Design Better Podcast: Bonus Episode — 30 Years of Design with Wert & Co., Live in NYC

Date: October 10, 2025
Panelists: Paola Antonelli (MoMA), Mark Wilson (Fast Company), Kate Aronowitz (GV), Mike Davidson (Microsoft AI), Meaghan Choi (Anthropic)
Hosts: Eli Woolery, Aarron Walter

Episode Overview

This special live episode celebrates Wert & Co.'s 30 years of shaping design by exploring how design, technology, and culture have evolved over three decades—and what lies ahead as AI and rapid digital change reshape the field. Through storied careers and candid conversation, the panelists discuss the expanded role of design, how craft and collaboration must change, the ethical challenges of technological abundance, and the essential human qualities that designers must champion as the world accelerates.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Profound Evolution of Design in 30 Years

• Design as an Enzyme for Change
  • Paola Antonelli: “Design really is the enzyme that makes everything happen… Designers are the ones that transform these revolutions into objects that touch people and make it all happen.” [03:25]
• From Product to UX to Fragmentation
  • The 1990s saw the coining of ‘UX Design’. Design roles have since become increasingly specialized but also fragmented—some product designers don't even know of others working in parallel domains. [05:37]
• Miniaturization and Invisible Design
  • Mark Wilson: “The biggest change is almost like the smallest one. Information was shrunk down… the algorithm is probably the most impactful piece of design of this time, and it's invisible.” [07:25]

2. The Optimism and Reckoning in Design

• Early Optimism Turned Nuanced
  • Design in the late 1990s and early 2000s was fueled by “infectious optimism,” but with time, designers confronted realities of unintended consequences.
• Design is Agnostic
  • Antonelli: Her “Design and Violence” exhibit was sparked by realizing open-source 3D printing was used to make guns: “Design can go either way. It can be good and it can be bad—it’s an application of human creativity.” [08:33]
  • Mark Wilson: “Design is agnostic. It's really just a reflection of the person using the practice.” [09:42]

3. Culture and Design’s Global Varieties

• Design’s role differs between the US and Europe, with Italy’s design culture recognized and deeply embedded.
• Antonelli points out the US “has so much strength in design, but it hasn't really learned to position it yet…” [12:43]
• MoMA’s mission: Normalize critical discussion of design in everyday life.

4. The Changing Corporate Perceptions of Design

• Apple and Target popularized design, inspiring companies to want "a piece" of design. [13:36]
• Trend: Design’s seat at the table rose, then plateaued, with marketing sometimes enveloping design teams. Now, collabs and “mainstream drop culture” dominate. [13:36]

5. Missed Opportunities & Unintended Consequences

• Examples:
  • Apple’s AirTags and stalking concerns; Tesla’s problematic car handles; Juul’s pivot from smoking cessation to addicting youth. [16:30]
  • Antonelli: “If these corrections don't happen, it's not because of designers, but because of other reasons.” [15:32]

6. Patterns and Lessons from Three Decades

• No singular pattern exists; patterns flow with cultural tides. However, the public is increasingly aware of “design intention.” [19:10]
• Wilson: Fast, cyclical remixing of style—“Post-Virgil Blow, everything sort of got remixed and blown up really, really fast...” [19:10]

7. Technology, Democratization, and the “AI Moment”

• Social media brought “democratization,” but “all the tools, none of the platforms”—contributing to the undermining of media and creative professions. [21:18]
• AI’s arrival is like the social media optimism of 2011, but its power to distort or uplift is exponential.
• Antonelli: AI's impact depends on human application—“the tools are more powerful; when they’re used in a twisted way, they are more powerfully down.” [22:07]
• Cites examples of positive “deep fake” memory reconstruction to help displaced persons and Alzheimer's patients. [23:48]

Second Panel: Present & Future of Design

8. The Evolving Role and Structure of Design Teams

• Design at the Startup Frontier
  • Kate Aronowitz: “Founders are calling immediately saying how much they want design… They’re looking for systems designers now, brand designers earlier… and for design to play a strategy role earlier.” [25:36]
• Blurring Roles: The “Full Stack Product Maker”
  • Mike Davidson: Rapid AI/software development means smaller, cross-functional teams where boundaries between Design, Engineering, Research blur:
    • “We’re moving from an era of specialization to an area of extreme generalization... We can do so much more with smaller groups…” [27:32]
• Accessibility of Code
  • Meaghan Choi: “Once you try using one of these [AI tools], you realize it’s truly just a conversation. You don’t need to know any code, you just need to be able to speak human language.” [30:03]

9. Integration, Collaboration, and the Role of Taste

• Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration
  • Davidson: “Designers don’t have a monopoly on taste... Now we have a bus full of people—some designers, some PMs, some marketers—all building culture together.” [34:00]
• Fluidity of Roles
  • Choi: “Titles are just a starting point... the makeup [of teams] is a lot more fluid.” [36:15]
  • Personal talents surface: “My PM’s title might be PM, but they actually spend a lot of their time designing...” [37:41]

10. Changing Design Education and the Need for Flexibility

• SCAD’s New Foundational Curriculum
  • Shifting from technical/craft focus to collaboration, communication, and problem-solving. [39:24]
• Automation Raises Premium on Human Touch
  • As AI generates “5,000 automated podcasts a day,” human-made, cared-for work becomes more valuable. [40:06]

11. Adapting to Rapid Change

• Choi: “The industry is actually changing that fast that what skillset is going to be important six months from now? We actually can’t predict it.” [42:01]

• “The most important skill set we can all have is to understand that we probably don't know what we need to hold dear.” [42:01]

On Privacy, Policy, and New Responsibilities

• Designers Need New Skills

  • Panel agrees designers must become conversant in policy, ethics, and trade to responsibly steer rapidly evolving technology.
  • Choi: “Technology policy, especially safety and privacy policy, is so important and so hard to walk back after it’s out there.” [43:57]
  • Aronowitz: Beware of over-automation: “It's probably really important for the designers to remember when the human needs to be in the loop.” [45:52]

• Team Human & Trust in AI

  • Davidson: “We are on team human, and if we can’t help the human beings who use our product flourish, then we’re not doing our job… It’s really important for us not to abuse that trust.” [48:34]

The Future: Abundance, Rarity & Human Experience

• Radical Abundance and the Death of Rarity?
  • With AI producing everything in abundance, what will remain rare and meaningful?
  • Davidson: “Music... is going to survive. …There’s something about the human authorship and performance of music that I think will never be replicated by machines.” [51:17]
  • Aronowitz: “Moments together—pour-over coffee with my husband, my son playing guitar—those will continue to be rare and special.” [52:47]
  • Choi: Rarity is personal: “What will not be lost is your personal connection to a thing…how you respond to it and your reaction to it.” [53:26]
  • Davidson: Cautions that overstimulation may be making us harder to move, positively or negatively. [54:43]

Audience Q&A: Extending the Conversation

Generating and Enabling Ideas with AI

• Panel optimistic about a return to “designing ideas”—with AI freeing time for visionary thought if paired with responsibility and philosophy.
  • Antonelli: “What's rare is still justice… If designers could remind themselves… and have ideas… that give different vectors to their profession, it would be fantastic.” [56:16]

Systematic vs Empathetic Design

• Tensions between “making things work” (systematic) and “making people feel” (empathetic) are real; the path forward is bringing the user—their feelings and stories—into the room, and forever listening.
  • Davidson: “As we build for AI, we can’t ignore what’s going wrong. The only way around that is to bring the user into the room.” [59:03]

The Value of Process Amid Hyper-Optimization

• Question about “justifying process and time” as timelines collapse:
  • Choi: Be comfortable releasing unpolished work, iterate, but take deliberate time for safety and for true expression. [61:40]

The Blank Page & Generative Editing

• Has AI removed value from blank-page creativity?
  • Davidson: “We’ve just turned it into editing. We become editors, which I think is fine… Editing is definitely one of the skills.” [65:05]
  • Choi: “I would actually posit that we have a blank page… it’s almost overwhelming how much you can do now.” [65:43]

Originality & Signal Amid AI Remix Culture

• Can we escape endless recombination and encourage new ideas?
  • Wilson: “Meaning is actually in us doing it in the first place.” [67:13]

Notable Quotes

• Paola Antonelli:
  • “Design really is the enzyme that makes everything happen… Without design, revolutions would not get home.” [03:25]
  • “Design, just like any other human activity, can go either way. It can be good and it can be bad—it’s an application of human creativity.” [08:33]
• Mark Wilson:
  • “The biggest change is almost like the smallest one… The algorithm is probably the most impactful piece of design of this time, and it's invisible.” [07:25]
  • “Design is agnostic. It's really just a reflection of the person, you know, using the practice.” [09:42]
• Mike Davidson:
  • “We’re moving from an era of specialization to an area of extreme generalization.” [27:32]
  • “Designers don’t have a monopoly on taste.” [34:00]
  • “We are on team human… if we can’t help the human beings who use our product flourish, then we’re not doing our job.” [48:34]
• Meaghan Choi:
  • “Titles are just a starting point that we’re all comfortable with and we know right now, but the future framework is going to be a lot more around just being curious about wanting to build something and then pursuing it.” [36:15]
  • “One of the most important skill sets is probably to be flexible and nimble… the industry is actually changing that fast…” [42:01]
• Kate Aronowitz:
  • “Instead of sketching… it’s can you draw an idea on a napkin? How quickly can you communicate an idea? … The idea around communication and curation and bringing people along together, I think there’s just no substitute for that.” [39:24]

Closing Reflections (Panel & Hosts)

• “The future isn’t happening to us. We are happening to the future… let’s ensure that when the next 30 years of design history is written, it tells the story of how we chose wisdom over convenience, connection over efficiency, humanity over everything else.” —Aarron Walter [70:53]

Useful Timestamps

| Timestamp | Topic | |-----------|-------| | 03:25 | Paola on design as the “enzyme” of change | | 05:37 | Evolution and fragmentation of design roles | | 07:25 | Mark Wilson on invisible design and algorithms | | 08:33 | Reckoning with design’s limits and violence | | 13:36 | Design’s seat at the corporate table, collab/drop culture | | 15:32 | Missed opportunities, ethical lapses | | 22:07 | AI’s potential and pitfalls—deep fakes and personal truths | | 25:36 | Aronowitz on design’s new strategic role in startups | | 27:32 | Davidson on 'full stack product makers', team structure | | 30:03 | Choi on AI accessibility for non-coders | | 34:00 | Davidson on taste and cross-role collaboration | | 39:24 | New design curriculum: communication over craft | | 42:01 | Choi: adaptability as crucial skill in an unpredictable landscape | | 43:57 | Choi on the need for designers to understand policy & trade | | 48:34 | Davidson: trust, privacy, and “team human” in AI design | | 51:17 | Davidson & panel: what remains rare in AI abundance | | 65:05 | Davidson/Choi on editing, the blank page, and creative overwhelm |

Summary

This 30th anniversary episode is both a celebration and a challenge, examining the ways design has shaped—and sometimes failed—our evolving world. As AI and automation reshape professional boundaries and outputs, the panelists agree: design must double down on its human core, ethical responsibility, and expressive potential. At a time when tools enable anyone to create, it’s how and why we create—and how deeply those creations connect to justice, humanity, and meaning—that will define what makes design matter in the next 30 years.