AI, Anxiety, and Actual Impact: Leading Design Teams Through the AI Era

As AI hype collides with workplace realities, design leaders face a threefold challenge: managing executive expectations fueled by LinkedIn headlines and pithy X posts, calming teams worried about being replaced, and figuring out how to integrate AI into both new products and legacy systems. In this talk, Chris Avore shares lessons from leading design organizations through this transition—from using AI to power product innovation to leveraging it for team enablement, like automating operational tasks to create time to design better outcomes. Attendees will leave with practical strategies to set realistic expectations, ease team anxiety, and drive meaningful AI adoption in their own organizations.