The AI Shift: Why Design Leaders Must Shape the Intelligence Renaissance
The Design Executive Council is proud to release The AI Shift: Transforming How We Discover, Imagine, and Design, a flagship research report capturing how senior design and research leaders are confronting generative AI not as a tool, but as a turning point.
Conducted in early 2025, the report features firsthand insights from five Fortune 1000 design leaders:
- Christina Vallery, Chief Design Officer, Cigna
- Janaki Kumar, Chief Design Officer, Global Banking, JPMorgan Chase
- Andrew Birgiolas, Head of Product Design & Research, Sephora
- Dave Brown, Head of Design for GenAI, Amazon Web Services
- J.M. Downey, Director of Design Strategy & Research, AT&T
Each one is navigating the pressures of AI acceleration, the erosion of traditional workflows, and the emergence of entirely new leadership expectations.
“This isn’t AI transformation. This is AI construction,” said Gordon Ching, Founder & CEO of DXC. “And we have a choice—design leaders can either be handed the blueprint, or help draw it.”
A Defining Moment for Strategic Design Leadership
This publication launches as part of DXC’s 2025 editorial theme: the Intelligence Renaissance—a belief that this era of intelligent systems must be shaped by human discernment, ethical foresight, and imaginative design.
Across every interview and insight, one message rang clear: AI may change what we can do, but not what matters most.
Key Insights from the Report:
- AI is an accelerant, and a mirror. It can speed delivery or scale shallow thinking. Without human oversight, trust erodes.
- Every experience is now an edge case. Traditional research and design methods break under probabilistic systems. Adaptability is the new default.
- Empathy, ethics, and imagination are strategic assets. These “soft skills” are becoming the hardest to replace, and the most valuable to scale.
- Design is moving upstream. Research isn’t just validating ideas—it’s now informing product direction, de-risking decisions, and shaping what gets built.
- Leaders must act now. The scaffolding is still being built. This is the moment for design to lead, not follow, in the construction of tomorrow’s systems.
“The Intelligence Renaissance isn’t about machines getting smarter,” the report concludes. “It’s about humans reclaiming the full scale of their imagination.”
About the Report
Produced in content partnership with Dscout, this report is grounded in field insights from leading practitioners. From healthcare to finance, retail to telecom, it captures the real-time shifts happening inside some of the world’s most influential companies—and how design and research leaders are rewriting their role at the center of it all.
Read the full report:
The AI Shift: Transforming How We Discover, Imagine, and Design
