UX Camp Winter 2026
Beyond Templates: Using AI as a Thought Partner for Design Leadership
Design leaders spend hundreds of hours annually on performance management – reviews, 1:1s, feedback conversations, career development plans – yet most of us received no formal training in these skills. As teams scale, the cognitive load becomes unsustainable. This talk shares a practical framework for using AI as a thought partner for people management work, with specific workflows and prompting strategies for performance review preparation, difficult conversation scripting, 1:1 structuring, and career development planning – drawn from managing a 20+ person distributed design team at an enterprise software company.
This isn’t about automating empathy or generating templated feedback. You’ll learn the critical guardrails: what AI can help with versus where human judgment is non-negotiable. Whether you manage 2 people or 20, you’ll leave with immediately actionable approaches – specific prompt frameworks you can adapt, a starter workflow for integrating AI into your management practice, and honest guidance on measuring impact without compromising psychological safety.
