#68: Next Evolution of Product Design Leadership with Anjali Desai

·57 min·5 clips

PayPal was designing mobile tap-to-pay and QR code experiences back in 2005, years before it became mainstream.

The host opens with clear excitement. He brings Anjali Desai in as someone who has spent a couple of decades across product design and AI, then gets out of the way and asks her to tell it properly. Her design roots are older and more hands-on than the usual software story. Anjali traces the start of her journey to Bombay, now Mumbai, where she studied typography and worked with letterpress printing. That detail gives the whole chat some weight. AI is in the room, but the conversation keeps drifting back to taste, judgment, and how designers decide what belongs. Then the host presses on the part everyone is nervous about. What happens when Figma, universal design training, and AI tools change what a designer is meant to be? Anjali does not baby the answer. Figma may be popular, but tools can age out as designers get more options at once. Her color-pencil-box analogy makes the point without overworking it: the skill is choosing the right tool for the job, whether that choice comes from a designer, product manager, or engineer. The phone example keeps it grounded. The host names the AI tools he already uses for general work, research, friendly arguments, and deeper research when he is busy. Anjali treats that as normal now. People will pick different tools, but the job is still to turn messy input into something people can use. Designers become conduits, more or less. The role is less about protecting one perfect software workflow and more about making calls that help end users understand and act. The closing stays human. Anjali calls design a privilege and says technology can support better experiences when designers use it for the right reasons. The vibe is quick and a little unfinished, in a good way: an anxious, useful chat about whether design leadership survives AI by clinging to tools or by getting much sharper about human judgment.

As heard by us

A grounded look at design leadership and AI, with enough practical detail to stay useful.

Anjali Desai's path from Bombay/Mumbai letterpress and typography into product design leadership gives the conversation real weight. It moves quickly from background into judgment, and that helps the practical points land without much drift.

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Why you'd press play

If you want a grounded take on how AI is changing design work, press play.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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