The Digital Project Manager

How Can We Lead Creative Projects Now That AI Has Entered The Chat?

• Galen Low and Kelsey Alpaio

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AI is transforming the creative workflow—but not in the ways we first expected. In this conversation with Galen Low, creative and PM leaders Sara Fisher, Sara Doubleday, and Greg Storey talk through the practical and philosophical implications of AI’s growing role in creative work. This isn’t about flashy tools or end-to-end automation. It’s about realigning how teams work, communicate value, and preserve the human essence in their process.

From misinformed client expectations to the strategic reframing of creative outputs, the panel explores how project leaders and creatives can use AI to amplify their strengths rather than replace them. Spoiler: there’s still no shortcut for trust, authenticity, or thoughtful strategy.

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Galen Low:

Today's session is all about how AI is impacting the creative process and the way that we lead projects. I thought maybe we could start by meeting our panelists. Who should I pick on first? Sara Fisher is the director of project management at Vye. And Sara, when I first met you, you were a designer and then we re-met when you were a PM and now you're heading up an entire PM team over there at at Vye. What's something that you learned as a designer that you still use every day as a senior leader?

Sara Fisher:

Yeah, so I definitely still use file naming conventions, date codes and versioning, Google Doc titles, just everything, meeting notes. It's so helpful, just noting those things in the file name and it's a habit that I can't break it 'cause it's so good and helpful.

Galen Low:

It is a helpful one. I saw a post the other day, I can't remember for the life of me, who it was. I was like, you know, your whatever, when you have a file on your desktop that's called, or files on your desktop, it's called Final final use this one. And I'm like, that is 75% of the like deliverables I've ever had on a project. It's like version 11.1 51, final, final share. But I love that. It's a great way to stay organized for sure, and like totally necessary. Totally necessary. I think I'll pick on the other Sara. Sara Doubleday is the creative lead at Seer Interactive. And Sara, I actually saw you give a talk about change management at last year's digital PM Summit. Now you're heading up the visual design brand and campaigns team at Seer Interactive. How has your experience in change management helped you navigate change with your creative departments?

Sara Doubleday:

Yeah, great question. So my background is in design. So when I first came to Seer, oh gosh, over five years ago at this point, I joined a really small but very mighty creative team where I wore a ton of hats beyond project management, as I'm sure many people here can understand. So I really think the change management isn't just for operations and PMs. It's really for everyone. So last year when I made the intentional shift back into full-time creative strategy, I never stopped using the change management principles. So leaning into change has been huge for our team and our growth as well as for understanding and learning about AI.

Galen Low:

Actually, your talk was so instrumental. Now it's a life skill, right? It's like running water. It's, it's like you need to understand how change can be done. Well, to the point of what we're seeing in chat, right? Like things are changing so fast, entire teams are being asked to pivot. We're gonna get into that as we get into the discussion, but what a useful slash superhero skill change management. Last but not least, Mr. Greg Storey. Greg is a designer, a creative strategist, and honestly one of the coolest humans I know. So I'm really honored to have you here, Greg. You actually surprised me in our prep call because you literally just published a book on like almost this exact topic. The book is called “Creative Intelligence: Don’t Ask AI, Think With AI”, and it's been getting a lot of praise in the community right now in our community. I remember way back, not that far back, but anyways, way back in the day, years, a year ago, couple years ago, I remember you not being very hot on AI at the outset. I'm wondering at what point you like turned a corner and embraced AI in the creative process, and then also what made you decide to write a book about it?

Greg Storey:

The switch flipped for me, when I saw it was a incredible tool beyond the generation point, the generating things, whether it was cartoons or video or whatever, that just didn't impress me. But once I saw that, oh my gosh, this thing can help me expand my thinking, it's an incredible research tool. The more I dug into that and used actually my background in design as a researcher, explorer, designer, being curious and in creative ways. And when I talked to other people about how they were using AI and people talking to me, it was clear that nobody knows how to use this, or nobody has a really good idea of how to use it. And so that made me think I, well, I'll write a book about it. Basically documented everything that I had been doing in a more friendly way.

Galen Low:

I like that. And it's in there in the title, right? It's like facilitating the creative process, not doing the thing for me. Right. And like generating the thing and that's the output and off we go, ship it to client. Ship it to stakeholder X. Yeah. And it's not the technology problem, it's like the human problem. We just weren't using it. Well. Yes, I love that. User error. Yeah, user. Somehow. It's always a human, you know? That's the problem. Alright, let me tee this up. I would say arguably one of the areas that felt the most immediate impact of AI was the creative field. One day it was promising to take on all the administrative stuff so that creatives could focus on their craft and then wham, suddenly it's like doing the design instead. Like tools like Mid Journey and Adobe Firefly, they like led the pack with AI image manipulation. Tools like Wizard and Figma UX Pilot are like generating wire frames, site maps, and even functioning websites in seconds. Heck, even ChatGPT's image generation engine, you know, we give it flack. But it is also starting to get labeled. As you know, a creative marketing team killer for all its disruptiveness. Looks like AI is here to stay, and some creatives are embracing it with open arms. New creative possibilities are being unlocked. Tedious parts of the process can move quicker, and in some ways it can be easier to get on the same page creatively before pouring weeks of work into something that a client doesn't like. The big question is value. How do we distinguish between areas of our creative projects that can be AI led with human intervention and areas that should be squarely human led, and how do we tell the story of value while still meeting these rapidly evolving expectations around the creative process? With that, I thought this time we would dive into the meaty question first, and I'll let any of the panelists weigh in. I guess when I talk to folks in our community, I would say that. Saying that some creative teams are feeling undervalued in the shadow of AI might be like a huge understatement. Clients are labeling things as oh, was that created by AI even though they spent weeks laboring over it? Or on the other hand, some folks, including project managers are like, Hey, couldn't we just use AI for that? And we're often simplifying the value that a creative team delivers. So the meaty question is, how should digital creatives frame the value of their work in an age of AI? And also how can project leaders help uphold that value?

Sara Doubleday:

One of my favorite quotes is from Spider-Man. With great power comes great responsibility. It's something I reference frequently because, you know, we have this amazing new technology at our fingertips. It's changed how we worked overnight, and we're so focused on outputs. So the next question that I'm always asking is, why are clients paying us all this money if we're just gonna use AI to give them assets? And to me, the focus really needs to be on as a creative, what is the strategy and why are we doing this? Because now that anyone can create an image, you have to really think about how is the image that you're generating driving value on a website or on a campaign? How is it standing out? How is it addressing the problem you're trying to solve in a time where users are expecting more personalization, more answers to their questions, so just creating an image and slapping it somewhere is not gonna be addressing that.

Galen Low:

Like Goal orientedness and always love a Spider-Man reference. How about from your perspective, Sara Fisher?

Sara Fisher:

For me, I think that teams should lean on, like humans bring authenticity that AI just can't ever claim. So if we can find ways to use language when we're talking to our clients and our customers about what are we bringing as humans? That are human elements, and also tying that together with goals that might appeal to like leadership. And I'm talking about elements like trust, emotional engagement, loyalty. Those are things that, I mean, AI, it's not really trusted very well, and people are gonna be skeptical about it. It's new, everyone's getting used to it. So leaning on those human elements and what we bring as humans to the projects, like even if AI is being used. Let's enhance it with our humanness. That's how I see it.

Galen Low:

I love that. Yeah. I agree with that sort of authenticity. Greg?

Greg Storey:

Before I get to the AI thing, just to add some perspective to this, to that, in my career, we're talking Photoshop one, you know? Right. I feel like as, as technology has evolved, design has always taken a hit. There's always been an assumption that what we do is just, I had one client one time. Look at a logo word mark that we'd created with the logo branding package. And he said, that looks like a type out. And he kept using this word type out and it's like, what do you, I can't stop. What does that mean to you? And he's it looks like you just went into Microsoft Word and just, you know, selected a font and typed it out and, you know, I was like, whoa. Like how do you come back from that? It's the same, same thing, right? Of I had a boss one time that just assumed that. We scanned designs and the computer coded the web for us. There's always been assumptions and, and design has been one of those things that I think it's because it's so visual, right? It's one thing that everybody has an opinion on or they have an opinion not to have an opinion, but it's an easy mark and I, I think one of the things that especially PMs can do, especially in sales, it has to be sales to PM to delivery, is here's the process. Even show, here's how we work with AI, here's how we will not work with AI. And I think it's important to build on Sara, what you were saying is to show that if we simply just rely on AI to do these things for us, we're gonna get generic. We're crap. There's not gonna be anything unique and speak to the bringing the humanity to it and the trust and you know, solving the user problems or what is whatever we're trying to do. Distinctive AI will not do that for you. It won't, it just won't.

Galen Low:

I love that you brought it back to the, the sales strategy of it, and I'm like looking at some of the larger agencies, you know, the global behemoths and it's front and center, right? Where you said here's how we use AI, here's how we don't, here's our stance. We're building this AI tool. I think, I can't remember if it was WPP, you know, they're like. They're being very clear about what lane they've selected and how that delivers value. I think there's a lot to learn from that. Even if you're a smaller boutique agency, if you were like, you could be a five person agency and I think it's important to have that stance and communicate that value as part of the value proposition, not by accident during the project. So I love that the, like at the beginning it is the value proposition. I thought maybe I could just go from there and talk about the process because. I'm imagining Sara and Sara, you're like in the trenches every day. You're leading teams of creative folks. How should creative teams decide when to use AI and when not to, like in their workflow? Like what are some of the criteria that you're using to guide the teams?

Sara Fisher:

It's really important, first and foremost to make sure that you're aligned with clients on what AI usage is going to be happening, just so that they're aware. I'm always a fan of consent culture, just people need to know what's happening and be on board with it. And if they're not okay with something, you can still deliver a product, a deliverable without it. Just talk it through. Have that honesty and that build that trust with your clients. So that's really important to me. So just being really clear how you're using AI and your projects, and I think there's a few questions that you can ask yourself when you're trying to decide should this be an AI thing? Do we wanna try and use it here? Will the use of AI significantly impact the and deliverable and the client relationship in a positive way? If not, maybe it's not the best use case. And touching back on what I said in that last answer, just being able to augment what humans do with AI to deliver something better. Like I try to view it like that. Another question you can ask is. Have we originated ourselves and left our mark before adding AI to the mix again, let's focus on that human element. AI can be really helpful, like some tests are better suited for AI. I'm remembering my days in like Craig mentioned Photoshop one having to edit out backgrounds. Now we have content A Aware, and you can just click it and remove clouds in the sky, and it's things like that. I'm all for it. But when you're doing like big campaign ideas and I feel like that's where you need to lean on human expertise, human experience, rather than let's just plug this in AI and see what it throws out at us.

Galen Low:

I love like picturing that line item. It's like a really good way to bring it into sharp relief, right? I'm imagining the line item on the invoice, it's like cloud removal, you know, 17 hours. Yeah. That, that seems like a lot to pay to remove clouds. Yeah. It's lot. But if you said a, you know, deliver creative campaign that's gonna you know, 10x your revenue go. Yeah. Cool. That, that seems like value. That seems worth it. A really interesting framing on what you do. I was at a conference earlier this week and someone in the context of developers. They're like, you know, writing code is only a part of a developer's job. There's strategic decision making, there's communication. And I'm like, wow. There's you know, that's great because there's a lot of parallels here, right? And in the creative field, there's a lot of parallels in project management. You know, there's these chunks. And Greg, you, you know, when you, we mentioned like we've been through these things before, especially the creative industry where change has happened and you know, it's like an easy target because everyone kind of understands this visual language and can have an opinion about it. Then we feel attacked and we forget, and everyone kind of forgets that there's more to the job than like removing clouds or you know, generating an image. There's a strategic thought behind it. And Sara, coming back to what you were saying about yeah, goal oriented on brief. Presently, humans are still better at that in terms of approaching that creatively and not just doing something that's been done before.

Sara Doubleday:

Yeah. I really feel like AI is not a replacement for thinking and strategy. Also, as we're working with our clients, that transparency piece is so important because if we're taking important documents, like brand guidelines, there are platforms, strategic documents, and feeding that into AI, we need to make sure that, you know, the algorithms aren't taking that learning off of it, creating opportunities for other companies to be able to use that. That's something that we take really, really seriously and make sure that anytime we are using AI, it's in a closed sandbox where that's not being released anywhere. And I just always bring it back to, you know, we're managing client brands. Most of these brands have invested millions of dollars into their reputation and their standards, and we really shouldn't treat that lightly. As designers that are creating branded elements, our client is putting trust in us that we're not just gonna grind that up in the AI machine. So I say that not to be anti AI. I think there's a lot of fantastic use cases for it, but just to be mindful and aware, going back to that Spider-Man quote of when and why we're using it, so. Our team will often use it whenever we're needing to distill down a ton of information. So recently we just had a eight hour client workshop, and we ran all of the notes and transcripts that we had through AI to pull out themes that would've taken at least half a day's work, otherwise, or we'll often be using AI for production work. So resizing campaign assets, creating imagery or iconography, and that's all really downstream. After we've solidified the strategy, after we've decided how and where we wanna use AI.

Galen Low:

Those are all such good use cases, right? Because like in the process there is tedious work that is not necessarily high value, and especially like the workshop thing I find really interesting because you know, AI. The way we use it today at, you know, like the sort of mainstream AI is excellent with language, right? It's excellent at like parsing language, natural language processing. Like it's a, it's a very good use of it and it's quite good at it. And also I remember the days coming back with the rolled butcher paper full of sticky notes, hoping that we roll it carefully enough that all the sticky notes are still there. Free fly off and you're like, oh gosh. And then we have to transcribe 'em and in a way I'm like, I can't believe we did that actually. You know, it wasn't, and people are still doing it today, right?

Sara Fisher:

It's hard to think back to that time 'cause I feel like using transcription tools like Otter is one of the ones that I frequently use. I think back to all the years of. Like feverish note taking on the side while trying to lead a meeting. And it's three conversations at once and I'm constantly going back and trying to edit or people will ask for my notes. This was pre auter days oh Sara, I saw you were taking notes. Can I have them? I'm like, you can't make sense of them yet 'cause it's in my weird shorthand. Give me like 30 minutes and I will clean these up. So it's really nice to not have to do that anymore. It's so helpful.

Galen Low:

Or like the book days where you're like, let me just put it in the photocopier for you. Yeah, yeah. Game is different. Sara Fisher, earlier you said, you know, almost giving clients a choice, being like, listen, we could do this with AI, but if you know you're not really cool with that, we have another way. Is that like a key decision point in your flow? Like at the start to be like, we have this path that goes, we can use AI and then we have this path that's like AI free. Is that built into your operation?

Sara Fisher:

Right now it's not, but it's being talked about for sure, and some of the places I've been at in the past that was more at the forefront. So it's like this is a new technology. It's starting to catch on. It's definitely being talked about on a daily basis. Used on a daily basis. I had a client in the past. This was a few years ago where they specified in their contract that we could not put any of their proprietary information in ChatGPT. And this was like at the very beginning of it. Mm-hmm. So at the time, I hadn't really even tested ChatGPT yet, but that was like my introduction to it with clients.'cause this was a client with a household name and technology, like they're also making products like that. Yeah, it's a scary thing. Like you don't wanna plug in their proprietary information, even if you're privately working on a campaign and it's not being shared out publicly, but it is being shared into the tool, which adds to the hive mind. And it's like you just have to be really careful about things like that because there is a domino effect that can happen. And it's just, I like being on the safe side. Yeah. Just have that upfront conversation first. If there's anything that's in question. So that you don't have to deal with the maybe some messy dominoes down the road.

Galen Low:

Yeah, I like that due caution comes back to that transparency and Sara Doubleday you had mentioned, I hadn't even thought about it, but like we're always like, oh yeah, like personally identifiable information, financial data, you know, really confidential stuff. Wait. Yeah, right. You know, people spend millions on their brand and it's not always the thing that are like, I don't know, I'm not a, I don't have a creative background. You know, I'd be like, yeah, brand guidelines perfect, like Chuck it into GPT, you know, off we go.'cause that's gonna tell me, you know, whether a lot or not, I'm aligned with, you know, what this company's all about. But also is that an artifact that requires sort of more caution? More safety around that actually. And Sara, double date is that part of the sort of value prop as well when you're being transparent with clients like, we're only using closed systems with your brand. That's policy. That's how we work.

Sara Doubleday:

Absolutely. Yeah. We have language that we'll sign off with a client on if we're ever using AI for any of our processes with them. And there's clients that opt in and there's clients that opt out for a variety of reasons. Like they might be working in finance or healthcare and just have a lot of sensitive information, or they might just be hesitant about AI. So we are very respectful of that and definitely don't wanna put any information in that they're not okay with. The other consideration here is, I do this all the time, is the knee jerk reaction to use AI is so strong. Something ha an email comes in, a design request comes in, and you think, oh, just use AI. And we need to really speed bump that and ask ourselves why we're using AI. Is it actually useful to use AI? Or could I just take two seconds to look at the brand guidelines and say, yes, this is accurate or not. Sometimes we don't need that additional layer of feeding something through AI to know if it's working or not.

Galen Low:

I love that. And Greg actually in the green room, you mentioned something, and I won't give away the spoiler, but that idea that it's still important for the human to understand something before. Also think with AI, right? Get that involved and almost just that the comparison is actually the collaboration. Not necessarily one is right or one is wrong. It's just, yeah, I don't know. It's that kind of what you do with a human colleague as well. I wouldn't necessarily just trust my day two intern to be like, cool, read these brand guidelines do a thing.

Greg Storey:

Yeah. In fact, I have a, a chapter near the end of the book about recognizing if you're relying on AI too much. Cure warning signs and Sara Doubleday you're spot on. You know, like when you, oh, cut paste, you know, it's too easy and it's we can lose our ability to just think for ourselves pretty quickly without recognizing, realizing it. So I wanna go back to one thing about the comment about the using AI and the process and, and that it speeds things up because, you know, I don't know about you all and your results. But just using AI to do a thing doesn't mean that you're gonna get, you're likely not gonna get good results for one. And we talk about being a designer, when you use AI in this way, you're really being more of like the creative director or, or director, right? So your role is simply just gone up one level. At the same time, you're still having to say, nope, make the logo bigger or move the button over, but you're still gonna have the same problems. It's just a roll of the dice if you're gonna get proper output and not on the first time, more like after your 40th try. What I've found in my use of, of these tools is that. You can go from just like Dan, this thing is just clicking and then five minutes later it's whoa, what just happened? I went from university professor, academic quality output to I'm dealing with a five-year-old. And I don't know what happens on that technology and I can't explain what happens. I just know that even in in a half hour's use, you can all of a sudden. What it's doing is just falling off a cliff. And there's been a couple times I just had to say, I gotta go. I gotta walk away, I gotta go, go do something else.'cause no matter what, I try in my response, if I work with this thing, it's just not capable of doing it right now. So I just bring that up because there was mention of Canva earlier in the chat way back in the day, we had a thing called Quill draw. I remember when people would say that they were a designer, you know, like you'd go to a Kinko's back when people did that, and there was a quote designer at Kinko's, and you could buy a logo and your business card and they would give you the Curl draw book and say, pick your logo. Pick your clip art image. And that's what passed is as design, right? And so again, people are always gonna be looking for shortcuts. They assume that it's easy to do. I don't, back to the question of the client that does wanna pay for design, they want to use AI, they shouldn't be your client anymore. If that's the type of people that you're working with and you are in design, or Sara, I know you Sara, double that. You guys work at SEO, I could use the robot to come up with my SEO strategy. And if I don't value it, then I'm, I'm probably gonna be okay with the output. Whereas I know if I sat down with you and, and will. The rest of the crew, I would be getting so much better results. So it's just a matter of, you know, I like this idea of being upfront to weed out, are these people that I should be working with, are they gonna value me and my work?

Galen Low:

I'd love to dig in there because that is, you know, what I'm seeing in the chat, you know, folks are like, I'm losing clients because. They don't wanna pay for graphic design. And Greg, what you're saying is those probably aren't the right clients, but they're out there, there are clients that do want, you know, sorry, double day. What you, you mentioned at the beginning, right? It's like, how do we achieve a strategic outcome, right? How do we hit the goal? What decisions do we make to get there? Not how do we, you know, resize a bunch of images. How do we like, you know, draw a line on a page that's not what the design is about. That's not its role. It's a tough one though, because I'm coming at this from a bit of an agency context, but a lot of agencies, the smaller ones are struggling because in some ways they don't have that buffer, the cushion to lose a bunch of clients and then acquire a bunch of new clients that are the right clients. That all takes time and energy, like the, the cost of acquisition is actually, you know, really expensive. I don't remember where I was gonna go with that other than to say that. Are there strategies that you all are using to say, yeah, listen, like actually this client, I might have to make the recommendation that this is not a client that we work with and, or hey, we need to be like more clear upfront about who we're selling to. You know, the economy is tough. Everyone wants to land the deal, but some of these deals are gonna be the wrong deals. And are you driving that conversation in the organizations that you're working with?

Sara Doubleday:

I'd say it's really important that we consider ourselves, not just creatives, but also consultants, whether we're working internally or with clients. Because if someone is working with us, odds are they are not a designer or a creative, they're coming to us for that. So it makes sense that people would be attracted to the new and shiny AI. They can get something immediately that previously they couldn't. If suddenly I could use AI to do my accounting, I'm not saying I would do that, but you know, just comparing it to something outside of design and something that I don't have the skillset to do. It is our job to explain why creative is important and why creative is solving our clients, our internal team's business problems. We're not just pulling together wire frames or mood boards or design elements. We're using these to support a larger strategy and to hopefully, ultimately create more revenue and grow our client's business. And I don't have a explanation as to how AI is currently doing that. So that's where the human mind is really plugging in at that point and saying, you know, you can go this AI route, you can generate these assets, but in one month, two months, when these aren't performing, come back and we'll put together a sound strategy that will actually get you the results that you're looking for. So then the money that you're investing is now, paying off because you're seeing that ROI.

Galen Low:

I like that. It's yeah, you go and try it. I'll see you in a few months. And then we're gonna be that puzzle piece that fits into the bigger puzzle rather than, you outsource to AI a piece of the puzzle that's just not gonna fit in the, in the broader strategy. Very cool. I wonder if I can shift into workflow a little bit because I think we're segueing there anyways. Obviously things have changed. How we're spending time is different and we're also talking about value and like in this particular, like what we were just talking about, like the the clients client value and what they're paying for, I guess I should say. I'm just wondering like how is AI changing the workflow in your creative projects today, for example. Is there really less time needed on some of the things like we've been talking about, like note taking and like synthesis from workshops, but like the actual like the more visual stuff. Things like mood boards and wire framing. You know, I'm seeing examples online of yeah, it can just spit it out. Is it really that much of a time savings? And if it is, then like how does that change the workflow and how you estimate time and you know, if it's great, we needed two weeks to do wire frames, now we need two days. Then how does that impact like the rest of the work? That was probably three questions, but either way I'm going to challenge Ms. Doubleday over here.

Sara Doubleday:

This is definitely a topic I could talk about all day, so I'll share my thoughts. One, definitely wanna hear from everybody else, but we really plug in AI for production and scaling. It has a huge impact on speed to market, so we're using it less upfront with the mood boards and with the wire frames because. That is all being informed by user research, customer journeys, business strategy, brand, platform. And those are elements that if we plugged into AI, we would not be getting a really great result. So if you're just looking for a design to be created, you could certainly plug it into AI, but it won't necessarily move the needle. So we're taking the time that we originally spent on production and putting that upfront in strategy, and then moving much, much more quickly on production and speed to market. So, you know. Hopefully gone are the days of versioning out hundreds of assets for campaigns, like having to make copy updates, having to resize things. I will happily trade all of that for more time and ideation and strategy, and our clients seem to really respond to that as well.

Greg Storey:

Can I build on that real quick? I imagine a future taking your, your, what you just said back to the personalization thing you talked about at the very beginning. When you have tools like design systems. Where you don't have to have a bunch of assets, you simply are evolving or iterating them. But going back to the personalization thing of there's gonna come a time when we go to the web and we're gonna be seeing different versions of the same site, different images, different language. And I don't just mean different language of English versus Spanish, different. It's gonna speak in the voice that we most resonate with. And that to me is. Where it's gonna be so interesting when you get to the having more time to ideate and come with the strategy. Right now we're looking at that as like a single channel or like a, a localization problem challenge. But I see a table, we're gonna have to be like, no, there's actually 12 different personas and just this language, or something along those lines. Right? The different data points that we have to then come up with these multivariate. Campaigns and the strategies for them. That's, I'll say, you know, buckle up because I see that kind of work that Sara, you just mentioned as being vital to develop the cognition, the, the capacity to do that kind of work because the demand will be there.

Galen Low:

I love idea and if I'm understanding you correctly, like the upfront work is creating the personas so that the downstream work is like that multivariate, the like multiplicity. You're not spending like whatever, if you have eight personas, you're not doing eight projects. You're actually spending your time up front and using AI and humans to create a more personalized experience that is gonna be different for those personas.

Greg Storey:

Yeah. Psychographics is gonna be, I think, become more and more relevant the farther we get into this new world that we're in.

Galen Low:

Boom. I love that. Fisher, what does workflow look like for you today going down an AI path? Similar, like more time spent in the upfronts, more AI use downstream, or maybe something different?

Sara Fisher:

For me, it's similar to what Sara Doubleday shared. I'm not seeing a big change on the overall workflow, but I am seeing things sped up. Once you get to the creative production phase. Like I mentioned, it's real quick and easy to use generative AI to fill in a background if you need to do quick edits. That said, it still requires a human eye at the end of it, if you're doing video transitions, it might make a really weird, funky transition. And this came up recently where it was like, and it was a hand thing, AI hands are getting better, but it was still just like not a smooth transition. So I keep using the word augment, like AI is augmenting the workflows. But I think the general start to finish the steps and the process has been largely the same. It's just using AI to shorten bits and pieces here and there. Or maybe ideate some things and synthesize. Meeting notes from clients and that kind of thing.

Galen Low:

I think that's really interesting, this idea of sort of like the meaningful human interaction. I like, great. You mentioned like your, your role is leveled up. You're kinda like overseeing work whether you like it or not, and that's like a skill and also like a, a sort of threshold to mind, right? Of like how many revisions is too many revisions you know, with a junior designer you know, like it's 12 too many and they're like, okay, well listen, this is let's just go another route. Then what is it for sort of each, whatever, each AI tool that you're working with. That's really interesting. I thought maybe I'd like. Dial it back a little bit, zoom a bit out, because the other thing that, like we were talking about as we were putting this together was just this notion of like creative role stereotypes. Right? And especially as a project manager, I got that a lot. I witnessed it a lot. I maybe have been guilty of it sometimes too. It's the oh yeah, you know. The design team, they just draw pretty pictures. They just, they never care about the business constraints. They always go over budget. Then we've blown the budget up front and you know, like there's not enough time to do all the other things because you know, they've just been creatives doing creative stuff. Does AI present an opportunity to rise above these stereotypes, or could it actually maybe deepen them?

Sara Fisher:

I feel like it's going to be a recurring theme, whether AI is included or not. I feel like. In my career, like starting out as a designer, trying to explain what you do again, like Galen, you were mentioning, you're just making pretty pictures. Like I could just sit down and pull up Microsoft Word and plug in, like.

Galen Low:

Type out.

Sara Fisher:

Yeah. It's more, for me, it comes down to, in order to overcome that stereotype, it's all about education. Educating your clients, your potential clients, people around you to let them know what really is it that you're doing, what is the value that you're bringing? And if AI is part of it, you can incorporate that as part of the, the answer. But I feel like the heart of it is, is really that education piece of telling the world what are you doing as a creative professional? That could mean many things. Graphic designer's, one thing, videographer's one thing, and creative professional. Some people have that title and it's like. What is that? Does that strategy, is that so Yeah, come sounds education for me.

Galen Low:

I love that about the education and having the words to frame it and spoiler alert, like you three have been using that language all throughout the session. So like folks in the audience, if you're looking for the language, just figure out how to frame and educate people about what you do. Like I've been hearing a lot of it throughout, so yeah, bonus, a bonus there. I dunno. Greg, Ms. Doubleday, thoughts on stereotypes and where it can go?

Sara Doubleday:

I would say that the best way to overcome those types of stereotypes is to not bury your head in the sand around AI. You need to understand it in order to properly explain where your job is happening and where AI is happening and how the two are combining. Because I do think that moving forward, creative and AI are going to be combined just like so many other professions. And we need to evolve beyond, just having Figma or the Adobe Suite, other design tools we need to be able to show on our resumes and in our processes that we are incorporating AI rather than ignoring it. And I have found that once you are open to AI explaining it, talking about it with colleagues outside of creative, you see their ears perk up a little bit. They become a bit more interested because they see, you know, you're not just a. Designer sitting around making pictures. You are, you know, talking about that strategy piece, how you are developing impactful creative for your clients and using AI to save time for yourself and for them. So I think that by grabbing AI by the horns, instead of letting it push you around, that is the best path forward.

Greg Storey:

So I was trying to think well, what is the stereotype to rise above? And the one that comes to mind is the creative that. It doesn't take critique well, it's too personal. It's my passion. That's me in that design and that button color, you know, or whatever. I think to build on what's already been said is using AI to understand the critique that comes at you. And to take it and try to use it to translate what that person is trying to say. Often in my career when I've received critique and it just pissed me off, or it hurt my feelings or whatever, the language being communicated to me, the words being said didn't reflect the tone of how it was said, or even the, physical language that was being expressed. But it's, you know, design. It's so funny, everybody has such a, a visceral, immediate reaction to design creative work, but they don't know how to talk about it, right? They don't know how to express it. And so you use words like type out and, made up language and try to understand like, what the hell did that person just say to me? I, I don't know what to do with this. And I think it's trying to use it to help improve the communication. To take then that feedback so that not only can you understand it, but to use it to turn it into a positive. Because a lot of times the, you know, when people give a response, there is some meaning to it. They're trying, they just don't, they don't know how to say the what's in their brain, what's in their reaction and meaning that what they're saying is actually very helpful. But when we take it, 'cause you know, we're, let's face it, people are snowflakes. Especially with the younger, when, when you don't have, just simply having that time to, to live through some of these experiences, the, you know, feedback. I think that's a way to use AI is to take all of that in and help you build your perspective and see better work from it.

Galen Low:

To my lovely panelists, thank you for volunteering your time, your expertise, your insights. I appreciate you all. Thank you so much for being a part of this.