With so much hype about using AI in the design process, we’re continuing to explore how companies are using different tools. This week, we sat down with two people who sit wonderfully in the intersection of technology and humanity: Cal Thompson, VP of Design at Headspace and Rachel Arredondo, Senior Product Designer at Headspace.
Together we explored AI tools they use in their design process, what designers should do to future-proof their careers and how AI can empower designers to have more influence in businesses.
Watch the full interview below, or read our favourite insights , as well as listen to the podcast version on Spotify, Apple Podcasts our Pocketcast.
Design leaders shouldn’t avoid hiring junior or up-and-coming designers because they can treat AI “like an intern”. If anything, AI makes it an even better time to bring them on. Tools like Claude can act as an ongoing education partner, helping new designers clarify their ideas, ask the “basic” questions they might feel awkward asking a senior teammate, and quickly spin up first-pass MVP wireframes. All of this helps them develop their analysis and synthesis skills faster so they can start tackling the more complex, higher-level challenges sooner.
On top of that, younger talent brings fresh perspectives and new ideas, which is exactly what we need in the age of AI. So yes, keep hiring and nurturing the new generation that will become the future design leaders.
As a designer trying to integrate AI into your workflow, one of the first things you need to understand is your own design process. One of the best pieces of advice that Rachel got from a mentor was to stop trying to become a more technical designer, because that wasn’t her strength. Instead, she should lean into her natural strengths, like research and understanding the “why” behind decisions. With AI, that mindset matters even more: know what you’re great at, and let the tools amplify that.
With new AI tools appearing every day, the real challenge is knowing which ones genuinely help you do better work. That means experimenting, getting curious, and figuring out which tools actually expand your reach and impact as a designer.
While AI tools make it easier to generate ideas and visuals, one thing that designers have built up over their careers is a point of view. That’s their real value in the current age of AI: not just producing things, but having strong judgment if this is the right idea, and a sense of taste for the quality of the final product.
Not everyone has to have the same taste, of course, everyone’s aesthetic will be different across individuals and cultures. However, as creatives, you need the decision-making skills to say: “this is good and this is what we wanna deliver to our customers, and this is what we as humans will stand behind.”
When photography first emerged, portrait painters had to reinvent themselves and find a new niche. However, they weren’t bound to realism anymore and were free to experiment and find new styles. New creative shifts like impressionism and cubism started because people “started to make things together” and “influenced each other”. It is this organic, cultural shift that highlights how great ideas come out when people get together.
Similarly, any future creative shifts that occur as a result of the rise of AI will happen from designers and creatives getting together to experiment and share ideas and influences. In fact, AI allows them more time to “play” and for unique design movements to emerge organically.
While Cal and Rachel don’t shy away from experimenting with new AI tools that appear every week. But the biggest value still comes from a few core, widely-known tools that everyone is familiar with:
Rachel often uses Claude to speed up her workflows. For example, in preparation for a user interview she asked Claude to create a mini member journey map based on survey data and a vague outline that she already had. This made interview flow much better and helped uncover more insights. Usually she wouldn’t have time to create artefacts like this before each interview, but Claude allows her to make the process more interesting and still hit the deadlines.
Cal uses Figma Make often to create quick prototypes using Headspace’s design language. Being able to show a clickable prototype of a new feature to the executive stakeholders is powerful and helps align around a tangible vision of how to solve certain problems. And now prototypes that used to take six weeks to build, can take less than a day.
Researching competitive landscape or working out the size of the market opportunity usually meant relying on a business analyst or paying for pricey research tools. Now, with tools like Google Deep Research, you are able to quickly pull up competitor data, revenue numbers, user counts, and rough TAM estimates on your own. This makes it a lot quicker to validate a business case for a proposed solution with executive stakeholders.
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