UX for AI

EP. 98 - How to Navigate Massive Tech Shifts like AI w/ Dónal O Mahony

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 A candid conversation with Dónal O Mahony about riding the waves of tech disruption — from the dot-com bust to the AI boom. We explore lessons in resilience, people over process, and designing with intent in an AI-powered world. Packed with hard-won insights for anyone navigating their career through rapid change. 


You can find Dónal here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/donalomahony/?originalSubdomain=ie

Interested in joining the podcast? DM Behrad on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/behradmirafshar/

This podcast is made by Bonanza Studios, Germany’s Premier Digital Design Studio:
https://www.bonanza-studios.com/

[MUSIC PLAYING] Welcome to UX for AI. Donald, we finally made it here, and I'm very excited. This is one of those podcasts I've been looking for. And to just give context to why Donald is here is that, first of all, I will leave to him to walk us through his long journey in the tech space. I think he has a fantastic, insightful, and adventurous resume. I got to listen to Donald on UXDX stage, and his message was really inspiring and energizing. And I asked him right away on LinkedIn, Donald, would you be kind enough to come on my podcast? And again, talk about that, and I would like to spread that message. And he was very graceful to come on this podcast. We initially wanted to schedule it earlier, but personal matter happened. But we are here. Donald, how are you doing? Great, yeah. It's still very fast turnaround. I think it's within a month of the conference, so well done, you. And thank you for all the compliments, and flattery, and blushing. But yeah, I'm more than happy to share some life lessons and my rather unusual career path. And yeah, if it was of benefit to people at the UXDX conference, amazing. Thank you so much for jumping in front of me when I was coming down the stairs, and you were actually the first person to get me feedback. So I think it's fantastic. That's why I jumped at your LinkedIn message to do it. Because I got my user feedback directly from you after the conference. Well, that's my job, to find interesting people and kindly bother them to come on the podcast. Your message was very telling. And I think you need a lot of time, hopefully, 20 minutes, 30 minutes. Not sure how long you will take it to unpack it. But essentially, your message was AI is a big trend, undeniably powerful trend. But like many other trends that you have experienced in your professional career, it's a trend that will be integrated in our day-to-day work. And we need to look at it from a productive standpoint, rather than a fearful or risk-averse standpoint. So with that introduction, maybe walk us through your journey all the way here. Because the journey itself is important, not the destination, I would say. And then unpack it for the audience. Will do. I will do. So I don't lose the audience, though. Let me say where I am right now, just for 10 seconds. And then I'll do the history that I think maybe appeals to people in the talk. So I am the VP of product experience within a company called Contentful, which is transitioning from really an area that, frankly, broke ice on or invented what we call Headless CMS, or Content Management System. Very open platform, API first ethos, which I found hugely exciting when I was approached by the company two or three years ago. And now moving into a digital experience platform strategy powered by AI. Those two letters that we talked about so much at that conference. So that's where I am at the moment. With all of the swirl of being in a company around content, when generative AI is generating tidal wave of content. So lucky me. So why do I have that ethos and that mindset? And I'm not being sarcastic. So let me roll all the way back. So very, very quiet, shy child and student. Looking back now, I realize I was highly creative. I had a whatever it is, left side, right side of the brain. I was certainly very, very creative. The Lego kit. I was a silent, introverted Lego kid for many years in the '70s. Through a pretty messy education system in Ireland, I really didn't find my mission, my why. So the best thing I could apply for after school was a business degree. So I did a business degree. And that was the hardest road for someone who was actually highly creative as opposed to massively analytical or any of that side of the brain. But I applied myself to it. I committed to it. And as I went through it, I realized, I don't know what I'm going to be when I grow up. But this degree is really going to stand to me. And that was my first life lesson of experience, even when the experience is hard. And to say resilience, which was a much overused word during lockdown. But a resilience in a positive way, not in a hard, forged in a fire kind of way. Making steel or glass. Not that kind of resilience. A fun resilience. So I got through that course. And I actually got a first class honors. And I was very deliberate about doing that because I knew I wanted it to stand to me. I'm really proud of the fact that I could say that, even though I was really a teenager when I began that journey. And then immediately after that course, I had begun to explore more creative outlets. And while other first class honor students were going off into accountancy firms, oh my god, investment banking, taxation, you could probably guess I'm not the character that would go down that route. And I was confident enough and brave enough to not do that. And in Ireland, if anyone knows the movie, The Commitments, from the 1980s, yet nearly every second creative kid was in a band. So I was very good at music. I went into a band. I had great fun. I ended up becoming a music producer. Ended up doing a soundtrack with Conor MacPherson, actually a really great playwright. Brendan Gleeson was in that movie. And we had a record deal for a time. So amazing. So and I didn't, you didn't even know that. So, but at the same time, I was now approaching my mid-years. And I was seeing this thing called the internet flash. And there was a master's course called multimedia systems, but basically interactive design. And I was so excited by that. That was where we are now of highly immersive internet. So I applied for that course and I loved it. And I don't know if you've had a moment, but a moment where everything in the past made sense. So I was like, wow, I'm very academic. I achieved that. But now that academic plus passion and love and mission for maybe your true calling. I excelled in that course, if I don't mind saying. So as did all the students, it was just really well selected by the person who ran that course. I did very well at that. And the person who ran the course also had an agency. So she head hunted me and head hunted, it's a great recruitment strategy into her company. But as then I began to share at the talk, and that was around the time of 99, 2000, 2001. As I went into that company and then two more companies, I think in quick succession, .com bubble, I have to go. It popped, it popped. And the first time ever, I had money left in my bank account. I was a 20 something working your way up the ladder. And I was so excited. I didn't know what to do with having a little bit of money left in your bank account every month when you pay the rent and the bills compared to a musician. But it was gone, it was gone. It was made redundant three times in two years. And again, I pivoted.- Oh my God.- Yeah.- Yeah. And that's why I'm trying to tell people now this has happened before. Whatever that this is, the great resignation happened. And management, including myself, were like, oh my God, my team has been poached. Now we're in a different time where it's the great, watch and see what happens. And then tragically for many people, they've been made redundant again. And I have my strong opinions on that. So it's a cycle. So it's a cycle. So why I think sometimes some of the more gray haired, men and women on the teams and no haired people, we do have something to share. So that would be one of my hopes is that we could all just kind of share and compare notes the way I did at that conference. For frankly, for the next generation and the next after. We're losing that tribal ability. I think Italians and Irish and Celts, we love the tribe and the sense of elders and then learning from the next generation. So I just really wanna bring that into my career. And I learned that in teaching. My father, God rest him, was a lecturer or a professor or whatever you would call it in the global audience. I learned that. So yeah, it was an emotional move for me to move into that. And then I got head hunted. So another lesson, everyone was either fired or left in the .com bubble bursting. And when the cycle returned, where are all the designers gone?- Yes. - Working in cafes, they're working in banks, they've left the country. So I was hot property and I was head hunted. And I began back into the path, but then I was greatly attracted to interactive design, which was the predecessor of UX. And shout out to Nielsen, Norman and Jared Spool and a huge bunch of people who again generationally led the way there. I remember Nielsen or Norman wrote an article called flash is evil or something like that.- Yeah. - And it was a critical. But they were right. The usability was a disaster because non-trained designers like me were making all kinds of UX errors. So I really got attracted to flash and UX at that time without even knowing it. So I'll pause there. I'm now moving into the predecessor of UX. You tell me, do you want me to keep rocking or do you want me to pause?- I'm still thinking about what you said that you made redundant three times in two years.- Yeah. - It must be intense.- So intense, so intense. I didn't have to move home to my parents just then, but I did eventually. I did actually eventually. But even that meant I started to save for a deposit. And folks of the younger generation, I know it's tough now for accommodation, for whatever, but I bought my first house, a hugely inflated prices when I got married. And then one year later, definite hair loss moment here. One year later, it was worth 30 to 40% of its price. And I had constant paranoia. I was gonna be made redundant. So what I'm trying to say is if I could go back and talk to myself in each one of these chapter turns, there are really good moments that I reflect back on. As my wife told me, today is as good as it gets.- Yes. - No back and say, and I know that's a cheesy US movie as well, but it's actually a philosophy that predates that movie. Every one of those moments were pivotal in my advancement in my life, my maturity, my experience. And I just wanna go back and say, enjoy it. As my beautiful mother says now to the grandchildren, enjoy it, enjoy it, whatever is happening. And it's great advice. Hard to say when you're worried about losing your house. Hard to say when you're losing about your job. But do remember, you will look back and go, wow, that formed me and I learned so much. And then I just rocked some beautiful serendipity moments of career changes over the past 20 years from where I left off my story a few minutes ago.- So we came all the way to Flash era and you started dragged into it because of course, Flash wasn't really the best UX actually created a lot of, I mean, there are articles about Flash that said Flash is evil, now looking back, of course, those articles, there are some merits, a lot of merits into them, but that sort of dragged you into the UX and then you carry on. You career afterwards took off. So what happened?- One I'll leave out, which I really should credit more, I moved from being a web designer and Flash designer and multimedia designer and investment bank, just standard jobs, standard role, not massively senior. I moved from that to then being a first ever manager role in an industrial design company. At the time it was called Design Partners, a proud Irish company that was working for companies like Logitech and Google. I got my first Silicon Valley trips during that time and pitching and working with big, big companies. Now I wasn't an industrial designer, but I was showcasing the power of these products. I'm actually doing amazing immersive demos of these products. This is probably designed still by that team, like this mouse here for Logitech and many others as well around people's homes. So I got to see the craft while I was doing these videos, standard kind of interactive, almost e-learning, which was my next job, demos and videos, but really powerful for pitches. But I saw the craft of industrial design. So my kind of latent or under the surface interest in UX was then brought right up seeing what was called design thinking or prototyping. So that had a model making room. It had a model making room where they sculpted the products and gave to the clients or users. And they would hold and feel these medical devices, these keyboards for your home, these predecessors of what all are immersive interactive homes like Nest and stuff like that. Beautiful industrial design. It didn't do Nest, but you know what I mean, where the wow of the UX, they would, I'd see them sculpt it. And that was prototyping. That was iteration. That was getting closer to the user.- Yes, yes.- And they are trained in it, industrial designers. I've hired many into UX by the way are trained and the flash designers, that was like chaos. We were from anywhere and everywhere, usually musicians by the way,'cause it contained audio actually, now that I think about it, we were untrained and we were committing all kinds of crimes against them at the time interactive design. So I saw that and I started to realize, wow, this scenario that really interests me, but I'm very interested in digital. So I moved then to another company a few years later, which was a new learning startup, now called EdTech type space, we call it e-learning at the time. Nearly all the content was flash-based. Nearly all other content had just come from the CD-ROM era. And this isn't like the 1980s and 90s. This is now well into kind of, I guess, 2010 era. I went there as the design studio manager, but began to a series of events to really expand out a UX team, almost by stealth, because it was very illustrators, children's and high school material, illustrators, animators, and of course, a very good design and web design, et cetera, flash design. But what happened in the first year was the iPad came out, huge, massive and a huge opportunity for contracts. Arnold Schwarzenegger was the governor in California, awarded many school children, high school children iPads in huge excitement of partnership with Apple. And that was a wow moment where we were like, oh my God, this is huge, porting all of the flash to the iPad, let's go. And a few months later, Thoughts on Flash comes out by Steve Jobs, God rest him. So it sends an email or sends a, well, sends probably an email, but it was a letter, very deliberate to communicate to the whole industry, internal letter that went public called Thoughts on Flash. And it was basically security concerns, CPU hog, accessing your webcam,'cause it was very multimedia, all these concerns, and it killed flash. Overnight, I think Adobe had just acquired Macromedia. Wow. Like what a corporate bombshell. And then a year of fallout for gaming companies, for media, for streaming, streaming through flash from all the TV companies that were moving into that space. All of that. So massive blow up. But again, I would call those once in a lifetime seismic explosions and terrifying for the flash designers on the team, I'm sure. But many of the really clever ones use that change management and that change process to move to Unity, for example. They were in their thinking, they were open in their ideas and frankly, they had no other choice. So it was like, well, we no longer that the road has ended for that, what do we pivot to? Some others dug their heels in and like to stay in the old way. And I termed them at one time, I heard it in the industry, I loved the term, it's a bit raw, but design a source. Some were slow to change. They were in danger of seeing the comet coming and they didn't change. And eventually, of course they did, but many months or years later, the ones that changed the curiosity and fun and excitement with a bit of fear, have done so well in their industry. So, and then in the same year really like, again, as I said in the talk, what's the best that could happen mindset instead of what's the worst that could happen. Negotiations were happening with some of these massive publishers, one of which was H&H, that's the learning company, with Apple to move all of their content into iBooks for pre-school, middle school, high school, throughout all of America. And incredibly daunting, but incredibly exciting project began of highly interactive iBooks that needed a team, that were hugely interactive, UX focused, but with a print background. So it was privileged to hire a lot of people I knew from a print background, but really wanted to move into digital like that, industrial design. I love giving people jobs that are great. And that's, I think, my era now in my life, hiring great people to do great work. And the diversity of the team was really great then of animators, illustrators, but print designers, of course the current team there as well at the time, transferring their knowledge from print to digital. That was an amazing, exciting time and was a huge success. And now they're producing many years after I left, just still really, really good interactive UX, design system, all of that leveled up so well around that time, well after I left as well. So that's when I moved from being a kind of a studio manager, promoted to be director, then specialized in UX. And a shout out to Brian Donoghue from Intercom. He was there at the same time, and he was the official director of UX at that same moment and was there a few years and then moved on to Intercom. And now, as we know, very, very successful, VP of Product Management with some others there as well in Intercom. So really loved working with him, learned a lot from him as well. A steal with pride, as they say. So I got a lot of inspiration from Brian's methodologies as well. Yeah, and then I was head on to what looked like a pretty unusual telematics, SaaS based, fleet tracking, tracking of trucks and a pretty clunky looking product at the time, but massively successful. And I thought, okay, I need a change. I've been in that role for six years, seven years. I felt that my mission was done and beautiful timing. And I went into what I thought was like, okay, fleet tracking within the first year was so clear. I had to build a team from two or three up to, I proposed 25, which was massive in Dublin at the time, of UX practitioners. And then, then suddenly, IoT of connected vehicles just exploded. Autonomous vehicles, quite hot at the time, still is. Still yet to deliver, but very, very hot. And then, and the connectivity in general. So they had already had a massive IPO. I missed that, but I came in at the tail end of it. But they were, as a result, acquired a huge data story as well of all of that connectivity of all these vehicles around the world. They were acquired by Verizon. So some people could panic if your theme is navigating these big changes. Some people would panic. Oh my God, this is one of the biggest success stories in Irish software history at the time. And now it's just been acquired by Verizon. Shake fist at the overlords. And I was like, hell no. Maybe it was the business background. I see nothing but opportunity. And within a year, I was appointed the global leader of ultimately product experience for UX across many other acquisitions, too. Some of our competitors were acquired during that time, which is crazy to think about. And I was globally across all that. And then I had shown success of hiring 25 people in one year, and it was going relatively well. Of course, storming, a lot of storming going on. And then ultimately, the team then hit an oscillator between 60 and 80 in the Verizon era. So a big global team across New Zealand, Europe, and America. I've got to mention those two letters way before all the hype now, that company and a partnership between product and design, and a very visionary Florence team in Italy proposed AI dash cams, computer vision to really broaden out. And it's been a massive success, and it's continuing to be. So working on a huge expansion of product offering and into the AI world of predictive, preventative as well there, and a huge illness and importance on the experience of the UX when you're saving lives or saving car emissions. There's a huge need for those fleet managers or those drivers who have a really good UX. I learned so much during that time, and I hope I taught a little bit while I was there too, others. A huge fondness in my previous role, which was about seven to eight years of many chapters. Yeah, I think I took it to a really good place, and they're doing great work still. And that takes me up to Contentful. I promise only one more minute. I joined Contentful, so huge explosion, a grenade of innovation and change, of flash, of e-learning. Huge explosion and opportunities, and grenade of moving to AI, moving to a huge scaling of the team, thanks to the Verizon acquisition, with the fleet maddox becoming Verizon, and then the fears around acquisition, but all the opportunity. And then I joined Contentful. And this same month, Chat GPT just exploded. And what is it doing? Generative AI, it's generating content. And I moved to a content management, but very future-focused, very innovative company. And I guess that takes me up to present day. I think like whenever you change job, it triggers a size-- It's not me. It's not me. It's not that I go and then it happens. I think it's a higher power thing. It's a higher power for sure. Yeah. So I need to sit down now. I'm exhausted after my life story. I didn't expect this. It's very-- I mean, I have-- it's like basically you have experience, massive shifts in tech industry. As you were like changing jobs, or made redundant, and-- and I think that's why you were very prepared when that acquisition happened. Instead of being freaking out, you saw an opportunity. No, actually now I have a climb to ladder. I can level up and take more responsibility in the-- well, the new form organization, which is part of the Verizon, and just take it to the next level. I think that level of navigation, that intuitive feeling cannot be formed over time and can only be shaped through years of riding these waves and of highs and lows. Percent. And if I make it more relevant, instead of so self-centered in all my content so far, apologies to your audience, is during particularly the last-- this role and the previous role, understanding the magic, the alchemy between engineering, product management, and design, and research, and frankly, all of the service area in general, marketing, sales, the alchemy of people connecting, of trusting, of working together. And yes, much has been made about it from a lean perspective or lean UX or triads or CFT collaboration. But yes, to what you said there, really, that's the biggest life lesson is that it's not process. It's not flavor of the month, off-the-shelf process. It's people. It's connecting. It's, as one person said on my team years ago, what is it? It's, in the old days when you would be in the office, you would just swivel your chair around and say, what do you think? I'm confused. Do you want to have a chat? Do you want to go for a coffee? Do you want to go to the whiteboard? That is absolute alchemy of innovation. And when there's no trust, when there's silos, when there's us versus them, or top versus bottom, or any of that, I guess that's something I've really noticed is a warning sign for the job you're in, the fit, the cultural fit. That's universal. People have to talk. They have to talk with respect. They have to talk with trust. There has to be radical candor to a point, but also not be-- not be rude. All of those things are very universal. I'm becoming very well known on people who move on from companies as well for those reasons. So I'm kind of imparting now a kind of a pass two or three jobs commonality, which is-- which I said in a UX DX talk 10 years ago when I was forming that 25 person team, it's people, not process. I see booms and busts come and go because I'm, you know, hitting the 50s kind of. I'm there now. So I see that as many others who have been through this. But I also see the consistency throughout of opportunity, or optimism versus fear, and also the importance of people and connection. I think we're right there now. It's a very raw moment. People are becoming optional in this hype of AI. That couldn't be further from the truth. They're so important. But the people who communicate well. So to our design folks, we obviously have a huge responsibility, I hope, on communicating and aligning and stakeholder really well. Engineers do, too, and they do it well in engineering sometimes. But they really, as we wear multiple hats, they're really beginning to get great at communicating out of engineering to other groups. But I would say to the designers that are listening, the researchers that are listening, you have to really pivot into strategic communication. The why, the what, and the how is so important for designer involvement. That is the strategy. And again, I want to shout out to anyone who doesn't know. Jared Spool. Follow him. He nails this on the shared, again, magic that happens when the designers and the researchers lean in as much as the PMs on the strategic effort. And we have to tell the design story of that. It's so important. I think future proofs of. It's so, so, so important. I am a UX designer by craft. I have, myself thought, myself, been doing this, running a business that offers design and innovation services. And in the beginning of this year, I went to, especially Cloud 3.5 and 7 came out. And I saw, actually, there is potential for wipe coding. I committed to launch applications. Just pure wipe coding. Not touching FIGMAW, not touching paper, not use no user flows, just wrestling with this LLMs, get the PRD out, get the user stories, and hack the phone. I was devastated in the middle of the process. My assumption, core assumption, was, look, I am doing this for a living. I can see screens in my brain. Why do I need to FIGMAW it? But boy, oh boy, have I made a massive mistake. I brought the app to the point that I could release it. But the process that took me there was painful, confusing, and very sporadic. So when we talk about design process, when we talk about, let's say, the typical double diamond based on driven-- basically inspired by design thinking, that we use it in our UX design process is for a reason. There is a reason that we say that you have to go through this diversion mode of thinking and exploratory to conversion. You need to basically phase it and respect each phase and go through it. And do not basically find easy way out around research. Do not find easy way out regarding requirement gathering and creating a persona and laser focusing on that. Because again, you are part of a generation that brought everything to now. Now we are basically passing the button to us. But it has been for a reason that we leverage these processes. And I truly believe now the role of the UX designers, the design and product people, is going to be more emphasized with AI. Because this AI, it's a very powerful tool. With the press of a button, it could go north or south. And it's within our control to choose whether it goes north or south. By that, I mean obviously the very much overused human in the loop. But really, the human in control is-- Yes. What I'm recommending to my team and also to our customers are strongly recommending to us is, hang on a second, our content, our marketing, our brand is really important to us. Let me be the judge of the next steps, the approved/unapproved, the bulk versus in context AI. And very strong and opinionated, not to mention compliance and regulation, et cetera. So north or south, I love that. And I really hear your devastation on your eureka moment that sometimes is scary of, hey, I knew my double diamond. And it sounds like you were blurring your product management. Skill wise, I was rocking Figma for solutions. And I suddenly saw all of that could be done in two hours. But there be dragons. There's danger there. If you were producing super fast, bloated BDRs or PDRs using AI, like many others, and then the concepts of Vibe coding are beginning to flow, but the quality of all is dropping to a lowest common denominator of generative AI in proddev, how do we get that standard back up again? Yes. There's a risk if it's applied like that across the board. And then suddenly, human teams are overwhelmed by the volume of these cycles and processes, view checkpoints, et cetera. So if I take a breath, and that's kind of scary, what I described, with associated farcical, someone's producing a 20 page document with AI, and the audience are then using AI to summarize that back down to one page, wow, that's kind of bonkers, isn't it? That doesn't happen anywhere, right? So you don't have to answer that. So what I recommend, because this looks very familiar to these other cycles, is this will settle. It's going to go. But the power of AI in certain jobs to be done of us as product teams is incredibly powerful. We are now in the depths of deciding which AI tools not just work for the Vibe coding and Vibe fun for our designers, but with a unified process with engineering, with product management, and all of us beginning to share some hats here in a trusting way. But not across the board, superpower, fast track, whole process, humanists struggling to keep up and be accountable for it. Not that, but in certain moments of documentation, of insights, but only to a level, and all the way through to design with Vibe coding and obviously shipping. But ironically, one thing that's coming out is we really need to focus on QA with all of this Vibe coding going as well, that the QA is now becoming, ironically, those old letters of age, ages ago, has coming back. It's a bit like vinyl records coming back after MP3s. How do we have a level of quality with this massive velocity? And you've got to put the customers first. So at some stage, if you are just churning out velocity rather than customer outcomes and quality, it's supercharged by AI process for Prod Dev. That comes back to Vibe 2, too. So I rather the intentional approach that we're taking. It was very intentional, not a first mover before in the previous company on the AI dashcam stuff, but very intentional and unified and step-by-step. Eating that elephant one bite at a time. And I'm enjoying that rather than this massive reactive whiplash that some others might be doing on this topic. Your point is exactly the point that Jason Fry from 37 Signal mentioned in other podcasts I was listening to the other day. Yeah. Basecam. Yeah. When you think about basecam, you could think of 100 different AI use cases that you can integrate into basecam, and they haven't introduced, as he claimed-- I'm not sure whether I heard that part really clearly. But let's say they are considering it, but they haven't introduced. And he was asked why. He said exactly the same thing that you mentioned. We like to take our time. We do not want to rush it. What's the rush? With their customers. Take their time with their customers. Never before has there been more need for customer feedback, customer contact. That's when it kind of breaks my heart about this lurch away from methodical user testing and customer contact and et cetera in this rush for velocity. So never before. So I guarantee you that was in their mix and they'll take their time too as well. I'm not sure of that podcast, but it's amazing to be included in that company or being in that same kind of sentiment that he shares. Our customers gave amazing feedback through some use cases that we tested in the early design sprints a year or two ago. And we've been on an AI journey, of course, in Contentful for two years. But the early one was no, not big sweeping conversational detached. And then as you dig into it, you're disappointed with the actions that that conversational agent is taking, now referred to as agentic. And actually, in our first waves of trust and governance and compliance, et cetera, we really want to have very obvious productivity boosts from AI in their content operations. For example, translations. So translations becoming faster but still approved by the team, by humans, et cetera. That's right where the money was. All tags for thousands, if not millions of images. We have huge enterprise customers. We're very enterprise focused in Contentful. And the web pages for some of these companies are potentially in the millions or million. Imagine the count of images. So AI accelerating all tags, et cetera. This is the kind of AI that is changing people's lives, and that's intentional. And that was from a card sorting game from a design sprint. Yay design. And that was with engineers, research, product management, and designers all sharing the load in that design sprint. And they came back with such confident breakthroughs from one, two weeks. I don't think you can ever say a design sprint is one week. A lot of us has it before and after that week. So two weeks, and it was just a joy to watch. And many other methodologies that the team use to keep that connection. And it's our customers co-designing, ultimately, one way or another. They would lose all trust if it was a huge lurch towards-- it will get there. It will get there that agentic, MCP, agent orchestration is much more coordinated. And bring it on. We're already thinking that way, too. But for now, we keep our eye on the North Star, the concept car there. But the now of their use cases, their jobs to be done, are just help me be faster, help me be better, help our team increase our productivity. That's our customers' asks. In areas we are willing to trust AI, and again, that's where research is really, really powerful on levels of trust and safety around AI, too. hugely important for our customers. Presented the all-tech example in your presentation and UXDX. I just literally jumped from my seat because I realized right there, that's a way to go about bringing in AI into your platform, into your ecosystem. Very calculated, very, very defined, limited scope that by implementing AI could change the lives of so many people. This kind of job also, these are not the job that-- because of the scope of it, and because it's not very-- I wouldn't call them very creative, that requires really an engine that could address that level of scope. And then the human role would be go and then basically do a quality assurance, make sure the content is there. There is no hallucination. It's contextual. It's really talking about that image and that image only. I think that's really the right synergy to your point. At this point of time with AI, there might be a utopia that MCPs and agents and all that, they do some crazy stuff. But right now, we are not there. And we need to look at the reality at face value. And the reality here is limited scope AI that could do something at scale is the right way to go. I'm a tiny bit jealous. I totally agree with what you say. I'm a tiny bit jealous of our customers that we've taken this approach. And why? How cool is it that inline, in field, in context, as we say, contextual rather than conversational? Only you'll get to conversational. I want to echo that. But right now, it's Maslow's hierarchy of AI. We need shelter. We need food. That will at least help me not get fired and do not only that, but do a great job and be incredibly productive. That's the right-- what's the best that can happen that our customers are trying to imagine? So I'm a bit jealous that they have these use cases in there. And they're getting 20%, 30%, 40% productivity gains are actually potentially off the chart at bulk. So we're doing AI actions like many other future-looking companies. We're open platform. We're API first. So that's like an open LLM type ethos is hugely beneficial to our customers. But on these prioritized use cases, AI actions, as I said, insights, translations, massive breakthroughs. I'm jealous because I'm trying to think, what do I use in my tool sets? It's all really stressful. I'm struggling to keep up with Figma, Make, Lovable, all the things we're testing, V0, Bolt, Cursor. I get a bit hyperventilation, as I say that. And it's not expected of me, but I'm trying to keep up with it. At VP level, I think you should still. And then the whole wider-- we use Glean, of course, a great tool. But in all of them, I'm either doing a bit of prompting or a bit of searching. But I don't have my in-context productivity boost that's so clear and so focused. Where is my user interview folks? What am I going to do with feedback? So I'm jealous that there is that focus. And many other companies are taking that same approach. The use case, the job to be done, and the productivity boost for the loyalty members and our customers to make them rockstars. Donal, a sort of a closing remark. I want to basically go back to your last phase of your career, which is you probably had hunted for several months, had multiple conversations about where you want to take the company content full in this case. You got on board it first month. The Chad GBT, a rative AI, on 10th at scale, introduced, and you're the VP of a headless CMS. So another massive shockwave right at your doorstep. And navigating that with all that pre-built through the conversation before hiring, it could be confusing, at least for me. So sort of like to the audience, a lot of my audience is younger folks, like in around late 20s, mid 20s, early 30s. How should they go about navigating their career while there is a big elephant in the room? Maybe just go into it like overused terms like growth mindset and curiosity. They don't land or resonate anymore. Go in with obviously acknowledging your gut. You're concerned. You're fearful. Take a breath. I know this is basic. And then try to get to that mindset of what's the best that can happen. There's going to be bumps in the road, but what's the best? And it's a career moment. It's a portfolio moment. We all own our own careers. So you own many moments. The younger members of the team, I hope you're loving where you are, and you stay there a long time. But you may move. And this is great experience for now, but for your next move. So go there. Go there. And try to settle the fear then into fun. That's really my ethos. And then on a-- certainly for the designs, the PM, and the engineering audience, how I coped with that moment myself personally and connected with people on the team, is I started to dream of the future. And so I love and I've specialized in the past three roles in, yes, North Stars or concept cars. I really, really was doing that instinctively, but then Jared Spool had a whole series, Leaders of Awesomeness, about design's role to move from pixel pushing and UI, all of them full stack to really become the visionaries around the design and the UX experience in concept cars. And then he has a great example from-- when Apple did that as well that I won't go into detail, which predicted 20 years ahead of time, the iPad. So I did that as a coping mechanism in partnership with the leadership in the company in my first months, first months, on to steady our vision. It was very far out, very ambitious, like many companies who do that. And then with that we began the what about now? And we've never lost sight of that, but of course that North Star has evolved in the past two to three years. We've never lost sight of it. And we must focus on the now, the realities of the current product, the current platform, the current maturity of our customers in AI. But I really recommend either officially, ideally with leadership, or unofficially if you don't have that support, having a concept car or a vision of where you'd like to get to. But be pragmatic. When you get there, it won't look like that. Sometimes the concept cars look like the Homer car for the Simpsons fans. They always end up looking like the Homer car and it'll be a mess. But I was very proud of the concept car we did there, and I've done it multiple times in Verizon Connect or Fleetmatics. It's a great coping mechanism. Why? Because you are shaking off the fear of the past, or the tech debt, or the UX debt of the past, and the fear of the future. And you're starting to visualize a better world. I love visualizing a better world. It helps me cope with the craziness in the world. And that's a UX technique that I think many designers have intuitively. But stop stressing about the how. That's what you should be sharing with a partner, with your engineering and PM buddies to work out the how together. You should dream the future with them too. It's super liberating, is what I would end with. When you put in an address in a GPS, it's basically calculate where you are, the right route, and towards that destination. I love it. And sometimes there's crashes, if you're on Waze. Outsourced. Partner with your engineers and your PMs. I'm going all time to them. Oh yes, love it. Bring it. Then you can go option A, B, and C. Avoid tolls. Get funding. Investors are... So that, yeah, you've got your route options. Do you want to take the scenic route? I love this. So, but yes, but you have to know where you're going. Where do Basecamp, just to close it out, just thematically, where do Basecamp get their name from? You know, Summit, Basecamp, Camp 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, but the team will survive basecamp culture of Basecamp. And then they tie one another together, going up to the summit when they're snow blind. Beautiful name for a company. And that's what it's... But it's just route planning. Journey mapping, not very popular anymore, but I still believe journey maps are going to come back. Yeah. So I could talk for hours, but I realised... Go on. No, I was going to watch it. All right. Thanks so much. Thank you. Thank you for listening to UX for AI. Join us next week for more insightful conversations about the impact of artificial intelligence in development, design and user experience.[MUSIC]