The Design Shift podcast is your weekly guide to mastering the leap from creative expert to confident design leader—packed with actionable insights, proven strategies, and real-world wisdom.
From Missed Bus to Civic Movement with Carley Hart
What happens when one frustrated commuter decides to stop complaining and start building? In this episode of the Design Shift podcast, Justin Lokitz sits down with Carley Hart, startup operator, educator, and builder currently leading partnerships for ...
22 Apr 2026
Designing What AI Can’t Replace (COMMUNITY) with Rachel Paul
What does it mean to design community in a world where AI can generate almost anything? In this episode of the Design Shift podcast, Justin Lokitz sits down with Rachel Paul—host of CreativeMornings San Francisco and founder of The State of Creativity—...
15 Apr 2026
From Design Leader to Solo Builder: Eric Fain on AI, Judgment, and Taking the Leap
Eric Fain spent more than two decades building products inside complex organizations. At Autodesk, he helped take platform and collaboration products from zero to one, shaped early generative AI strategy, and worked across leadership teams to align on ...
24 Jan 2026
Designing New Ventures, Culture, and Rituals in the Age of AI — with Kursat Ozenc
What does design look like when there’s no roadmap, no shared clarity, and no stable system yet?
In this episode of Design Shift, Justin Lokitz talks with Kursat Ozenc (chatgpt://generic-entity?number=0) about designing at the edges of organizations—where new ventures are forming, culture is shifting, and teams are learning how to work alongside AI.
Kursat is an Executive Design Director at JPMorgan, a longtime lecturer at Stanford d.school, and co-author of Rituals for Work. His work focuses on design beyond artifacts: shaping systems, behaviors, and the conditions that allow teams to move through uncertainty together.
In this conversation, we explore:
• How designers create leverage in new ventures before clarity exists
• Why organizational change fails when culture is treated as an outcome
• How rituals translate strategy into shared behavior and meaning
• What changes when teams operate across multiple modes of AI intelligence
• Why judgment, not tools, is the next frontier of design leadership
As AI accelerates execution and automation, this episode reframes design’s role as infrastructural—helping teams coordinate, decide, and stay human in increasingly complex systems.
If you’re a designer or design leader navigating innovation, culture change, or AI-enabled work, this episode will expand how you think about what design is really for.
Follow Design Shift for weekly conversations on design, leadership, judgment, and shaping what’s next.
18 Nov 2025
Building Tomorrow, Today w/ Sid Vanchinathan
Justin Lokitz interviews Sid Vanchinathan, founding partner of Design Squads and Hibrids, for a deep dive into how design teams can thrive as AI, distributed collaboration, and organizational change reshape the landscape.
Sid shares how his teams use AI to speed up early exploration, why nearshoring has become a powerful model for creative collaboration, and how human-centric design methods help organizations adopt new tools and processes with ease. He also explains HiOS, the internal operating system that keeps Hibrids’ cross-regional teams in sync.
If you’re a designer, design leader, or anyone guiding transformation inside a growing organization, you’ll walk away with practical insights and a clearer picture of what it means to design responsibly in a rapidly shifting world.
Subscribe to the show and the Design Shift newsletter for more conversations like this.
12 Nov 2025
Designing from the Inside Out: Building Human-Centered Orgs in the Age of AI w/ Stephanie Knabe
In this episode of Design Shift, Justin Lokitz sits down with Stephanie Knabe, Director of Business and Org Capability at BILL, to explore what it really means to design people systems from the inside out—especially in an era where AI is reshaping how we work.
Stephanie shares how she prototypes HR systems like products, why performance reviews need better design, and how culture gets built through conversation, not just policy. She also dives into her experience working with AI tools and agents, and how she balances automation with the need for human connection and context.
Whether you’re a design leader, org strategist, or just curious about how AI is changing the way we grow and lead teams, this conversation is packed with practical insight—and plenty of honesty about what works, what fails, and what still needs figuring out.
Subscribe for more episodes, and check out the Design Shift newsletter at https://www.designshift.me for weekly tools, interviews, and ideas at the intersection of design, leadership, and strategy.
17 Sept 2025
Designed to Listen w/ Gregory Stock
In this episode of Design Shift, I talk with Gregory Stock—fractional Chief of Staff, design strategist, and executive coach—about what it takes to lead with empathy, taste, and strategic clarity in an age defined by speed and AI.
Gregory shares his journey from the art world to the world of startups, revealing how his early work in museums shaped his approach to systems thinking, storytelling, and design at scale. We dive into his experience with The Bay Lights project in San Francisco, the power of deep listening in client work, and why he believes taste is something you build through time, discomfort, and curiosity.
He also opens up about how the DMBA program helped him close a “big empathy gap,” how he uses AI as a tool for dialogue—not just output—and what advice he has for the next generation of design leaders navigating ambiguity and change.
If you’ve ever wrestled with what it means to be both creative and strategic—or wondered how to stay grounded while working at the edges of art, business, and technology—this episode is for you.
Subscribe to Design Shift for more conversations with designers, founders, and creative leaders shaping what’s next.
designshift.me (https://www.designshift.me) | Follow on LinkedIn | Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts
8 Aug 2025
The AI Advantage: How Boutique Agencies Are Redefining Design Consulting w/ Chris Basey
In this episode of Design Shift, Justin Lokitz sits down with Chris Basey, founder and CEO of Comedia, a boutique design agency that’s quietly outpacing the Big Four. From building real products for Google, BMW, and Atlassian to using AI as a “force multiplier,” Chris shares how small design teams are scaling impact without scaling headcount.
They dive into:
How boutique agencies win by making, not pitching
Why design thinking needs a reset (but not a funeral)
What AI can (and can’t) do for product designers
How to avoid “vibe coding” and stay relevant in an AI-driven world
The future of boutique consulting—and why the full-service agency model is dying
Whether you’re a design leader, founder, or creative strategist, this episode is packed with honest insights, hard-earned lessons, and practical advice to help you thrive in a shifting industry.
🔗 Subscribe to the Design Shift newsletter at designshift.me (https://www.designshift.me)
#DesignConsulting #AIinDesign #BoutiqueAgencies #UXLeadership #ProductDesign #DesignThinking #CreativeStrategy #Comedia #ChrisBasey #DesignShift #InnovationConsulting #DesignLeadership
25 Jul 2025
AI Meets UX: The Playbook for Future-Proof Design w/ Nick Cawthon
Get ready to level up your design game. In this episode of Design Shift, veteran UX strategist Nick Cawthon (founder of Gauge and professor of Data Literacy at CCA) breaks down how to stay indispensable when AI can generate a wireframe in seconds. We cover why direction beats deliverables, how to anchor machine learning in human insight, and what happens when design and engineering finally merge.
🔑 What you’ll learn
The new definition of design in an AI-saturated world
A step-by-step playbook for scaling research with 40 M data points—without losing empathy
How “prompt-engineered” Design Ops collapses hand-offs and saves dev cycles
Nick’s 3-year learning plan for future-proof careers
⏱ Key insights…
0:00 Opener1:08 Meet Nick Cawthon – 25-year UX veteran2:38 AltaVista to Gauge: forging a data-driven career10:43 Design is direction, not deliverables14:58 UI vs UX vs Usability: emotion over pixels16:11 Uber’s “moving cars” trick for micro-delight21:08 40 M Airbnb reviews: AI starts with qual hypotheses22:38 Why Double-Diamond skills still matter35:07 Hybrid “diamond-shaped” orgs win36:08 Design Ops becomes prompt-engineering44:03 “Figma isn’t the web” – prototype in live code46:08 Near-production hand-offs & component libraries56:58 Nick’s 3-year learning plan59:53 Take the free AI-readiness assessment at retrain.gauge.io
🔗 Resources• Gauge: https://gauge.io• AI-Readiness Self-Assessment: https://retrain.gauge.io
👉 Subscribe for weekly deep dives on design leadership, innovation, and the future of work. Smash that 👍 if you find value, and drop your questions for Nick in the comments—we might answer them in the next episode!
#UXDesign #AI #DesignLeadership #ProductDesign #NickCawthon #Gauge #GenerativeAI #DesignOps
11 Jul 2025
From Google to Founder: Maya Elise Joseph-Goteiner on Reinventing Design Leadership
What happens when a top UX leader leaves big tech and builds something of her own? In this episode, Maya Elise Joseph-Goteiner—former Google researcher and founder of Velocity Ave—shares her powerful journey from the inside of Area 120 to launching a nimble, high-impact agency.
We talk about the identity crisis that comes with leaving a well-known role, the freedom (and fear) of starting from scratch, and how designers can lead by embracing ambiguity—not avoiding it. Maya also unpacks her view of design as a systems-level negotiation between business, tech, and humanity—and why that matters more than ever in the age of AI.
If you’re a designer, strategist, or creative leader wondering what’s next—this one’s for you.
21 Jun 2025
Intent Made Real: Why Designers Are Built to Be Founders with James Song
James Song discusses transitioning from design leadership roles at Meta and Uber to founding a company, emphasizing curiosity, strategic thinking, and building systems, in an interview.
13 Jun 2025
Designing for Climate as a Creative Act with Marc O'Brien
Marc O'Brien, an award-winning creative strategist, discusses with host Justin Lokitz how design amplifies climate solutions and reshapes industries for a sustainable future in this interview.
20 May 2025
Design in the Age of AI Agents
Design and innovation leaders Elizabeth Glenewinkel and Mario Ruiz discuss how AI and the Jobs to Be Done framework reshape design roles, enabling strategic leadership through human-centered design; this is an interview.
15 May 2025
Want to Lead in Design? Kevin Flores Says Start Here.
Kevin Flores, design leader and co-author, discusses the value of design and blurring product boundaries in an interview with the host, offering insights for early to mid-career designers.
Who has been a guest on Design Shift Podcast
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James Song
Marc O'Brien
Kevin Flores
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Podcast Authority Score: 40 / 100
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