Design judgment in the era of AI, with Alexis Puchek

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AI can generate a screen in seconds. Deciding whether that screen is right still takes someone who has seen enough of them. In this episode of Patterns, Chris Strahl talks with design leader Alexis Puchek about what design judgment means when agents do more of the building.

Drawing on about 20 years at frog, Hudl, and Procore, in fields where the screen often isn’t the point, Alexis explains why judgment gets more valuable as systems get better. The conversation moves from enterprise design systems to job sites, wearables, and interfaces with no screen at all.

We’ll explore:

• Why teams using the same components still ship “consistently inconsistent” products, and the layer of patterns and principles that belongs above a design system
• Why judgment is built through reps, and why better systems concentrate judgment instead of replacing it
• Why metrics in field software can mislead: when people can’t quit a tool, endurance looks like adoption
• What changes when you don’t control the canvas, from heads-up displays to an exoskeleton that only vibrates near its limit
• Why content design, information architecture, and service design are moving from polish to the first decision