companies reverted to old patterns. Efficiency became the dominant narrative. A direct path from business to engineering seemed like enough.
Some of the patterns I kept seeing and feeling. Maybe the design community didn’t experience them as sharply because many of us still stay closer to the craft than other departments. But they shape our context too:
- Leaders are pulled into the operational trenches
What used to be delegated is now expected to be owned. Leaders are no longer shielded from the day-to-day they’re deep in it. This shift demands increased personal agency, resilience, and sharper judgment. - Efficiency and innovation are converging under pressure
»Do more with less« is a structural expectation. Leaders are tasked with pushing transformation and AI adoption, all while running on tighter budgets and leaner teams. - Flattened structures and collapsing middle layers
Middle management is thinning out, pushing more direct responsibility onto senior leaders. Fewer buffers, more exposure. Decision-making and execution are increasingly fused.
These patterns describe a backdrop for us and also a chance. We won’t return to strategy by waiting to be invited back. The language is still around. The potential too. But the mandate isn’t, and strategy won’t come looking for design. We have to earn our seat again. And maybe GenAI gives us a way back in. Because now, delivery accelerates. Interfaces, copy, concepts all can be produced in minutes. But speed makes something else visible: the missing link between what gets produced, what makes sense, and what’s actually good. Fast output without synthesis creates noise. Slop. And that won’t help any company, not in the long run, not even short-term.
Holding the line on quality
There’s been a shift in how we talk about design leadership. Less about execution, more about judgment. About knowing what’s good, even when the thing wasn’t made by us. Taste has become shorthand for quality. But not the superficial kind. It’s about coherence, about balance, about timing. It’s about knowing when something fits and when it doesn’t. Even if it came from a prompt instead of a person.
In a GenAI-driven environment, this kind of judgment becomes more visible. Because the volume of output is no longer the bottleneck. But quality still is.
»So I think that’s like probably where it’s headed, where we’re gonna have more and more people that ultimately become the creative directors, the art directors, and they might have an idea and a vision. They may not have the classical art and al art and design training. So how can you train that on the fly or provide that right?«
Amy Lokey, Chief Experience Officer, ServiceNow (Finding Our Way Podcast)
So this can be one way into strategy is by holding the line. Not by doing more, but by helping others know when something is good. When it’s enough. When it’s not yet right. Not just visually, but in its intent. In its fit. In its ability to carry meaning.
The kind of quality that still needs conversation. That still needs perspective. That still needs care.
Creating orientation, before speed
Another way design becomes strategic again is not by speeding things up, but by helping teams find direction. That means slowing down early enough to ask better questions. To name the actual problem. To decide together what matters before jumping into execution.
This isn’t new work for us. We’ve always created space for synthesis—visually, conceptually, strategically. But that kind of work is becoming more essential and plays on another scale.
Help teams to:
- ask the right questions
- frame the real problems
- align around direction before execution
GenAI frees up time in the process. But that time won’t stay open for long. If we don’t show up with intention, someone else will. And if we’re not involved in how direction is formed, we won’t be part of what gets built.
This isn’t about control or ownership. It’s about stepping into uncertainty and making it navigable. That’s not just a design opportunity. It’s one of the few real chances we have right now to enable, influence, and create impact by bringing experience back into the conversation as a business partner.
Both attempts need one thing. Not the mandate, but room and the culture for real cross-functional work. If you are in a place where silos, titles, and leadership of the division and demarcation is based. You have to elaborate if it’s worth your time, energy, and lifetime.
The risk: Designing in the dark
The more GenAI becomes part of our work, the less we often understand how results come to be. The tools produce things that look right, that feel complete, sometimes even convincing. But the process behind them stays hidden. There’s no clear path to follow. No trail to learn from. No reasoning to reflect on.
This breaks something fundamental in the way we work. Design has never been just about outputs. It has always lived and breathed in the in-between.
- In the way, we arrive at something.
- In the questions we ask. In the dots we connect.
- In the reasoning that leads to clarity.
When that disappears, we lose more than process. We lose confidence. In the result. In the quality. In our ability to repeat what worked. We can barely grasp the why behind the output. How did we get here? Why does it make sense? We start reacting to what is generated instead of shaping the conditions in which it’s made.
And we lose something else, too. The ability to teach others what good looks like. If we don’t understand the steps, how can we help others get there? If we can’t see the thinking, how can we reflect or improve?
GenAI privieds us with faster and more output. But without transparency, they risk creating noise instead of meaning. Without transparency, there is no trust to build on. No foundation for true partnership.
When everything moves fast, it’s easy to follow whatever comes next. And for a while, even noise can feel like progress. Until it doesn’t. Until something feels off, but no one knows exactly where or why. And it will take a long time to recreate the path to understand this.
The loss: When experience is skipped
People build things without us. They move forward. They ship. They launch. Not always well. But well enough to get by. And the hard truth is, in many places, that’s enough.
The truth is, our absence rarely causes a crisis. Decisions still get made. Interfaces still get pushed. The roadmap moves on.
And when our work is no longer visible, it quickly becomes optional. When something looks smooth, people assume it was easy. And when it looks easy, they assume it’s not essential.
That’s where the erosion begins. Because our work was never just about the deliverables. It was about holding the threads together. About making sure the thing we’re building actually does do make sense for the business, for the people using it, for the teams involved. Without that, it’s not that things fall apart. They just drift. Direction gets fuzzy. Decisions become political. Quality becomes subjective. And experience becomes a checklist.
And still, people move on. Because they can. That’s the part that hurts, quietly. But just because something continues doesn’t mean it continues well. And just because it works doesn’t mean it works together.
The danger isn’t that we’re excluded. It’s that we’re not missed until the cost becomes visible. And by then, it’s already spread.
»Design leaders face a pivotal moment. As artificial intelligence reshapes creative processes, platforms evolve at unprecedented speed, and businesses seek more profound competitive advantages, the mandate for design leadership has fundamentally expanded. What was once about craft excellence and product impact now demands enterprise-wide transformation and strategic influence.«
Rachel Kobetz, Chief Design Officer, PayPal
The question: Where do we go from here?
Good question, right? I don’t have the answer. But I do have a perspective. And yes, my bias. I don’t think it’s about needing to be at the center (of everything). We work with others; we need others. Their input, their opposition, their experience.
But when no one holds the center, things start to slip. The work keeps going. But the friction builds up. The gaps grow. Quietly. Until no one can cross them anymore.
That’s where we come in. Not to dominate. But to hold the space where direction can emerge. Design isn’t about saving the day. It’s about how the day takes shape. How people come together. How priorities become visible. How momentum builds at the right moment.
If GenAI accelerates the visible, then our work is with the invisible. The timing. The framing. The synthesis. The quality. The clarity you can’t automate. But you can design for it. And maybe that’s not just where we come back in. Maybe that’s where we’ve always been needed.
