AI Strategy

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feb 16, 2025

Design of AI: One of the World’s Leading AI Strategy Podcasts for Product, Design, and Research Leaders

AI did not arrive overnight. It quietly embedded itself into roadmaps, workflows, research practices, and executive mandates long before most organizations had the language or frameworks to reason about it responsibly.Design of AI began in 2023 because we kept hearing the same concern from product, design, and research leaders across industries:

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AUTHOR

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AUTHOR

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AUTHOR

Arpy Dragffy
Arpy Dragffy

“We’re being pushed to move faster with AI, but no one is slowing down to ask if we’re making the right decisions.”

That gap between acceleration and judgment is why this podcast exists.


Pride in the Growth, and What It Signals

In 2025, Design of AI became one of the fastest-growing AI podcasts globally. It ranked in the top 2% of podcasts worldwide by shares, was recognized as a Rising Star, and grew 350% year over year.

We are proud of this growth not because of scale for its own sake, but because it signals a shift. Practitioners are actively seeking conversations that treat AI as a strategic, human, and organizational challenge, not just a technical one.


Why We Started Design of AI

Design of AI was created after years of advising organizations that were being told to “add AI” without clarity on:

  • Where real customer value exists

  • How trust is earned or lost in probabilistic systems

  • When automation weakens expertise instead of strengthening it

  • Why speed often hides long-term risk

Most AI podcasts focus on tools, funding, or speculation. Very few focus on product strategy, research rigor, design judgment, and accountability. Design of AI was built to fill that gap.


2025 Episodes, Guests, and Topics

Below is the complete list of 2025 episodes, with links embedded directly in each title:

Together, these episodes span creativity, discovery, commercialization, trust, research, agents, organizational design, and the uncomfortable limits of AI itself.


Similar Podcasts We Respect, and Why to Listen

Design of AI sits alongside other important voices in the AI ecosystem:

  • Lenny’s Podcast
    Exceptional for product management, growth, and execution.

  • Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 by Emily M. Bender & Alex Hanna
    Essential listening for understanding how AI hype is manufactured and who benefits from it.

  • Lex Fridman Podcast
    Long-form conversations with researchers and founders at the frontier.

  • Hard Fork (New York Times)
    Strong coverage of AI news, platforms, and policy.

Design of AI complements these by focusing specifically on design judgment, research rigor, and strategy tradeoffs inside real organizations.


PH1 Research, Arpy Dragffy Guerrero, and Brittany Hobbs

Design of AI is an extension of the work of PH1 Research, a strategy and research consultancy that helps organizations make high-stakes decisions about emerging technology when the cost of getting it wrong is high.

PH1 works with global technology companies, public institutions, and fast-moving startups to move beyond AI experimentation and toward clear, defensible strategy. This includes identifying where AI meaningfully improves customer outcomes, where it introduces unacceptable risk, and where it simply does not belong.

Arpy Dragffy Guerrero works at the intersection of AI strategy, decision science, and organizational change. He is best known for helping executive teams and product leaders move from vague AI ambition to concrete strategic direction. His work focuses on framing the right questions before technology decisions are made, pressure-testing AI use cases, and facilitating executive and cross-functional workshops that align teams around what to build, what not to build, and why. His approach is deliberately skeptical of hype and grounded in first-principles thinking about value, incentives, and long-term impact.

Brittany Hobbs is a mixed-methods researcher who specializes in helping organizations understand where AI can create the most meaningful customer impact. Her work combines qualitative research, behavioral insight, and large-scale quantitative signals to pinpoint which AI opportunities are worth pursuing and which distract from real customer needs. Rather than treating AI as a blanket capability, her expertise lies in prioritization. She helps teams identify the few places where AI improves experiences or decision-making, and just as importantly, where human judgment should remain central.

Together, they host Design of AI as practitioners who spend their time inside real organizations, helping leaders navigate uncertainty, risk, and responsibility as AI reshapes how products and services are designed.


Our Commitment

AI will not fail organizations because it is too powerful.
It will fail them because it is poorly understood.

Design of AI exists to prevent that outcome.

PH1 Research
AI strategy grounded in research. Decisions grounded in human outcomes.

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BLOG

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BLOG

AI Strategy

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Jan 2, 2026

The Design of AI in 2026: Strategy, Power Shifts, and the Cost of Pretending You Understand AI

AI is no longer a differentiator. It is infrastructure that forces us to change how we think, work, and value interactions. By 2026, the gap will not be between companies that “use AI” and those that do not. It will be between organizations that restructured how they create value and those that simply layered AI onto existing products, workflows, and org charts.

AI Strategy

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Jan 2, 2026

The Design of AI in 2026: Strategy, Power Shifts, and the Cost of Pretending You Understand AI

AI is no longer a differentiator. It is infrastructure that forces us to change how we think, work, and value interactions. By 2026, the gap will not be between companies that “use AI” and those that do not. It will be between organizations that restructured how they create value and those that simply layered AI onto existing products, workflows, and org charts.

Resources

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Nov 24, 2025

Journey Mapping That Actually Works: How Teams Use It to Drive ROI, Productivity, and AI-Ready Services

Why Journey Mapping Is Still One of the Highest-ROI Investments for Innovation, Productivity, and AI-Ready Services

Resources

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Nov 24, 2025

Journey Mapping That Actually Works: How Teams Use It to Drive ROI, Productivity, and AI-Ready Services

Why Journey Mapping Is Still One of the Highest-ROI Investments for Innovation, Productivity, and AI-Ready Services

Tips

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Oct 12, 2025

Customer Experience in the Age of AI

How AI is transforming customer experience from reactive journeys to predictive, personalized systems—and why CX must become core infrastructure, not a function.

Tips

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Oct 12, 2025

Customer Experience in the Age of AI

How AI is transforming customer experience from reactive journeys to predictive, personalized systems—and why CX must become core infrastructure, not a function.