DX Perspective: When Design Becomes Infrastructure, Intelligence Eats Software, and How Tech Progress Leads To Economic Growth
Examining when design becomes infrastructure rather than interface, exploring how intelligence is eating software at OpenAI's Dev Day, and diving into how technological progress drives economic growth
Hi all!
Here’s your weekly dose of DX Perspective, a list of what I’m exploring and thinking about. Feel free to forward this along to friends.
kw picks
Nick Law Thinks Creativity’s Job Is to Change, Reject, Build On, Swerve Tech – “The inventors of these technologies are not the same people that figure out how to express them. And that’s the difference between inventive creativity and expressive creativity.”
Functional Strategy. The Three Functional Leader Tasks by Roger Martin – Six years ago, I wrote (with colleague Jennifer Riel) a Harvard Business Review article on functional strategy. But the questions about functional strategy keep coming unabated. And the classic: A Plan Is Not A Strategy.
How technological progress leads to economic growth, an interview with 2025 Nobel Prize winner Joel Mokyr - a16z crypto – Why did the Industrial Revolution take place where it did, and then spread beyond? It had to do with a competitive, open market of ideas, Mokyr argues — a transnational “Republic of Letters” — not unlike the crypto ethos of open source, decentralization, and more.
Be Careful What You Tell Your AI Chatbot – Stanford HAI – A Stanford study reveals that leading AI companies are pulling user conversations for training, highlighting privacy risks and a need for clearer policies.
The Next Frontier of Data Moats, Verticals Mashing Together, & The Perils of Generative-Only Apps – Will everyone’s data be rare or everywhere? What’s the next frontier of valuable data? Graphs? Robots’ memories?
What I’m reading
Founders Fund Shifts From Caution to Concentrated Bets on AI – Peter Thiel tells investors that scale will determine success in the AI race.
UI for AI Initial Concepts – For the last two weeks, the UI for AI team has been working on generating concepts that solve the various issues with current AI systems. The following is a collection of ideas and explorations.
Forever Chasing Truths – Humanity’s never-ending quest for answers.
The Three Cs of Leadership: Why Caring, Clarifying, and Committing Matter at Every Level – Leadership is too often framed as a title. But titles don’t inspire people, and they don’t solve hard problems. Leadership, at its core, is a posture. It’s how you show up, how you influence, and how you elevate others — whether you manage a team of ten or contribute as an individual designer.
Game Theory: Why Playing Forever Beats Trying to Win – Life is a game, that’s a fact. As soon as you are born, you are registered on the server as a new player. You are assigned a name, and until the day you die, you don’t get to log off, pause, or restart.
What I’m watching + listening to
The Library of Minds: Road To Sequoia – Jess Lee, Episode 5 – The visionary who turned fashion discovery into a social phenomenon at Polyvore. Now at Sequoia Capital, she has an unmatched eye for consumer products that people don’t just use – they obsess over.
When Designers Start Shipping Real Code: Emmet Connolly from Intercom – Emmet Connolly, SVP of Design at Intercom, explores how design and engineering are converging in the age of AI and automation. From the hype cycle to real-world product impact, Emmet breaks down what it means for design teams when creativity meets technical execution.
Emerging Tech
OpenAI’s Windows Play – Stratechery by Ben Thompson – OpenAI’s flood of announcements are getting hard to keep up with.
Weekly Review: We saw a future where Intelligence Eats Software at OpenAI’s Dev Day – We wrote about “Intelligence as OS” earlier this year, about how AI models could replace the traditional stack of apps, browsers, as we know it today. This seems to be coming true.
Apple’s latest bid to get ahead in the AI race could require M&A – Some of Apple’s biggest successes, including the iPod and iPhone, weren’t first to market. But in the AI age, Apple is in a rare position: last.
Start With a Prompt: Inside How Warp’s CEO Follows His Own AI Coding Mandate – When Warp’s Zach Lloydnoticed senior engineers were reluctant to adopt AI tools, he rolled out a slightly more pointed new policy: Every coding task needs to start with a prompt. AI mandates from CEOs are nothing new. But Warp’s founder goes further than most by actually following it himself.
A tale of two Agent Builders by Emmet Connolly – OpenAI announced their new Agent Builder product at their annual Dev Day event. I watched this announcement with interest—not least because on Thursday this week we announced a similar product at our annual Pioneer event: a new Fin feature called Procedures.
OpenAI Moves to Generate AI Music in Potential Rivalry With Startup Suno – OpenAI recently made a splash with artificial intelligence that generates short videos from text prompts—say, a scene from “Lord of the Rings” but with Gen Z characters, or Pokémon’s Pikachu as “The Godfather.” Now the company has set its sights on doing the same thing with music.
Tools and Resources
Agentic AI with Andrew Ng - DeepLearning.AI – Build agentic AI systems that take action through iterative, multi-step workflows. In this course taught by Andrew Ng, you’ll gain a fundamental understanding and practical knowledge to develop production-ready agentic applications, from design patterns to deployment and evaluation.
How I AI: Data-Driven Prototyping and Structured Midjourney Prompts for Elite Results with Ravi Mehta – Learn how to generate better AI prototypes with data-driven JSON and Reforge Build.
Augmenting DesignOps with AI-Powered Design Systems – Futureproofing design in a post-pandemic landscape.
What makes a designer technical? – A Technical Designer in 2025 should be defined as a product designer with an engineer’s mindset and a user’s vision—someone who moves comfortably between technical complexity and ease of use, creating solutions that work great “on the inside” and feel intuitive “on the outside.”
The Product Benchmark Report: How Top Teams Win and Grow – Companies often make the most important product and marketing decisions in a vacuum. But you don’t have to. This report gives you the growth secrets behind the world’s top-performing products.
My recent articles
Strategic Design Leadership: Essential Questions for Design Executives
Fueling Innovation: How Design Leaders Drive Product Transformation
Moving Beyond Execution — The Evolution to Strategic Design Leadership
Decoding The Future: The Evolution Of Intelligent Interfaces
🔈 Design Leadership at Scale
DLS courses are built for design leaders ready to sharpen their strategy, expand their influence, and lead at the highest level. Whether you‘re mapping your next career move, strengthening design operations, or stepping into executive leadership, these programs give you the frameworks and insights to drive real impact.
DLS: Career Strategy (Dec 13–14)
Your career journey deserves intention and strategy. This weekend immersive is designed for design leaders who are ready to map out their path, elevate their impact, and align their leadership trajectory with long-term goals. Whether refining your current role or preparing for new opportunities, you’ll gain actionable frameworks to craft a career that stands out in a competitive market.
DLS: Executive (Jan 20 – 29, 2026)
This advanced course is tailored for senior design leaders—Senior Directors, VPs, SVPs, and CDOs — who are ready to lead at the intersection of design, business strategy, and emerging technology. Dive deep into aligning design with business objectives, fostering product culture transformation, and building scalable operations that support innovation and growth.
DLS: Operations (Feb 24 – Mar 5, 2026)
Scaling a design organization without compromising quality or culture is a challenge every design leader faces. This course equips senior and emerging design operations leaders with the tools to build robust infrastructure, optimize processes, and drive operational excellence. From talent development to systems that support rapid growth, this program is crafted for leaders ready to take their teams to the next level.
And please give me feedback. Which bullet above is your favorite? What do you want more or less of? Other suggestions? Please let me know.
Have a great weekend.
— Rachel