AI Dreams, Shoestring Reality
InsideOut Design Leader Community
An invite-only community of senior design, experience, and operations leaders. Small, facilitated sessions, big brands.
Welcome back to Inside Ideas, the newsletter that brings insights from our InsideOut design leadership community right to your inbox.
Our community is having a busy year, jam-packed with learning through over 50 sessions so far, ranging from roundtables to workshops to show & tells–in addition to brand new ways to explore and connect.
In fact, we have successfully launched three new formats, based on feedback from our members:
Most exciting of all, we hosted 11 in-person sessions in 6 cities over a 5-week period as part of our Spring IRL InsideOut series, gaining incredible insights on what's REALLY happening with AI for senior leaders at complex organizations.
As you can see, InsideOut is truly built FOR our members, BY our members. And lucky you, these leaders love to help others, so read on for some high level takeaways from our in-person roundtables in April and May.
No surprise, AI has been a blazing hot topic in this year's conversations as senior creative leaders aim to discover how to harness its potential, while helping the business solve relevant problems–and mitigate risk. Here's the rub:
Business leaders want AI dreams on a shoestring budget.
Worse still, they drank the Kool-Aid. Believing the hype of what's AI-possible without understanding how it works is a dangerous choice that's leading to a frenzy of tech-first activity without direction.
A sentiment that came up in every roundtable: Executives seem less interested in "Who might want what we're building and what problem does it solve for them?" and more interested in "What are we doing with AI?!" In fact, several leaders shared that they have been asked to literally capture and report up any AI efforts, often with PR in mind...
On the bright side, design leaders are infinitely curious by nature and actually want to embrace and discover meaningful applications of AI–just not without customer / user benefit as the goal, and not without high quality outputs.
Two key challenges for design leaders arose in our sessions:
Fortunately, creative and design teams have been faced with problems like these for a long time. Maybe not with such urgency and lack of interest in the WHY (though the Metaverse comes to mind), but education is simply part of the creative team's job.
Here's the REALLY bright side: When design leaders move business partners past the shiny object of AI, they are uniquely qualified to help them discover high impact solutions that tap into its power without destroying brand equity.
Think about it. The most visible and accessible promises of AI are coming from Generative AI, a visual / communications arena where these leaders have spent their careers. Tie in the REAL power of AI (its ability to synthesize extraordinary amounts of data), alongside these leaders' experience drawing insights out of critical user and market research, and a design leader is one of the most qualified partners out there for effectively deploying AI.
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Unfortunately, as executives scramble to be seen as first movers in the AI space, many see the future of design as a self-serve function for business people. The pressure to "just do something with AI" to achieve short-sighted outcomes of saving time and money threatens to discount vs. elevate creative expertise.
So what's a design leader to do? In our recent roundtables, after making clear the situation above, leaders in our InsideOut community explored ways to:
While no one has all the answers, all agreed that keeping design in the discussion is absolutely critical to viable business success. And so, these smart leaders will no doubt continue to ask great questions and educate partners on what's possible, both with the limitations of today's AI and the promise of its future.
We'll be packing up more actionable insights as articles, and as always we would love to learn with you! So please share your thoughts and resources in the comments below.
Below are links to content and resources shared during our live discussions in response to current leader challenges during our recent sessions:
Over the past four years, we've generated lots of content, with trends and insights on real-world challenges for leaders of in-house design teams. ICYMI, check out our most recent articles with high level learnings from InsideOut roundtables.
We're moments away from our next article, which outlines strategies leaders can use to build the social capital they need to get ahead while everything (and everyone) is changing around them. Don't miss it!
As always, our InsideOut overview page includes dates and topics for our upcoming sessions, links to articles, and our member profile, alongside a handy form to express interest or refer a friend. Enjoy!
Somehow we're halfway through 2024... and yet there's no shortage of challenges to tackle. That's why we're thrilled to get to support senior creative and design leaders as they explore new ideas–and why we'll keep sharing them through our Inside Ideas newsletter.
Our mission is to connect leaders to find solutions. If you’re a senior design, experience, or creative operations leader of an in-house team at a high profile brand and want to connect with others who share your unique challenges, let’s talk. Our InsideOut community offers virtual and in-person roundtables to support the learning and growth of our members, and we're honored to facilitate those discussions.
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