EP. 19 How AI is Elevating Creativity Without Replacing the Human Touch: Josh Ulm, VP of Design at VSCO
Flexxible By DesignShow Notes
Most people assume AI makes creativity cheaper. Josh Ulm thinks it does the opposite. As Head of Design at VSCO, he talks about what it actually looks like when a creative company goes all-in on AI, not to automate photography, but to amplify what photographers were already trying to do: capture emotion, tell real stories, and express something only they could express. Josh breaks down how VSCO is integrating AI across the entire photographic workflow, why authenticity is about to matter more than it ever has, and what creative leaders need to understand about human judgment in an AI-powered world. If you're a designer, founder, or creative leader figuring out where AI fits without losing what makes your work worth making, this is the episode.
More from Flexxible By Design
Design leaders are going back to making things themselves. In this episode, David Hoang explains why that matters more than ever. Allie met with David, Head of Design at Atlassian, to talk about how AI is changing design careers and leadership. For leaders, his point is direct: when the tools change this fast, the ones who stay hands-on are the ones who can guide their teams. For early and mid career designers, the advice is just as practical. Strong craft still matters, AI-native skills matter too, and personal projects are one of the clearest ways to show both. The tools are changing fast, but designers can meet the moment by staying close to the work, experimenting often, and developing a point of view of their own.
Searched the web "Less about the how, more about the why." That's how Itamar Rotem sums up product management today. Allie Vogel sat down with Itamar, CPO at Faddom, for episode 26 of Flexxible by Design. His path into product was not the typical one. He started in intelligence in the IDF, moved into technical pre-sales at Verint, and eventually made the jump to product management without an engineering background. Today he's part of Faddom's founding team, where he co-leads R&D alongside the CTO. In this conversation, Allie and Itamar talk about why product management requires perspective, and why that perspective takes time to build. They get into sales as an underrated career skill, what juniors actually bring to the table, and a deal that was lost and then closed six months later when the prospect changed companies. They also dig into how roles are blurring across product, design, and development. Designers are being asked to think like product managers, developers are being asked about the why instead of only the how, and as the tools get faster, the work that matters moves back to judgment about what should be built at all. Connect with Itamar Rotem on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/itamar-rotem/ Learn more about Faddom: https://faddom.com/ Learn more about Flexxi Studio: https://flexxi.studio
Every AI conversation right now starts with speed. This one doesn't stay there. Allie sat down with Cody Rogers, CPO of Hubstaff, to talk about what AI is doing to product development and the way teams work. Instead of the usual replacement argument, Cody makes the case for AI helping people do better work, not fewer people doing it. His example: a technical CEO submitted three pull requests over a weekend with AI. Fast, obviously. But nobody had asked for the feature, and the team still had to review it, support it, and explain it to customers. That's the difference between writing code and building a product. Cody's take: when execution gets cheap, judgment, taste, strategy and domain knowledge get more expensive. Not less. The teams that get the most out of AI won't be the ones producing more. They'll be the ones who know what deserves to be produced at all. Eight plus years of industry experience, and a real question about where all of this is actually going. Full episode out now!
Compliance training is the last place you would expect a conversation about craft, which is exactly why this one goes where it does. Allie sits down with Hannelore McElheny, VP of Design at Ethena, the compliance platform behind teams at Airbnb, Figma and Notion. Hannelore's argument: the faster design gets, the more valuable research becomes. AI makes polished output cheap, so the differentiator moves to whether you actually understand the person you're designing for. We get into: How Hannelore gets more out of one customer success call than most teams get out of a formal studyWhy research came back into the design role instead of leaving it. What she hires for now that the tooling changes every few monthsHow her team works with Cursor, Claude Code and Figma MCP in day to day product work. What happened when Ethena's marketing team picked up the same toolsDesign as a strategic advantage inside enterprise compliance, a category not known for it. Enjoy!
Episode 23: AI Won't Take Your Job — But Ignoring It Will. Allie, Founder of Flexxi Studio sits down with Brooke Weinbaum, VP of Product at Copyleaks, the company built to answer one question: is this real, or is it AI? They get into how AI fraud is already hitting insurance claims, and how marketplace sellers are passing off recreated goods as the real thing. They also talk about how Brooke's team leans on tools like Claude and Gemini inside their own design process, and where roles like AI prompters are already showing up on job titles that didn't exist two years ago. What they discovered together: the real risk was never AI taking your job. It's ignoring it while everyone around you learns to use it. New episode of Flexxible by Design is live now, enjoy!