Creativity and design system leadership in the age of AI, with Natalya Shelburne — #17
05/12/25 • 58 min
📲 Text the show your thoughts!
Chat, this is the last episode of season one! Thank you for listening and supporting the show! There's no better way to wrap up, IMO, than an optimistic and curious exploration of what it means to be a creative human in an increasingly technological world.
So to wrap up season one, Natalya Shelburne joins me to explore how design leaders can cultivate creativity in an era of rapid technological and organizational change. Drawing from her degree and research in creativity, Natalya shares insights on fostering innovation, overcoming fear-driven management styles, and why embracing artistic thinking is essential for teams navigating the age of AI. She explains the importance of creating safe environments to unlock creative potential and why outdated corporate structures simply can't compete. Plus, flow state, goats, expansive thinking, and hobbies.
Links & References
- Natalya Shelburne on LinkedIn
- GitHub Primer
- Natalya's talk at Beyond Tellerand, Channeling Chaos: Role of the Artist in the Age of AI
- Twilio's Paste design system assistant
- Research and books mentioned:
- Lev Vygotsky on cognitive development
- Lauren Sosniak on phases of learning
- Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's classic book Flow and an overview
- Oliver Burkeman's Four Thousand Weeks
- The Extended Mind
💖 On Theme is a brand new podcast, so if you like what you're hearing, please hit subscribe and sign up at designsystemsontheme.com!
🎨🎟️ Into Design Systems is May 25-28
Get your ticket at intodesignsystems.com/onthemeInto Design Systems is back with their annual virtual conference, May 28-30, 2025. Get your ticket now for three days of practical, hands on sessions showing the what, why, and how of design systems. This year, the conference is focused on developer handoff, accessibility, multi brand theming, and governance. You'll get hands on knowledge you can put to use at work immediately, files and resources to take away, and hear from very well known industry speakers.
📲 Text the show your thoughts!
Chat, this is the last episode of season one! Thank you for listening and supporting the show! There's no better way to wrap up, IMO, than an optimistic and curious exploration of what it means to be a creative human in an increasingly technological world.
So to wrap up season one, Natalya Shelburne joins me to explore how design leaders can cultivate creativity in an era of rapid technological and organizational change. Drawing from her degree and research in creativity, Natalya shares insights on fostering innovation, overcoming fear-driven management styles, and why embracing artistic thinking is essential for teams navigating the age of AI. She explains the importance of creating safe environments to unlock creative potential and why outdated corporate structures simply can't compete. Plus, flow state, goats, expansive thinking, and hobbies.
Links & References
- Natalya Shelburne on LinkedIn
- GitHub Primer
- Natalya's talk at Beyond Tellerand, Channeling Chaos: Role of the Artist in the Age of AI
- Twilio's Paste design system assistant
- Research and books mentioned:
- Lev Vygotsky on cognitive development
- Lauren Sosniak on phases of learning
- Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's classic book Flow and an overview
- Oliver Burkeman's Four Thousand Weeks
- The Extended Mind
💖 On Theme is a brand new podcast, so if you like what you're hearing, please hit subscribe and sign up at designsystemsontheme.com!
🎨🎟️ Into Design Systems is May 25-28
Get your ticket at intodesignsystems.com/onthemeInto Design Systems is back with their annual virtual conference, May 28-30, 2025. Get your ticket now for three days of practical, hands on sessions showing the what, why, and how of design systems. This year, the conference is focused on developer handoff, accessibility, multi brand theming, and governance. You'll get hands on knowledge you can put to use at work immediately, files and resources to take away, and hear from very well known industry speakers.
Previous Episode
But "design systems as infrastructure" is boring, with Sam Anderson — #16
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Y’all, I’ll be honest. Some days, I’m scared and nervous and uncomfortable with AI’s emergence, and implications, too. But I am also curiously optimistic, and more importantly — I don’t want to use any platform I have to spread even more fear and discontent and drama. So today you’re getting a dose of two things that I love: infrastructure and optimism.
Drawing from his experience leading design systems at three very large orgs, Sam Anderson from Intuit shares how framing design systems as infrastructure can help them be recognized as essential to business success. He shares his vision for the importance of patterns as the next frontier of systems work, particularly in a rapidly changing tech landscape accelerated by AI, and we talk about what leadership conversations look like. Plus, Sam drops a spicy take that he believes AI won’t destroy design system jobs but make us even more valuable.
Links & References
- Sam Anderson on LinkedIn
- Sam's article Design Systems are Infrastructure: The evolution of design systems in the age of AI
- Nate Baldwin's Leonardo and Proportio
💖 On Theme is a brand new podcast, so if you like what you're hearing, please hit subscribe and sign up at designsystemsontheme.com!
🎨🎟️ Into Design Systems is May 25-28
Get your ticket at intodesignsystems.com/onthemeInto Design Systems is back with their annual virtual conference, May 28-30, 2025. Get your ticket now for three days of practical, hands on sessions showing the what, why, and how of design systems. This year, the conference is focused on developer handoff, accessibility, multi brand theming, and governance. You'll get hands on knowledge you can put to use at work immediately, files and resources to take away, and hear from very well known industry speakers.
On Theme: Design Systems in Depth - Creativity and design system leadership in the age of AI, with Natalya Shelburne — #17
Transcript
And if people feel safe, they will be able to access their creativity. Time scarce people who feel scared will not be able to innovate. And I think that's the biggest thing that I see, is just like, if you're in a place where people are working a very old fashioned way, where you know, it's very top down and heavy and that's—
Natalyayou're not gonna be able to compete, in the age of AI. Because
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