Rebuilding Design for an AI-Led Future
Benevity
Leading the design function through the most uncertain moment in product design
The Moment
Nobody knows what design at an AI-led company is supposed to look like yet. What designers do, how many we need, where the value sits. None of it is settled.
Throughout the year, attrition took the team from twelve to ten. Two layoff events reduced it to four and removed the design director. The CPO asked me to step in. The AI-first work I'd been doing over the past year had given her a clear view of where I could take design next.
The job since has been two things. Rebuild the operating model so a senior team produces more than a larger team could in the old shape. And raise design's presence at the senior leadership table so the function is understood, funded, and used well in whatever comes next
The First Two Weeks
An in-person design summit was already on the books for two weeks after the team changed shape. Knowing this was a much different environment we were all stepping into, I rebuilt the agenda last minute.
My first priority was giving the team a place to acknowledge what had changed without letting the moment turn into bitterness. Pointing the energy forward toward what we were going to build. Honest and optimistic at the same time, for three days, in person.
Secondly, recognizing the state the team would likely be in, the CPO joined us. It was the first time she'd seen the design team together as a team, and the first time she got to be part of it rather than adjacent to it. The summit did two jobs at once. It gave the team a place to land. It started the relationship between our function and our executive sponsor.
The team came out of those workshops pointed forward.
The Rebuild
The team today is two staff designers, a senior, and an intermediate. One of the staff designers was actually a senior at the time of the changes. I advocated for her promotion and the case landed even in a constrained environment because of the hard work she had done, both prior and during the transition.
This is a deliberate composition. Fewer, more senior designers need to do more in an AI-led operating model than a larger mixed-level team could in the previous one. That bet only pays out if the work itself changes, which is what we've been doing.
The Operating Model
A smaller, more senior team only works if the operating model changes around it. We're moving in four directions in parallel.
Designers spend more time on strategy
They sit with VPs. They identify where the risk is high or the patterns are new, and they put their time there. On lower-risk surfaces they advise and review rather than execute. The shift is from "designer as maker" to "designer as the senior voice on the experience."
PMs prototype
With our AI-native design system, PMs produce credible prototypes themselves. Designers refine and review rather than build from zero. The honest tradeoff is that quality has shifted on PM-led work. Although it is not ideal, we need to accept good-enough patterns in more places, and we pick our spots to be inventive. The team is aligned about where that tradeoff is the right call.
We're building toward more UX, less UI
As AI generates more of the interface, what remains for design is the harder work. Service design. Information architecture. Decision flow. Trust. The parts of the experience an LLM can't reason about alone. We're skilling the team up for that future deliberately, and the new operating model assumes it.
We treat product as junior designers
We've moved into a coaching posture for PMs and engineers. Skills that score PRDs against good service design principles. AI-led OOUX exercises that take a fraction of the time. Design-thinking workshops PMs can run with our scaffolding. We need to be very deliberate to raise the design fluency of the whole product org so our four designers can focus on what only they can do.
The Visibility Work
The other half of the rebuild is making design legible to the people who shape the company's direction.
I've been putting our designers in the spotlight more. Their work goes to senior leadership directly, with their names on it. I'm having more conversations with the executive layer about what design contributes in an AI-led product organization, and where it adds the most value. The CPO meets with the team more often, and she's commented several times on how the transition has been handled.
Design needs a bigger presence at the senior leadership table, especially now. As AI changes what gets built and how, the function that translates customer needs into product experience becomes more important, not less. That story has to be told in rooms designers haven't always been in. That's the work I've taken on.
The Team Today
The mood started where you'd expect. People processing a hard change, mourning the loss of their colleagues and friends. Over the year it moved into a problem-solving posture. Everyone shows up knowing that it is not a matter of if the new model could work, instead figuring out how to make it work.
The 90%+ engagement score in the post-transition survey is the clearest evidence we have that the team is in a good place. At our Fiscal Kick Off, a direct report said the support and collaboration during the transition was what she was most proud of from the year. That mattered more than the engagement number. The score tells you the team is okay. Her words tell you why.
Zero voluntary attrition since the promotion, eight months in. The team is small but it's together.
Where it’s Still Difficult
The tradeoffs are real and worth naming.
The team has no slack. The senior-most designer has been a role model and an anchor for the rest of the team, and her presence is part of how the rebuild is holding. Losing any one designer right now would be a meaningful setback.
We've also accepted that we cover less depth than 12 designers could. Some surfaces that used to get our full attention now get PM attention with our review. The first version of more things is good-enough rather than great. We've been deliberate about where we choose to be inventive and where we choose to be pragmatic.
These are the costs of the operating model we've chosen. Knowing them and naming them is part of leading it.
What Surprised Me
How much can be done by rethinking long-standing assumptions and being willing to sit in the uncomfortable parts. The team we have today wouldn't have been possible doing the same work with fewer people. It became possible when the work itself changed.
The harder version of the same lesson: a smaller, more senior team isn't a downgrade. It's a different kind of team, doing different kinds of work, with a different shape of impact. Letting go of the previous shape is the price of admission.
What’s Next
More design presence at the executive layer. More PMs and engineers operating with real design fluency. The design harness moving from early access to broad adoption across the product org. The four designers growing into the strategic roles the new model needs.
The future of design at an AI-led company is still being written. The team, the operating model, and the relationships we're investing in put us in a strong position to write it well.