Designing Healthcare in the AI Era, National Design Award Winner Jules Sherman & Figma’s Amber Bravo

Hi everyone, welcome. My name is Alexandra Hudkowski. Thank you so much for joining us on this very special lunchtime virtual program. Uh I'm the curator of public programs here at Cooper Hwitt Smithsonian Design Museum uh where I also lead and have the pleasure of leading the National Design Awards. Since 2000, the the awards have celebrated designers making innovative and impactful work. We start with an open call for nominations and then culminate with 10 winners selected each year by an esteemed jury across design disciplines. This afternoon we're here to celebrate Jules Sherman, a leader in pediatric medical device design and healthcare innovation and our two 2025 national design awards winner in the product design category. This category um for this category the award is given for the forward thinking of design objects products and materials. Past winners have included Ees Bahar Ideo Jonathan Iive Herman Miller and Steven Burks. Jules may not be the typical designer that you think of when you think of product design. In her presentation today, she would tell you her fascinating career path which led to healthcare design after a traumatic hospital birth experience in 2010 when she turned her focus from consumer product design to transforming pediatric and maternal health care through devices that prioritize safety and efficacy. For the past 12 years, she has collaborated with clinicians, engineers, and families to develop innovative devices and teaches design thinking methodology for medical device development uh to nurses and students. Today, she collaborates with AI uh which will be one of the main topics that we'll hear in the conversation. Um she is currently working as a graduate student at UC Irvine studying human computer interaction where she's developing projects for pediatric and mobile clinic applications. She I think maybe like many of us is completely blown away by the capabilities of AI in this work and spending up to five five hours a day primarily using Figma. Figma is a cloud-based digital design and collaboration tool primarily used to create websites, mobile apps, and other user interfaces. After Jules's presentation, we are thrilled that we will be joined by someone from Figma, Amber Bravo, who leads Story Studio and um that is a department there where she helps shape how the company shows up and how its products are understood from vision and direction to launches and tools where design happens every day. Her background spans design and cultural storytelling with earlier work at Google, Herman Miller, Dwell, and the Fader. Today together, Jules and Amber will offer a timely conversation on contemporary healthcare design in the era of AI. Um, we'll first hear Jules's presentation. Um, then we'll invite Amber in for the conversation. At the end, we will have a Q&A through the Zoom Q&A um app. Um, and we when we get there, I can tell you where that is. So, I hope you'll join us for the for that discussion. We'll have around 5 to 10 minutes. Um, I put a link in the chat uh for anyone that needs live captioning. Um, there's a link there for the stream of captions. So, please join that if you need it. And at that, I'm going to welcome Jules on. Jules, please join us. Tails, if you want to just turn your video on, I think then you'll appear. Yes. Hi, welcome. Thanks so much. I'll hand it over to you. >> Great. So, well, first of all, thanks so much for this invitation today. I'm very excited about being here with Amber and all of you. And um my talk is called Care by Design. So, um, I've been an industrial designer for about 30 years. I have, uh, held full-time positions and I also operate under my own consultancy, JS Design Group. I'm also an adjunct professor at BI of bioengineering at the University of Maryland and a current graduate student at UC Irvine studying human computer interaction and design. So, as you just heard, last year I was honored to receive the Cooper Hewitt uh National Design Award for Product. And from a personal perspective, I'm a mom to a teenager. I'm also a dog mom, and I've always loved to draw and paint. So, today I'm going to talk a little bit about my early career in consumer products and my transition to medical devices. And then as Alexandra said, we'll talk about how AI is changing the design process and lowering barriers to software and coding for designers. So I studied ID at Risy and then 15 years later I received my MFA in design at Stanford University and now I'm back at school learning about human computer interaction. So, as a young industrial designer, I loved seeing the things that I drew in my sketchbook come to life and show up on storeshelves. And I've always had a fascination with factories and mass production manufacturing in general. And so, I was able to learn more about that when I traveled overseas for my work uh designing consumer products. So, I'm going to kind of breeze through this chapter in my life, but I wanted to acknowledge it anyway because it does inform the work that I do today in healthcare. Um, these are some of the brands that I've worked with uh the first 15 years of my career. So, my first role out of school was designing custom furniture for um residential clients and high-end model homes. And then I moved on to uh the jewelry industry and designed and manufactured mass-produced jewelry. And then in 2000, I started my own consultancy and worked for several different clients like Restoration Hardware, Forms and Surfaces, Lennox, uh, Limited Brands, Bath & Body Works, and their sister company, White Barn Candle Company, Cambridge Silvermiths, uh, and Old Thompson. >> [clears throat] >> and Old Thompson was a manufacturer of private label kitchen housewares. So at this point in my life, I was expecting my first child and the pregnancy was very challenging and the delivery was very difficult as well. And uh to be honest, the experience transformed me in many ways uh that I would never have anticipated. And it ultimately changed what I care about and how I wanted to spend my time. And so while recovering in the hospital, I realized how many opportunities there were to make healthc care better for new moms and babies. And in 2010, uh, four months after the birth of my child, I entered Stanford's graduate program of design where I was introduced to human- centered design methodology or design thinking at the D school. And this was a fundamental gap in my knowledge that I was really excited to learn more about. And so one of my first healthc care projects at Stanford was inspired by my grandmother who refused to wear her emergency response device while living alone at home because she felt it was unattractive. Um and so through research at local older adult uh communities, I learned that many other older women felt the same way as she did. So, I designed a series of emergency response devices that looked more like jewelry and could blend in more. And this project really taught me um a pretty big lesson that has shaped my work ever since, which is that design uh for wearable medical devices needs to support u a person's dignity. Yes, it needs to function, but it also needs to respect somebody's personal style and their identity. Um, so that they can feel more like themselves and not like their diagnosis or their age. So obviously there's a great deal to learn about medical device design, but I slowly gained knowledge of human factors and regulatory pathways, testing procedures, IP law, uh all that through, you know, reading and mentorship and asking a lot of questions to experts in the field. But you know, learning um most of what I learned was through doing. So just doing the work myself and really collaborating with a lot of people. So engineers and clinicians um writing a bunch of grants and patent claims and conducting research testing products uh with end users and um I also want to say that much of my work has been supported by AHRQ and FDA grants. And many of these projects that you'll see took many years to develop and some are still underway. And the next slides really just provide a very brief overview of each product. So if you'd like to learn more, there are published papers available on my website jsdesigngroup.com. So first after becoming a mom, I learned that many women cannot breastfeed immediately after birth. This w this was also my story. So um I founded a company called Maternal Life shortly after I graduated from Stanford and developed Primolacto a closed system for colostrum collection. Primolacto is a two-part colostrum collection system consisting of a breast pump adapter and a hand expression funnel that connect directly to a feeding syringe. The system helps to capture uh small volumes of colostrum efficiently while providing volume markings for um to support a mother's uh to support uh reasonable expectations for new mothers. Um and I worked on this in collaboration with clinicians and uh Primolacta was acquired by Lansino in 2018 and is sold in hospitals in the US and Europe now. So this uh product I'd like to say was supported by two pediatric device consortia grants which is an FDA program. Um in 2014 I joined Stanford neonatlogy as part of an interdisciplinary team. Um we secured a $4 million AHRQ grant to create the safety learning lab for neonatal and maternal care. And one of our projects was called NUMA, which is a delayed cord clamping cart that allows clinicians to provide respiratory support to pre-term infants while preserving the benefits of delayed cord clamping during the fifth 1 to 3 minutes after birth. So the human factors challenges for this project were quite significant. The device needed to provide a stable and warm surface for neonatal assessment and CPAP support while remaining close enough to the mom to allow delayed cord clamping without putting tension on the umbilical cord. So here you see us testing different versions of our prototypes and simulations. And I'd also like to say I worked very closely with Doug Schwant who's a mechanical engineer on this product. Here on the left was our final rendering and on the right is the prototype we used in our clinical pilot studies. Another product developed through the safety learning lab was um that I worked on was the pelvic lift cushion and this device was designed to improve pelvic exams in emergency departments where OBGYn um exam tables are often not available. So um you know by improving patient positioning the clinician can perform a more effective exam and um just use existing hospital beds and examination surfaces. Uh from 2013 to 2020 I co-taught 10 different healthcare design classes at Stanford's D school. That was over about seven years. and I worked with as um with uh the same clinicians that I was working with in the safety learning lab. So we taught together and the classes were focused on uh simulation learning and visiting families with children who had have medical complexity and also talking to doctors and nurses a lot. So students identified needs and worked in teams to develop solutions. And some of the names of these classes were redesigning the hospital birth experience, redesigning the neonatal ICU, designing for safety in labor and delivery, the empathy project, medical device design, identifying problems through observation, etc. And through these this experience of teaching over seven years um I was able to do a lot of needs finding myself and I met a lot of very interesting clinicians who I learned a lot from and one of those physicians was Dr. Ruthanne Crystal an OBGYn and together we developed the Kangaroo. The Kangaroo is a garment designed to make kangaroo care or skin-to-skin care safer and easier for parents and nurses. The Kangaroo focuses on supporting bonding while managing baby's lines and tubes safely during holding. In 2021, I was hired at Children's National Hospital to direct their newly created biodesign program. And in this role, I collaborated with physicians and nurses and other hospital leaders to design products that addressed unmet needs that they had identified in their clinical practice. So, the connector protectors was an idea by children's national picky nurse Lorie Irvin, uh, whose experience as a nurse inspired her to address a common safety problem, which was preventing children from tampering with IV and G2 line connections to reduce the risk of infection. Um, because if they're accidentally disconnected, infections may happen. So we designed these products together through multiple iterations and conducted an IRB approved uh pilot study and the patent is currently pending and this is Lori here on the right smiling. TRSense was inspired by a safety challenge identified by Dr. Raul Shaw at Children's National Hospital and that that safety challenge is accidental tracheosttomy tube dislodgement in children. So through many qualitative interviews uh with families caring for children with tracheosttomies at home I gained a very deep understanding of the emotional, financial and safety challenges that these families face every single day. So this research informed multiple publications including a stat opinion piece that I wrote last year. Uh and this research just really profoundly shaped my perspective as both a designer and a parent. So TRSense is an accessory that attaches to the end of a tracheosttomy tube. It uses CO2 monitoring to detect acculation and alert caregivers. It's scheduled to enter a human pilot study this summer. This was my first connected medical device combining a physical product with a digital application. I worked very closely with the FEL Institute for Biomedical Devices at the University of Maryland to manufacture and test these prototypes. This is a snapshot of my Figma file for the clinicianf facing TraSense app showing the prototyping mode in Figma. This is the mode that allows designers to um connect screens and establish interaction behaviors. On the left you can see a clinicianf facing app prototype I made in Figma and on the right a bit more information about this project. So the results of our feasibility study on the bench showed that traens could indeed detect tracheiotomy tube obstruction decanulation and even help parents confirm that they've changed a tra tube correctly. As part of my master's work um in human computer interaction at UC Irvine, I developed uh Vigil, a concept inspired by the challenges faced by new mothers of preterm infants who also are recovering from opioid use disorder. So, um if a mother is um using opioids during pregnancy that often can um can lead to pre-term birth. So, you know, these mothers are on different kinds of drugs to um help them get off of the opioids. Um and these drugs lead to drowsiness very often. And so when they're in the NICU um this could be a safety problem. So I explored the question you know how might we support safe NICU holding without compromising bonding autonomy or dignity for these mothers. And so to visualize the concept I storyboarded a smartwatch experience that supports moms during NICU holding sessions. And the interface provides an encouragement and gentle alerts if it detects signs of drowsiness or sleep while holding her baby. So, the smartwatch uses a tiered alert system that provides haptic and audio cues when drowsiness is detected and mothers can dismiss the alert just with a wrist rotation. If the alert is not acknowledged, a notification is sent to the nurse through the clinicianfacing app. So here the nurse is being alerted and waking up mom for safer holding. And then here are my two Figma prototypes. On the left is the clinicianfacing application designed to help nurses monitor holding sessions and receive those escalated alerts when an intervention might be needed. And on the right is the motherfacing app which provides support, encouragement, and the gentle drowsiness alerts during skin-to-skin care. So, here you're going to see while she's holding, if she's falling asleep and the watch is is sensing that, it will deploy a haptic alert first, which is a vibration alert, and she can just move her wrist to turn that off. Um, but if she ignores that first alert, it will uh escalate to an audio alert and then she can um rotate her wrist to turn that off and it's always going to give encouraging messages. PDQuest is my capstone project for my masters in human computer interaction and I'm working with a student team and the pediatric paliative care idea lab at Mass General Hospital on this project. We are redesigning the user experience of a survey application that helps children with serious illness and their families report symptoms and quality of life. Because engagement with this survey is linked to better outcomes, improving usability has a direct clinical significance. So this is a snapshot of part of our group's FIG jam board where we have a lot of our research documented like coding synthesis from interview transcripts, affinity and empathy maps as well as annotated wire frames of mobile screens that we're starting to design. And some of the key redesign principles we're integrating are progress visibility because these um surveys are long and people want to know where they are in the process, reciprocity and trust, save and resume flexibility, accessible and easy to understand reports, and um caregiver well-being support as well. So here on the left um the screens that you see are the current PDQuest uh experience and then the phone on the right that you see is showing an initial redesign prototype that I developed using Figma and an MCP host to accelerate design and iteration. So I started experimenting with Vibe coding back in February. Uh but things became much more interesting for me once I connected Figma to an MCP. Um so that workflow really allowed me to generate fully functioning screens directly in Figma as editable layers. So that was a gamecher. uh instead of accepting whatever the AI produced, I could go back into the design and make changes myself and also teach the AI to replicate patterns and decisions that I wanted. So in this way, I retained complete control over the design while gaining a thought partner that helped me explore ideas quickly. So I'll end here uh with a few words about how I think about design. I feel like good design is an act of care because it anticipates people's needs. It reduces suffering. It creates understanding and it helps people basically achieve what matters to them. And then if you think about it, care also requires a lot of attention. So to care about someone for example, you have to notice them. You have to notice their struggles. You have to notice their motivations, their fears, their aspirations. And design research for me is really an act of paying attention. Uh it asks, you know, what's it really like to be you? And when you spend time with the people you are designing for, you really absorb their experiences and the data becomes a part of you. And that deeper understanding is um you know it helps you guide AI if you're using AI towards solutions that are meaningful and human- centered and so it becomes a partner rather than a crutch. So that concludes my talk and I appreciate your attention. So I will stop sharing my screen. >> Thank you so much. It's really fascinating to get like a behind-the-scenes look at and many of those things that many of us don't think about until we're actually in kind of an urgent situation like that. So, thank you for guiding us through and I'm I'm sure it all deserves much more time than 20 minutes, but um uh it's really fascinating and thanks for all the references to find out more. Um now we're going to invite Amber. Um I see you there. Amber, welcome. >> Hi, thanks so much for having me. Yes. Um, okay. So, I'm going to go off screen and and we can kick off the conversation. >> Amazing. Jules, you know, I've had the opportunity to spend some time with you and talk to you about your work, but um I was really moved by the presentation and just seeing you go through the work more extensively. Um, and I think one thing that really caught my attention, especially um, at at the closing of your presentation was the line uh, you have to to care about something, you have to pay attention. Um, and I do think that this is such an incredible time. Um, with AI in the mix, obviously, we're able to do so much more and bridge so many technical gaps. We might have things that we haven't learned. Um, but I really love your framing as it being a collab, a tool for collaboration as opposed to a crutch. Um, so outsourcing the attention and care that you give to your work to an agent is not something you're interested in. And so, um, I wanted to kind of start there and talk a little bit about your process. Um, and thinking specifically about some of the later projects that you were showing where you were using MCP. And for folks who maybe don't know, MCP is is a way for AI tools to connect um different applications together and actually pull context from those other applications. So, think of it as an agent that kind of fetches core data or context or code and allows you to kind of move between places. And so I'm just curious, you know, as as a designer, bringing all of that context into your design space, what does that unlock for you in a in a unique way? And what did you find? You kind of named it as a gamecher, but I would love to just hear you talk about the editable layers being on the canvas, what that what that does for you at your practice. >> Yeah, I have to say it was really magical. Um because I have been learning Figma over the past year and spending a lot of time, you know, um [clears throat] making things uh myself, right? Very very detail oriented work and learning all of the tools and Figma is it's a lot to learn. And um suddenly, you know, after I took classes and did a lot of tutoring sessions and was really nose to the grindstone with it, there was this um ability to have a thought partner with what I was producing, but also like um relieve me of some of the more tedious repetitive tasks, right, of creating the Figma screens. So, like once I've once I created like my design system and components that I was happy with and did all of the thinking myself, I could ask the MCP to help me replicate some of that more repetitive work, right? so I could create things faster and get more ideas out faster. And so it was just kind of freeing for me as a designer because uh I mean I still brought all of the the research and the insights that I had you know done but I was able to explore ideas just at a at a faster rate really >> when you are in when you're in the canvas and sort of working I I mean everyone always talks about the sort of elusive flow state Um, and I think what you're describing, I mean, most designers, and I'm not sure how many folks on the call are designers or design adjacent, but I think any discipline really, whatever your discipline is. We all know the feeling of when you can lock in and feel like you're in your flow with your work and you're not sort of fumbling around, I guess, to for lack of a better word. And I think um when you have the sort of capability to go farther with these agentic tools and things like that to go farther faster, there is the sort of desire to kind of pull it all together and find your base. Um and I'm curious and and sort of thinking about some of these projects like what is your process for what are some of the things that you do to find your base? you sort of mentioned your design system um but I'm assuming that there are probably some first principles or even thinking about some of the tenants of like design thinking and how you approach a project. So I'm curious if you could just kind of describe that a little bit for us. >> Yeah, I mean my work is really has always really been grounded in the research. So I do a lot of qualitative research and I'm always going back to the insights from that research. So, um, I'm really like a catalyst for the people that I've interviewed. I'm an executor. And so, whenever I have a question about, you know, is this the right thing to do or how should I approach this part of the product, I just go back to the data, you know, and I make sure that whatever I've heard is being reflected in the design work that I'm creating. So I I have this that's my guide, right? Um I'm never lost really and I don't get I don't get distracted because that is the guide. The guide is the user research. It's the field research. Yeah. >> And when how does that start to play out for example with um like an application like Vigil which I thought was so interesting. I I always think >> these applications that have both a motherfacing um experience and a clinicianfacing experience that is such an interesting design problem, right? Because they're really kind of looking for two different um experiences alto together and they need to kind of hold the experiences that each of the users have in tandem and and share information and translate information. So, I'm curious, what are some of the things that you do in a in a process like that? >> Yeah, that's a really interesting question. That project was really interesting for me uh because it includes a lot of psychology, thinking about psychology and wanting to give power back to the mom and time back to the nurses, right? because you know patients don't have to be monitored every second and we want to give them um especially these this population we want to give we want to empower them to come back and hold their baby so that's why I thought a lot about the alert system and how that looked and that's why I made it a tiered system so you know it gives mom the chance to resolve the issue herself before she gets the knock on the door in her room or the tap on her shoulder. Um, you know, just trying to give power back to the person using the product. And then on the nurse side, like giving the nurse time back, right? She doesn't have to be always checking in. she gets the escalated alert only when the patient uh or the I'm sorry, the mother um is ignoring the first two alerts. So, uh yeah, it's only monitoring when needed essentially. So, there's there's just like a lot of psychology, I think, behind human computer interaction that I enjoy thinking about and learning about. And so, um, yeah, I guess that's how I approach it is like putting myself in the shoes of of these, um, different individuals and learning about each of their stories. Yeah. One thing that is also pretty striking from just your career and and and also the the sort of you know positions you've held, the projects that you've worked on is just you you are endlessly curious. You you know I I always think it's so exciting when people Can everyone hear me? Okay. >> Yeah. Sorry, that's my dog. >> Okay. [laughter] Just making sure. I actually can't really hear the dog. um if that helps. But um tell me a little bit about the decision to go back and sort of study HCI really um in a sort of concerted effort and what what what what brought you to that decision? Um obviously you sort of alluded to learn it. You've learned a lot from it, but I'm just curious um if you can kind of bring me back to that moment. Yeah, I mean I think it started with the project I showed called Traense. So that project was my first medical device that I worked on that had a connected application and I was doing that while an employee at Children's National and I really didn't know a whole lot about digital applications. I'd always been doing, you know, work in the physical world. And so, as I was working on that with other people, I realized, wow, I really need to learn more about this uh because this is where medical devices are going first of all, and it was an area that I found very interesting. And so, uh, when I left Children's National, I I decided to go back to school instead of jumping into a new job. I decided to really take some time for myself and invest in myself in midlife and really kind of learn a whole new set of skills. And it's been it's been really empowering and really uh interesting program for me. Um and I feel like it's opened up some doors so that I can better understand how I can move forward in connected medical devices. So yeah, I think uh does that answer your question? >> It does. I mean I I guess one thing that I'm always curious about um are some of the the sort of lessons the transferable lessons between maybe the two mediums, right? So I think you know in in our world in a in a more Figma focused world we we use the the the term product design in a very specific way in a more digital capacity. Although as um Alexander mentioned I also come from a background that's more um I started out more in architecture and industrial design in the most classic sense of the product design world. And I'm very curious about, you know, of course we we are doing them in different ways. You as a design practitioner, me as more of a observer and and critic and and writer about it. Um, but I'm curious, what are some of the things that you feel are fundamental? and and actually even do you feel like there are things that you've learned from that um more sort of 3D analog tactile kind of process that you that you find very transferable into the digital realm um and what those look like. I mean, yeah. Yeah, I mean, you're always I think with any kind of design, you're always looking at like what's it feel like? What what is it what kind of emotion is it bringing somebody? Is it easy to use? Um is it intuitive? Um like all of those uh values and and and aspects of design are transferable to to any medium, right? Um, and so yeah, I brought all of that into what I'm learning now. Um, but they are also different, right? Um, because you're not holding an application in your hand. It's not interfacing with the body necessarily. Um it is a lot about u how people see things, what overwhelms people, how not to overwhelm people, how to um reduce frustration and support people uh through a process. But those are also things, you know, I did in in physical product design as well. I I find those questions fascinating and I love kind of uncovering uh sort of the latent needs uh that people don't necessarily uh can't necessarily articulate. But when you watch them use something, you you see what's happening and um can apply your insights to making a product better. It seems like uh this sort of collective collaborative process has been really informative and fundamental to your work. Um just sort of in some in more of a clinical environment. um the the sort of projects that you walked us through there. Um and I'm curious because we've chatted a bit about the sort of feeling of being in a digital space and and sort of you described it as well is like with sometimes when you're in Figma, this sort of aha moment where you suddenly felt like you had more of this space to collaborate with AI. Um, and I'd love to just, you know, I think that a lot of people maybe don't don't see it that way. Um, and I'm very curious how design almost is this like this language that really actually brings this new capability into a more humanized collaborative kind of environment maybe even in the canvas that is like a place where that happens more. And if you could just describe that um experience and I'm also added question on top of that is just what has been your has has your opinion changed like h did you have an opinion about AI before you really started using it or did you kind of go into it um >> well I'll start I'll start with that second question which is I was afraid of AI because I was afraid and fascinated by it And whenever I'm afraid of something, instead of avoiding it, I try to jump right in and learn about it because I know that that's the way for me anyway to deal with to deal with a fear. Um, and as I started to learn about it, I just became more and more fascinated. And yeah, and so then um that led me to have the courage essentially to start working with it in Figma this year. And when I started to do that, it was really like having another person in a way in the room. And because I work a lot u at home as an individual um you know designer right now, there was something about it that felt uh very collaborative and helpful and less lonely. And that really made working more fun because I could ask it for an opinion on something based on, you know, data that I had and see what what it thought and be kind of reflective with it and and so it's really just like having another person and that you're working with honestly and that you can bounce ideas off of. And for me that was really exciting and um empowering and just really fun. I was having a better I was having a better experience working and enjoying myself. Um >> yeah, it's so interesting because I also think um you know there's sort of the world now where as people are working with AI more, they're able they're just they're kind of understanding what it what it can be good at and also teaching it. Um and you mentioned this as well. Um and so there are sort of like you know things that you can do like you can write skills for your AI. So it's like, >> you know, that would be like Jules being in a situation being like, "Hey, I want you to do like a, you know, you could write a skill to ask it to do like a bunch of qualitative um run a bunch of qualitative like questions against this, you know, flow or this data set or something like that. And you could have a skill that maybe is like helping you with, you know, orthogonal thinking or, you know what I mean, just like testing yourself or pushing you and your assumptions. And that's something that you can actually like cultivate and curate in your own practice. And I'm curious if you've been doing anything like that also. um you know kind of bringing in some of these more structured collaborative prompts. Yes, I have built skills actually um by writing them myself. Uh that was also a learning curve for me. It was very interesting to experiment with that. Um, and if you're working with data that is not sensitive, if it is and you can deidentify everything and it's not uh sensitive uh medical data, you can use um AI to help you keep those insights at the forefront of your work. So you can uh ask the AI as you design the components or the screens the flow if it's being true to the data and double check it's just like another set of eyes right and um you know we want to be reflexive when we are using AI we want to be in the moment and um be aware of you know what we're bringing to it and as an individual and um making sure that we acknowledge that, you know, we're bringing our our own backgrounds, our own choices, our own decisions to take advice or not take the AI's advice and just to be aware of that as you use AI so that you're not using it blindly, right? and you stay in control of your creative ex your creative expression and and the data itself. So yeah. >> Well, um I know that we're running out of time. We're going to move to the open Q&A, but I I just wanted to say again um >> how, you know, I think we could only hope all hope that someone like you is behind a lot of the things that we might find ourselves using in these vulnerable times, times of stress when when we need it most because it's just um that care and consideration really shows through in your work. So, thank you. >> Thanks, Amber. >> Thank you both so much. Questions are flowing in. So, I'm just going to read off um a few. We won't get have time to get to all of them, but um to kick it off, we have a question here. Says, "You're doing great work in medical design. Why were medical products so poorly designed for so long? What has changed that we're making progress now?" Well, I think we've made progress. I mean, we've always we've always been there's always been great medical devices. I think if you're specifically in maternal and infant care, I think um I think there's just more more attention right now being given to these populations uh for medical devices. there's uh a lot more women who are st starting companies that address women's health. It's becoming um you know something people are talking about now uh because we have as women we have more of a voice. We have um you know more opportunities. And so I think uh that's a big reason why medical devices for for at least women and and infants are getting better. Um does that answer the question? >> Yeah. And maybe I mean maybe the technology too. >> Oh yeah, of course the technology. Yeah, for sure. >> So uh Amber, this this one's for you. Could you tell tell us more about what you do and your work? >> Sure. Um, I run a team at Figma called Story Studio and we are really uh sort of we work across uh the company. So we work a lot with the product designers um to help sort of tell the story of our product. Um but we also work uh you know we run our sort of primary editorial site. So, if you go to the Figma blog, it's called Shortcut. Um, and it's a lot about the products that we launch, but also the people who use it. So, um, different companies and and customers that we have, what they're building and how they're building with Figma. Um, you know, stories like Jules would be something that we would have there as well. uh just showing the ways that technology is changing and how designers are really shaping uh the landscape. Um as so many things that we interface with every day are moving into devices and inter interfaces or at least have a component of it. I think uh we really feel that empowering the builders um who are making these experiences to do their absolute best work is really important. And so, you know, my background like uh Alexandra mentioned is I've always sort of worked in in in media and then also just in design and for design companies like Herman Miller. And so I've really always had a very strong interest in the design process and designers um themselves as well. And so I think you know sharing those stories, telling those stories um making the process more um intelligible for people I think is really important. Um and it never gets boring to me too, you know. It's it's like amazing actually. I I just always find that when I am connecting with that process and with design um it really kind of sparks something very unique for me um and a synergy that you know I love and that my team sort of brings to the poor. So amazing. Um okay this one is for both of you. We'll do this one and then and then the last one but this one goes to both of you. What was your first experience using AI as a designer? Jules, you want to start? >> Um, my first experience using AI as a designer. Okay. Uh, the first experience I had was and I I it was connected to research. So, I don't know if you know the program called Atlas TI. It's a qualitative research synthes synthesis program. Um, and a lot of researchers use it. Uh, and they came out with an AI function in their in their um, product that I started to experiment with. Um, yeah, that was the first, it's not really, it wasn't really for like quote unquote design, but it was for finding insights to help me create designs. So, that was my first foray into into AI for my design work. And then in terms of like actual design, it was this year really when I was experimenting with Figma and the M MCP setup. >> What is MCP? >> It's the connection, the bridge between whatever AI you're using and the platform. >> Yeah. So, a good way to sort of think about it and and at this point, I feel like probably a lot of folks on the call have have played around with AI at some in some capacity. Perhaps you've asked it to do something and you've found that it doesn't do exactly what you want it to do. Um and MCP connections are ways that well so the thing that we always say the the sort of like mantra is like you know if you if you give it the context if you give an AI better data better context its results will be better too. Um, so Jules was sort of describing like she will design a design system, right, that has like all of these rules. And the other great thing about design systems is that they're often connected to code um in in in a in a in an application setting, for example. AI is really good at code. Um, but it's not as good at the visual. I mean, it's getting better and better. It's always getting better. But I think that when you have um the MCP that's able to kind of read both things and understand it contextually um you're going to get much better results. And so I think people who are really using AI as a tool really um and not as a novelty or just sort of like a thing to play around with that context just becomes so much more important. Um so yeah so it actually stands from um a bottle context protocol. So, it's like it helps bring that context into your your interactions with AI. >> Thank you for that explanation. Do you want to share your first experience with AI? >> I mean, I was I don't even remember. [laughter] I don't know if it wasn't memorable or it's just at this point it just feels so much a part of my process and and the way I work and the way people around me are working that I think we really are sort of in this state of I actually think it's a really exciting time because I think people are really getting into it now in a way where it does feel like a tool and I think that sort of um decisiveness I guess about like what it what it's good for for you even as a practitioner, as a maker, thinker, like what it what it helps you do and where it actually is not helpful to you. And so we're in this kind of like interesting phase where I think if we're able to kind of tailor it, if we're able to give it more context, if we're able to write skills that are from our discerning point of view, that's when it can really help. accelerate because it's not just sort of like prompting and hoping it it it feels much more tactical and strategic um in how you're using it and how it's actually accelerating you. So um but I don't know I don't I I feel like it's very just part of the you know part of the tool tool. It's a tool in the in the tool kit you know. >> Yeah. Okay. Well, you know, we have time for one more and I think it's like a really beautiful place to end. Someone's interested um in kind of the throughine of the body in your work, Jules. So, they said, "Going back to your early work, working with the body is a throughine. How has AI changed that for you or not?" >> Um, that's an interesting observation. I haven't hadn't really thought about that. Um, AI hasn't really changed anything about that. It's just an like, you know, like Amber just said, it's just another tool in my toolbox that I'm enjoying experimenting with. And um, and sort of like my interests and the people I want to serve kind of remains the same. Um, it's it's sort of just like another another very interesting thing to to use to solve problems and express express uh ideas. Yeah. >> Yeah. I remember early on we had one of our first conversations and you were talking about like how you know when you first started you would sketch and you now still sketch even though you have AI you still use you know your hand sketches and I'm so happy they were in your presentation too. It's such a nice window into your world. Um, but that your process is still the same, but you know, there's a new a new tool involved. So, um, thank you both so so much. Um, we're so excited to follow along. Um, what's coming up next and, um, Jules, good luck with all of these things. It seems like there's a lot of projects out there that actually I didn't know were kind of on the brink of of coming to fruition in their in their processes, whether it's patents or coming, you know, after testing, etc. And um Amber, you too. It sounds like Figma has a lot coming up. I know you're releasing new things and have a big conference next week. >> Yeah. Yeah, there's a big conference config coming up next week and that's our annual user conference. So, we usually have a big a bunch of announcements. Um and I've already been chatting to Jules about some of the things just, you know, when we were talking shop about it. So I um you can tune in virtually and of course obviously have access to all the things that we're launching as they become publicly available. So um excited about that. >> Thank you so much. And then for those that are watching here at the museum, we have some exciting things um coming along. Our next National Design Awards program is on July 16th. We'll have Josh Tofoya, who's our 2026 fashion design winner with us. Um, and we're trying to get some of his incredible um, garments here, too. So, that'll be here at the museum. Um, and then we also are opening a brand new exhibition that is unveiling many pieces in our collection. So, you know, we have a collection of over 200,000 objects. Um, and an exhibition called Design Across Time is opening on June 26 where you can see um, many of them in our first floor galleries. So stay tuned and definitely sign up for our design news um where we send information about once or twice a month about what's going on here. So thank you again and um take care. Thanks so much. >> All right. Take care. Bye. Thank you. >> Bye.