Whether you’re a seasoned design leader steering complex digital ecosystems, or an aspiring design executive preparing to step into your first leadership role — you belong here. This isn’t just another design community.This is a home for visionaries, changemakers, and product pioneers who believe that design leadership is more than just pixels and prototypes — it’s about creating a vision, aligning teams, and driving innovation at scale. What you can expect here: ☕️ Weekly Coffee Hours — casual virtual meetups where we discuss real-world challenges, share leadership lessons, and unpack the evolving role of design leadership in the age of AI, remote work, and digital transformation. 📚 Free & Premium Content — from exclusive playbooks and case studies to deep-dive workshops on stakeholder alignment, design strategy, and leading high-performing teams. 🎯 Expert Insights & Peer Coaching — learn not just from me, but from your fellow design leaders across industries, all navigating the same challenges and opportunities. 💬 Open Conversations — this is a safe space to ask hard questions, get unfiltered feedback, and sharpen your leadership craft. New members, please introduce yourself and share a pic of your workspace or your team in the comments!

Here's some of the most noteworthy news and opinions from the past week I came across on the web: 1. UX Design: a. UX Generalist on the Rise NN/g reports AI is reviving the role of the UX generalist: people who can navigate everything from research to visual design, wielding broad strategic thinking as tools automate niche tasks (Nielsen Norman Group). This echoes our community’s mission—designers expanding into leadership and strategic influence, not just execution. b. Strategic Curiosity as a Leadership Skill UX Collective shared how top design leaders use structured curiosity (e.g., reusable journey-maps, tool experimentation) to drive team innovation (UX Collective.) c. A future without UI? An opinion piece posted by Tony Moura (Head of Design) at IBM about the future where there will either be no interfaces or interfaces generated on the fly. Read more here. 2. Product: Inside the Mind of a Global Product Leader Product Coalition’s podcast episode with Alex Blinoff (global product exec) explores communication, cross-functional leadership, and navigating technological shifts ( Product Management Today). Real-world leadership is about influencing through shared vision—an ideal topic to dive into for our PMs and designers exploring softer leadership skills. 3. Digital Channels, CX and AI: a. Fix Your AI CX Before Customers Bail DesignRush cautions that AI-powered CX fails without strategy, data hygiene, and human empathy (DesignRush). Digital transformation can't neglect the softer side—data governance, empathy, and design-thinking must lead every AI initiative. b. CX + AI: a Decade of Potential

I'm going to keep this poll open for all our members - please indicate your preferred timeslot for our weekly coffee hours. As we keep growing, we might extend it to 2 timeslots (one during Europe/SA daytime/early evening and one during US daytime). What would be your ideal time for Lead by Design's weekly coffee hour? (Please add your preferred day in the comments)

Very interesting post from Tony Moura (Head of IBM Design) on LinkedIN today: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tmoura_ux-uxdesign-aidesign-activity-7352906421664899072-b5_j?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAAEdIuEBLvFLoGRtqHyUqjZl5lzwsvWa_7Q My 10 cents: I partially agree, but think that it will be a case of having UI's for certain types of engagement and interactions and no UI for others, some of which might be "once-off generated". I think Design Systems will become increasingly important, as these UI's generated on the fly will need to be presented in ways that users actually understand. What an exciting time to be part of this industry - so much opportunity to innovate and lead this next wave of change! What's your take on the future - will it be with or without UIs?

Just read this report at https://trends.uxdesign.cc/ and it really hit the nail on the head! Here are some of my key takeaways: 1. AI is handy—but sometimes makes us lazy. When tools do the heavy lifting, we lose space to think deeply. Design with what humans learn, not just what machines can output. 2. Just start. Everyone’s either hyping AI or hating it—but we need to experiment gently, figure out what actually works for our teams. 3. Love for your craft will shine through - if you're good at what you do, and you can learn to embrace new tools and methods to make yourself more efficient, you will still stand out against the overabundance of "generic, AI-produced" solutions out there. 4. Embrace imperfection. We need more bold, strange, even messy moments—not bland predictability. Uniqueness and quirks might be a great differentiator in the future, embrace it!