Dave Brown (Director, UX Design at Qualtrics) returned to the conference with a fresh take on designing for, with, and around AI—this time delivering three provocations to nudge us out of our deterministic comfort zones.

He kicked off by reminding us that the age of golden paths in UX is over—when every interaction becomes a potential edge case, the real job of a designer is to help users feed the AI the right context. From mad-lib style inputs to explainability tools that surface citations in context, Dave spotlighted emerging design patterns that help translate intention into inference.

But he didn’t stop at design. Dave offered a call to arms: You have infinite tools—so what will you build? He walked through his own build-first workflow and challenged us to lead with action, not just inspiration. And as AI shifts constraints into abundance, he made the case for transparency and context as leadership’s new north stars.