--- title: How to Lead Design Teams Through the AI Era | daily.dev description: Design leader Jen Dunnam, former VP of Design at Patreon and Head of Design at Shopify, shares her approach to leading design teams through the AI era. Key... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/how-to-lead-design-teams-through-the-ai-era-edxnh0wbo twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: How to Lead Design Teams Through the AI Era | daily.dev og:description: Design leader Jen Dunnam, former VP of Design at Patreon and Head of Design at Shopify, shares her approach to leading design teams through the AI era. Key... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/how-to-lead-design-teams-through-the-ai-era-edxnh0wbo og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/EDxnh0WBO.png og:image:alt: How to Lead Design Teams Through the AI Era og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # How to Lead Design Teams Through the AI Era **[Figma](https://daily.dev/sources/figma)** · 6 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Design leader Jen Dunnam, former VP of Design at Patreon and Head of Design at Shopify, shares her approach to leading design teams through the AI era. Key themes include leading with calm rather than panic, hiring for critical thinking over surface-level AI fluency, building psychologically safe teams that embrace healthy dissent, and being precise about what kind of speed actually matters to your organization. She emphasizes that design critique remains a vital tool for modeling rigorous thinking, and that the fundamentals of designing for humans haven't changed despite rapid AI advancement. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [When AI Changes the Work, Leadership Has to Change with It](https://daily.dev/posts/when-ai-changes-the-work-leadership-has-to-change-with-it-ncfx6ploi) · Medium · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [How AI leaders are borrowing from the design playbook](https://daily.dev/posts/how-ai-leaders-are-borrowing-from-the-design-playbook-kynreuf2b) · Figma · 3 upvotes · 0 comments - [Why I stopped treating AI adoption like a tool rollout](https://daily.dev/posts/why-i-stopped-treating-ai-adoption-like-a-tool-rollout-2izmxjdcp) · LogRocket · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [AI-First Mindset: How AI is Reshaping Teams and Leadership](https://daily.dev/posts/ai-first-mindset-how-ai-is-reshaping-teams-and-leadership-agfl24sxm) · Magda Miu · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [8 lessons from tech leadership on scaling teams and AI](https://daily.dev/posts/8-lessons-from-tech-leadership-on-scaling-teams-and-ai-dl9u8nkjk) · Stack Overflow Blog · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#leadership](https://daily.dev/tags/leadership), [#figma](https://daily.dev/tags/figma) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/how-to-lead-design-teams-through-the-ai-era-edxnh0wbo) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"How to Lead Design Teams Through the AI Era","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/how-to-lead-design-teams-through-the-ai-era-edxnh0wbo","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/how-to-lead-design-teams-through-the-ai-era-edxnh0wbo"},"datePublished":"2026-07-09T15:24:31.066Z","dateModified":"2026-09-14T06:49:47.754Z","description":"Design leader Jen Dunnam, former VP of Design at Patreon and Head of Design at Shopify, shares her approach to leading design teams through the AI era. 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