 First of all, I would like to say that you want to keep your phones down. I don't have any frameworks to share, and I don't want any of you to take pictures because I really don't have anything to share. And whatever I'm going to be saying today is something which we all know, nothing new. It's just that I want to make us make ourselves realize that what are we doing and are we doing it right, right? So before I start my presentation, I want to talk about myself a bit. 1996, I was straight out of college and I graduated from painting. Like I had a choice to do commercial art, I had a choice to do textile design, I could have made a lot of money, but I decided to do painting, and then I realized I'm not going to make any money because at that time, painters were not making monies. And then I said, okay, fine, I live in Bombay, I can get into Bollywood, and start doing a bit of film editing, right? Because that's glamorous, that'll give me a lot of money. And I was like, wow, that's good. So I get into a film editing design studio, and that's where I see Internet. And that's 1996, Internet on DOS mode. And I see Photoshop, and I was, I think, version one or two, there was nothing called drop shadow in that Photoshop. And then I do 3DX Max, and 2D animation again in DOS mode. And I was like, wow, this is lovely. And I should learn this, this looks interesting. Forget my art world, you know? And I start experimenting with it, and then somebody says, hey, there's something called web design. Have you ever heard of that? It gives you lots of money. Then coming from a business class family, I wanted to impress my dad, and I'm like, yes, I should have that big fat paycheck. So I start dabbling with Photoshop. I pick up a first job as web designer. And I'm super, super happy, because I'm making lots of websites for Reebok, I'm making for Grocers, I'm making for a lawyer, I'm making for Keychain Guys, I made websites for Dubai also, like Bujjal Arab. And I was making lots and lots of money. And I was super, super happy. But 2000 March, it all busted. A lot of web designers were jobless because a dot-com busted. I did not know what to do. Trust me, at that time, I also made money by teaching people how to use Hotmail, how to go out there and dial up on internet, and how to write emails. I made pots and pots of money, seriously. But when the dot-com busted, I really had nothing to do. And I'm like, what do I do? Thanks to my professor in college. He said that, Izmina, keep it broad. If you want to get into commercial design, if you want to get textile design, you'll narrow your perspectives. You want to keep it broad, keep it creative, keep it painting. And I did that. And thanks, because I shifted towards print. And from print, I went into branding. From branding, I went into fashion design. And from fashion design, I went into museum design. And from museum space design. So I explored everything just to make sure I'm making that for big fat paycheck. Trust me, that was my goal. Because I always wanted to make money and I still want to make a lot of money. Yeah, so that's what's my goal. But I would just say in all of this, over the years, I went into, I would say, cognitive fashion, cognitive toys. I've done cognitive cooking. I experimented with everything possible. Design, thinking, UX design, all of that. But over the years, we had various inflection points. We had crypto coming in. We had meta coming in. And now we have Genai coming in. Where do we designers stand? We always keep changing ourselves. We always keep reinventing ourselves. And yeah, before you guys start judging my age, 1996, 2023, I think I'll divert you guys to my presentations. Do you want to be a UX designer in the age of Genai? Want to understand how many of you are UX designers? Hands up. How many of you are interaction designers? How many service designers? Great. And how many UI designers? Perfect. And how many of you are problem solvers? Now you guys are talking, right? So moving forward, I was struggling with mid-journey to understand that how do I get a right picture of a UX designer, right? Gave me a lot of guys, geek guys with specs, sitting with laptops and computers, did not give me one single female. And then I had to actually mention in my prompt that give me a female UX designer. And that's when I got a female UX designer. So yeah, prompts have to be matured yet, right? Moving forward, does this work? You'll have to give me another clicker. This little video. In this video, I'm going to tell you what I think about AI potentially taking the jobs of UI UX designers. Should we be worried? Yeah, so should we be worried? And I would say yes and no. Why yes? If you're still spending time on looking at bootcamps, you look at UI templates, looking at playbooks, and even looking at Behance and Pinterest for inspiration, then I would say don't even bother. Because AI has got you. Seriously, yeah? I would say how many have you used mid journeys, dahlies? How many of you guys have experimented, right? How easy is it? Do we understand prompt right now? Is it easy? Is it difficult? It's yet to decide, right? It's good for logos. It's good for app screens, website inspirations. And it's also good for mood boards, right? But are we able to edit those screens? We get variations. I would say we can upscale them. But are we able to edit them? Not really. But we also have, I would say, editable wireframes. Are you looking for an easy way to create beautiful designs? Wizards AI features empower you to design like never before. Use auto designer to generate a mockup from simple text. Use wizard screenshot scanner to turn screenshots into editable mockups. Or use text assistant to generate copy for your designs. Advance your project with an easy to use editor. Collaborate with your team in real time. And leave instant feedback to make iteration a breeze. You bring the ideas, AI does the rest. Sign up for free to wizard today. So I'm not advertising UI wizard, but I'm trying to say it does editable wireframes, right? So yeah, you have mid journeys, which just gives you inspiration. Then you have some smart AI tools which help you with editable wireframes. But it also does heat maps. So now what's left, right? And imagine with a little prompt, I can create a complete website. Everything. It's taking care of editable wireframes. It's taking care of heat maps, learn our math methods and templates, and also do research, everything. Where do we stand, right? I has democratized design. There was a time when designers were high and mighty. People did not understand design. People did not know what an app was. People did not know how to design apps. But today, everybody's got an opinion on an app design. Even my daughter can tell you how she can make an experience better, right? Because she says that, mama, this is not working. We need to make this better. Everybody has an opinion on app design now. So yeah, it's the same level playing field right now, right? No longer designers are the high and mighty rock stars. But I'm seeing a service architect create a blueprint, two personas, two journey mapping. So where do we come? Now let's see what clients really need, right? Clients need websites. They need a lot of other things. But art is solving for, I would say, life centricity. We're talking about human experiences. We're talking about customer experiences. But post-pandemic, we've seen that preferences have changed. People have changed. Their needs have changed. Is anybody solving for life centricity? Is anybody solving for humanizing chatbots? Yeah, yesterday, Suzanne had a lovely presentation. And that had a lot of conversational UX in that, right? Is anybody solving for ethical biases? Is anybody solving for accessibility and inclusion? Not really. And if you see that by June 2025, you will have the accessibility guidelines kicking in, and everybody will have to be compliant very soon. So is anybody taking care of all of those things? Today, companies have net zero as their goal. Who's helping them solve that? Today, we're coming up with such rich graphics, right? Such heavy websites, such heavy applications. Who's talking green UX? I'm not sure that AI is gonna do it very fast. It's gonna take time. Because currently, it's still struggling to create human hands and feet. So it's gonna take a little time. But who's going to help them, right? So I would say, can AI solve for these complex needs? I don't think so, right? It's still time. I would say generative AI is most likely to augment designers' roles. But it's going to leave designers a lot of time to take care of those high-level complex needs. And that's where we all come in. If we are making wireframes and we should just stop doing that, we should start looking at these newer areas and your forays. Coming out here, are we solving for responsible design? Which is very, very important. I saw some solutions where people said, like face recognition, and I'd probably share my data with another hotel guy yesterday in a workshop. Is that responsible enough? Like, I saw somebody saying that we want to do banking while driving. Is that responsible enough to ask those questions? And as designers, we want to ask those questions also, right? I would say, what about displacements and enablements? You know, we've seen gig economy, the rise of the gig economy, especially the delivery partners, the Uber drivers. Did you enable them or did you displace them? I worked with World Bank and we would discuss how do we take care of skill-elabeling for those gig economy workers? Is that a lifetime career for them? Have we thought about that? Not really, right? And when we're enabling something, whom are we displacing? Like, if you talk about these online grocery apps, we've displaced a lot of grocers, right? Did we think about that? As designers, I think we need to start thinking about that. AI is going to take time. It's not going to think about all of these things. Sustainability, yes, I did speak about it. Accessibility and inclusion, right? We're talking about a lot of different people and are we taking care of all those various cultural needs? That's something which we need to start looking into. Behavioral needs, you know? Today, kids are on roadblocks and discord, right? They are on the waking of tar-selling NFT fashions and the same kids are really awkward when you bring them out in society. They're super comfortable behind their afters and behind those screens. But are they comfortable when you ask them to talk in public? They aren't. So when we are designing these various NFTs, these various experiences, these metaspaces, are we really looking into the behavioral needs of those areas? Also, an app is not always an answer. I was there for, I would say, a hiring drive and I was surprised that a college, I would say a design school student had made an app for leftover food for people on the road. How sensible is that? You had a jury who passed that entire exercise. The kids had made an application to identify where the fridges were located outside those apartments to find food. And who's going to use that app who cannot afford to buy food? Do you think they have an app? Do you think they have a phone? Education system who's gone through that process. Have you identified that? Like this is where I keep questioning. So I would say we need to solve for the human needs and not the human needs. And as designers, we bring that unique quality. We bring in creativity. We bring in problem-solving skills. And we also bring human insights and empathy, which I think AI is going to struggle to replicate. And that's where we have an edge. I would say smart designers would want to probably explore all of these various avenues. There is something very beautiful in bio-mimicry. If you've never explored that, you want to explore that. I would say you're learning from nature, like I would say from the whale skin, a product designer especially uses a lot of bio-mimicry. A whale skin has inspired swimsuits. I would say these little velcro-type buds, they've inspired velcros. And then a hummingbird helps solve the supersonic boom for a jet, I would say a bullet train. So there's so many various examples in bio-mimicry. Are we probably exploring those? There's so much data out there. There's so much ethnicity. There's ethnographic research. There's cultural research. There's behavioral research. Who's making meaning out of this? There is meaning making, which is also important. We can probably explore that soon. And I would say you must have seen how clunky the prompt is. Can we design prompts again, which is more human? Currently, the prompts are like AR slash doubles place, upscale version one, version two, seriously. Do I really understand that? If I really want to democratize design, and if I really want people to use more and more JNAI, can I design those interfaces which are more human? And I would say speculative design. It's been there forever. Can we get into those areas? And I would say you also want to get into creative art direction. Today, AI is still struggling. If I still write Indian, I will still get brown skin, and I will get people who do not look more impoverished when I say Indian and mid-journey. But I would say, can I help there? Can I help our director? Can I bring in probably a Northeast person as Indian? Can I bring in a fair skin person as Indian? Why does it always have to be brown skin? So these are areas which you really want to explore. And I would say human history is full of change. And it's true change which we learn and grow. I have learned and grown enough. But I would say, let there be change and get smart. There's a brilliant book by Azim Azar, and that's called Exponential Age. Yes, you guys can take a picture now. Yeah? So I'd say it's Exponential Age, and you really want to read this book because it talks about how technology is always, always, always ahead of society and mankind, and how there's a huge gap and how you could bridge that gap, right? So it's a beautiful book, Nudge, my favorite. You also want to probably read up on behavioral design, biomimicry. Biomimicry is a lovely book. It's just a great read. You want to probably get there, right? And yeah, I would say for me, it's always been, AI has always been friendly, Mr. Spock. And he's always been there for us. He was AI for me when I grew up. You always want to make some music with AI and make them your friend. That's me. Thank you so much. My time's up. If you have any questions, I can always hit you. You guys can always talk to me later. Thank you. Questions. We'll proceed with the token of love with a momentum. Does anybody have a question? Hi, it's Meena, Rasa Gya here. This was wonderful. I think much needed for the kind of conversations we are having today. Sorry, I can't hear. You have to speak a little louder. My name is Rasa Gya. I think the talk was much needed. A lot of these conversations are really going in our head, and you really articulated it really well. What I was a bit curious about is the need of what is needed in the industry or in our jobs today seems to still be lagging far behind some of the things that you were talking about. While we have an intention to work on sustainability or think about ethics, the work requires a very different kind of expectations. Do you have some suggestions on how to go about this? Do you think the only way is to have a day job which may be pushing pixels and making boxes till AI takes over, but then that evenings and nights are spent dreaming about whatever is speculative design for the future? Or is there other ideas that you have? I hear you, and that's a problem because we all have to be billable. We all have to have a code there, and we always have to be on job, not on bench. And sometimes, yes, we have to make our wireframes, but then that's where you use AI to augment all of that. When I'm talking about speculation, when I'm talking about responsible, when I'm talking about ethical, you know, in those tiny little areas which we are working, who's stopping you? That's fair, and just a follow-up on that, are there other communities, places where people are specifically talking about this? Sorry? Maybe are there other communities, platforms, places where people are talking about these aspects of thinking about design? Absolutely, there are so many. I would say there are so many. You want to just, I would say you just want to search Google, and you'll get it, and probably you can connect with me. I'll get you connected with some places. But I would say there are so many places which is talking about it, and I would say you just have one big problem in front of you which is accessibility and inclusion, right? And trust me, there is an act which has come up in June, by June 2025. Every application in America and in Europe has to be compliant. Like, are we really ever thinking about designing, we go up out there and be hands, pull some inspiration, just paste it out there? But are we looking into those various color palettes? Are we looking at, you know, the alt tags? Are we looking at any of those things, right? So these are tiny things where you can make an impact, have those conversations with your stakeholders, you know? And I've always like, you know, at least I have always challenged the status quo with clients, with CEOs, and trust me, you know, I've had experiences where, you know, I was going into a large digital transformation where the CEO said, like, you know, the CTO and the CEO said, we don't have the time to do what you're suggesting. We can probably go ahead with this. But trust me, they gave me time to do a side project. And we did a side project and then we married the two solutions later, right? So I would say you always want to inspire, we want to talk about it, you want to question it and see if it's, you get lucky. Thank you. Thank you so much.