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AI and Design: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Dan Saffer and Nik Martelaro
Two Carnegie Mellon faculty explore how artificial intelligence is reshaping the world of design. Each week, we'll break down the latest AI developments, dive deep into AI topics that matter to designers, and talk with fascinating guests who are right at the intersection of these fields.All views expressed are our own and not reflective of Carnegie Mellon or the Human-Computer Interaction Institute.
Latest Episodes
The most recent episodes — sign up to get AI-powered summaries of each one.
- 1 weeks ago30 min
OpenAI's Intelligent UI, Facebook's Your Algorithm, AI Relationship Quality (ARQ)
Fresh off their first live show, Nik and Dan look at three stories about who gets to shape what AI shows us. First up is OpenAI’s Intelligent UI, which lets GPT-6 build small interactive interfaces (charts, forms, buttons, maps) inline in ChatGPT instead of returning a wall of text. They compare it to Claude Artifacts, argue that speed is what makes it usable as a default, and ask what happens when companies like QuickBooks have to hand over a design system for their product to show up inside someone else’s chat window. Is ChatGPT becoming an operating system that generates apps on demand, across the silos our tasks currently live in?Next, Facebook’s “Your Algorithm” lets people steer their Feed and Reels in plain language. Dan draws on his time at Twitter and the promise of Bluesky’s algorithm marketplace; Nik wonders whether more control might raise engagement rather than lower it, and how this data could feed Meta’s Muse agents. Finally, UserTesting has rebranded as Auros and is pivoting toward AI training and evaluation with verified human experts. Its new AI Relationship Quality (ARQ) benchmark measures trust, affinity, and control alongside technical performance, which leads to a frank conversation about why benchmark gains don’t always produce models that are pleasant to work with, and whether ARQ could become the NPS of AI.LINKSOpenAI Wants ChatGPT to Stop Looking Like a Chatbot (Gizmodo)https://gizmodo.com/openai-wants-chatgpt-to-stop-looking-like-a-chatbot-2000823211Facebook Is Giving Users More Control Over Their Algorithm (TechCrunch)https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/13/facebook-is-giving-users-more-control-over-their-algorithm/UserTesting Rebrands as Auros, Aims to Bring Humans into AI Experience (Constellation Research)https://www.constellationr.com/insights/news/usertesting-rebrands-auros-aims-bring-humans-ai-experienceAuros Adds ‘Human Elements’ to AI Evaluation (Daily Research News)https://www.mrweb.com/drno/news40429.htmDan’s debut AI novel The Restoration (2176, Book One)https://link.amazon/B05GcHBe7
- 2 weeks ago1h 1m
Live at IxDA Pittsburgh - How to be a designer in 2027
This week, Dan and Nik recorded live at the IxDA Pittsburgh meetup. We discuss how we are thinking about being designers in the future, what we are teaching students, and what tools we are using. We take audience questions and hear about how these professional designers are working with AI today.
- 3 weeks ago52 min
The Fastest Gun in the West, Multiplayer AI, Serious AI Products & Jeremy Belcher
The Fastest Gun in the West: https://www.doc.cc/articles/fastest-gunWe're building multiplayer AI. Here's what we've learned so far: https://newsletter.posthog.com/p/were-building-multiplayer-ai-heresWhat would a serious AI product look like? https://blog.glyph.im/2026/09/serious-ai-product.htmlJeremy BelcherRobot Heart - www.robotheart.studioLinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremybelcher
- Sep 30, 202658 min
AI Sychophancy with Steve Rathje
This week Dan and Nik sit down with Steve Rathje, a new HCII colleague who runs CMU's Psychology of Technology Lab, to talk about what sycophantic AI does to the people using it. Steve's team randomly assigned people to chat with bots that were flattering, disagreeable, or neutral. People liked the flatterers, shrugged at the neutral ones, and hated the bots that pushed back. For designers, the news is mixed. Validation drives enjoyment, but cherry-picked facts do the persuading, so pairing a little warmth with opposing evidence makes disagreement easier to take (at some cost to its persuasive punch). The bad news: across six studies from three research teams, teaching people about sycophancy through warnings, videos, or quizzes made the chatbot seem less trustworthy but no less persuasive. That puts the little "AI can make mistakes" disclaimer in an unflattering light. We also cover AI dark patterns, whether the right dose of sycophancy depends on the task, and Dan's random idea of a group chat of dueling AI personalities. Plus, Nik explains Jev and the new class of fast, cheap "System One" decision models, and we look at pieces from Microsoft and DoorDash design teams on why AI evals should measure what users experience as well as what models get right.LINKSJev decision model touted as quicker, cheaper LLM alternative (TechTarget)https://www.techtarget.com/it-infrastructure/news/366650696/Jev-decision-model-touted-as-quicker-cheaper-LLM-alternativePutting the user back into AI Evaluation (Microsoft Design)https://microsoft.design/articles/putting-the-user-back-into-ai-evaluation/Building AI Evals: Who Gets to Decide What’s Good? (Doordash Design)https://medium.com/design-doordash/building-ai-evals-who-gets-to-decide-whats-good-39671385f50dSycophantic AI increases attitude extremity and overconfidence (Rathje et al.)https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/vmyek_v1/Observing sycophantic AI validate others reduces its appeal but not its persuasiveness (Ye, Kraut & Rathje)https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.25166v1Sycophancy in GPT-4o: What happened and what we're doing about it (OpenAI)https://openai.com/index/sycophancy-in-gpt-4o/Silicon sycophants: the effects of computers that flatter (Fogg & Nass, 1997)https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1071581996901044Insincere Flattery Actually Works: A Dual Attitudes Perspective (Chan & Sengupta, 2010)https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1509/jmkr.47.1.122On the conversational persuasiveness of GPT-4 (Salvi et al., Nature Human Behaviour)https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-025-02194-6@Grok Is This True? LLM-Powered Fact-Checking on Social Media (Renault, Mosleh & Rand)https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/85quw_v1Steve Rathje's websitehttps://stevenrathje.com/Steve Psychology on TikTokhttps://www.tiktok.com/@stevepsychology
- Sep 22, 202631 min
Google CC, Controlling Image Generators, and Planning with Agents
This week we talk about Google's new CC agent for managing family tasks, some techniques to control image generators when you want to constrain certain elements, and a deep article on planning with AI agents.Show Noteshttps://techcrunch.com/2026/09/18/googles-new-cc-is-an-ai-agent-that-helps-families-run-their-households/https://trpevski.com/blog/image-model-decide-everythinghttps://maggieappleton.com/planning-agentsMai Lee Chang, Alicia (Hyun Jin) Lee, Nara Han, Anna Huang, Hugo Simão, Samantha Reig, Abdullah Ubed Mohammad Ali, Rebekah Martinez, Neeta M Khanuja, John Zimmerman, Jodi Forlizzi, and Aaron Steinfeld. 2024. Dynamic Agent Affiliation: Who Should the AI Agent Work for in the Older Adult's Care Network? In Proceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS '24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1774–1788. https://doi.org/10.1145/3643834.3661500ShiftUX workshop: https://shiftux.rosenfeldmedia.com/workshops/designing-ai-for-humansShiftUX talk: https://shiftux.rosenfeldmedia.com/program/day-2-turing-machines/Dan's ShiftUX Discount Code: SAFFER-SHIFT26
- Sep 16, 202649 min
Apple's Siri AI and Audio Intelligence, Project Solaris, Miro Sale, AI Tool Building
In this episode, Dan and Nik unpack Apple's big announcements from its latest event, starting with Siri AI: now a dedicated app with personal context indexing, on-screen awareness, and in-app actions, launching in beta with iOS 27 . They dig into the promise and limitations of Apple-only app integration, the EU regulatory lockout, and what daily usage caps signal about Apple's services ambitions. The conversation gets more charged around Audio Intelligence, Apple's new always-on listening features for the Apple Watch, including live audio rewind and Siri Recap summaries of real-world conversations. Dan and Nik wrestle with the surveillance implications, the absence of any on-device indicator, and whether this crosses a line — particularly in two-party consent states like Pennsylvania and California.The back half covers Runway's Project Solaris, a generative UI concept that uses its video model to render fully interactive, pixel-based interfaces with no underlying code. Dan sees echoes of Microsoft's Bob-era skeuomorphism and questions whether it misunderstands fifty years of HCI; Nik finds more to like in its challenge to the sameness of modern app design. They then turn to the surprise sale of Miro to Bending Spoons for $1.36 billion — a 90% haircut from its 2021 peak valuation — and what it means when a profitable, hundred-million-user company gets absorbed into a portfolio known for maintaining but not advancing its acquisitions. The episode closes with a discussion of Benedict Evans' essay "AI, Tools and Transformation," which argues that the Silicon Valley vision of everyone rolling their own SaaS tools misunderstands how most people think about their work. LINKSIntroducing Solarishttps://runway.com/news/research/introducing-solarisBending Spoons to buy collaboration tools maker Miro for $1.36B, 90% less than its 2022 valuation https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/10/bending-spoons-to-buy-collaboration-tools-maker-miro-for-1-36b-90-less-than-its-2022-valuation/AI, Tools and Transformation (Benedict Evans)https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2026/9/3/ai-tools-and-transformation
- Sep 2, 202634 min
Episode 33: Mobbin MCP, Perplexity Computer, Design Ledgers
This week on AI and design, we highlight the release of Mobbin's MCP, Perplexity and NVIDIA's local AI agent, and the concept of design ledgers. Dan also has some new speaking engagements you can join coming up.Chapters00:00 Introduction to AI and Design01:11 Upcoming Speaking Engagements04:44 Mobbin's MCP Release11:34 Perplexity and NVIDIA's Local AI Agent23:54 The Concept of Design LedgersShow Noteshttps://mobbin.com/mcphttps://venturebeat.com/infrastructure/perplexity-partners-with-nvidia-to-launch-portable-computer-a-fully-local-ai-agent-with-zero-token-costshttps://www.proofofconcept.pub/p/the-ledger-of-designDan's Speaking EngagementsShiftUX workshop: https://shiftux.rosenfeldmedia.com/workshops/designing-ai-for-humansShiftUX talk: https://shiftux.rosenfeldmedia.com/program/day-2-turing-machines/Dan's ShiftUX Discount Code: SAFFER-SHIFT26Chicago Camps' Leadership by Design: https://chicagocamps.org/event/leadership-by-design-2026/
- Aug 25, 202639 min
Figma Make Time Savings, LLM Bias Affects Designers, Target's AI/UX Bid, EasyCircuit
Nik and Dan open the fall semester with a look at how their own courses have been rebuilt around AI this year. Nik's third run of AI Augmented Designer now leans hard into professional software development practice. Dan is teaching Designing for AI Products and Services, an Advanced Interaction Design Studio reworked around AI-ready design systems, and a new independent study with Brad Myers on "AI widgets" — what happens when scroll bars, cut-and-paste, and other decades-old microinteractions get smarter.This week’s news: Figma's randomized controlled trial on Figma Make found roughly 20% time savings, but Nik pushes on whether a 52-minute task dropping to 45 minutes actually feels different, or whether the real gain is more iteration cycles. Maud Benaddi's article on bias in LLMs prompts a discussion of how training-data skew shows up in generated personas, AI-assisted copy, and flattened qualitative research summaries; Nik connects it to Liz Gerber's exercise having students generate personas of themselves and watch the class recoil. Target's appointment of its first chief AI officer, Chandhu Nair, alongside Purvi Shah as SVP of UX, gets read as a welcome sign of AI and UX paired around real operational value rather than an AI strategy for its own sake. We close on EasyCircuit, a new app for vibe-coding hardware prototypes — fun, promising, and, as Nik found when a wiring render would have let the blue smoke out, a reminder that basic usability QA still matters.LINKSMeasuring Time Savings From Figma Makehttps://www.figma.com/blog/measuring-time-savings-from-figma-make/Bias in LLMs, or how to design for everyone with tools built for someone — Maud Benaddihttps://medium.com/@maudbenaddi/bias-in-llms-or-how-to-design-for-everyone-with-tools-built-for-someone-01b8e38bd17bTarget Strengthens AI and UX Capabilities to Power Its Next Chapter of Growthhttps://corporate.target.com/news-features/article/2026/08/chandhu-nair-purvi-shahEasyCircuithttps://easycircuit.app/Dr. Liz Gerber’s LinkedIn post https://www.linkedin.com/posts/elizgerber_ai-builds-cardboard-cutouts-of-people-not-share-7440452615232024576-aS5k/
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About AI and Design
Two Carnegie Mellon faculty explore how artificial intelligence is reshaping the world of design. Each week, we'll break down the latest AI developments, dive deep into AI topics that matter to designers, and talk with fascinating guests who are right at the intersection of these fields.All views expressed are our own and not reflective of Carnegie Mellon or the Human-Computer Interaction Institute.
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