Maheen Sohail - Navigating ambiguity in AI design

This week’s episode is with Maheen Sohail who is a senior staff designer working on generative at Meta. She joined as one of the earliest designers on both the VR and AI teams, so a big part of this discussion is about navigating ambiguity when there’s no clear playbook to follow.

We go deep into:

• New types of interface patterns for AI
• The unique ways she thinks about prototyping
• Ethical considerations when designing AI produdcts
• How Maheen explores AI models through side projects
• Why the goal posts for what it means to be a designer are shifting
• a lot more

⭐ KEY TAKEAWAYS

Nobody knows what they’re doing

This is especially true when you’re designing products for emerging technologies like AI. It’s easy to look at people working on these AI-native products and assume they have it all figured out… but we’re all still learning and exploring what’s possible. This came up in George Kedenburg’s episode too.

Curiosity > everything

I asked Maheen what traits are more important than curiosity for people interested in designing AI products. Her answer? Nothing.

The importance of passion projects

There’s a trend I’m noticing in these interviews… the designers who are creating cutting edge use cases for AI are the ones actively exploring the technology with side projects. Reading essays isn’t the way to learn. You have to want something to exist in the world and use that as a reason to figure out what’s possible. For Maheen it was using AI models to colorize images of Pakistan. For Nate Parrott it was using AI to hallucinate in HTML.

• Maheen references Alex Cornell’s storytelling abilities
• Maheen’s demo for animating drawings (it’s very fun)
• We referenced Colin Dunn’s episode about the importance of naming in AI products
• Maheen’s colorized photos of Pakistan
• Maheen’s FakeID podcast
• Meta’s AI release
• Maheen raved about the Rosebud journalling app