DPM – How Can We Lead Creative Projects Now That AI Has Entered The Chat?

Galen Low: [00:00:00] Hey folks, welcome to our session on how AI is impacting the way we lead creative teams and creative projects. We do events like this once every month as a way for our members and our VIP guests to engage directly with some of the experts who contribute and collaborate with us here at the Digital Project Manager.

Uh, for those of you who don’t know me, I am Galen. I’m the co-founder of the Digital Project Manager, and I, I will be tripping over my tongue and I will be your host for today. Uh, and I’ve also got with me, I cast with my favorite creative project professionals, Sara Fisher, Sara Doubleday, and Greg Storey.

We do have a few VIP guests in the audience today. So if that’s you, welcome. Uh, this is just one of a series of monthly events that we hold for our members who get access to a number of benefits, including our back catalog of session recordings, our library of templates, resources and mini courses, as well as members only pricing on our flagship certification course, mastering Digital Project Management, and our upcoming Mastering AI for Digital Projects certificate program.

Uh, you can join the fund by heading over to the digital project manager.com/membership. [00:01:00] Uh, okay. So today’s session is all about how AI is impacting the creative process and the way that we lead projects. Um, I thought maybe we can start by meeting our panelists. Who should I pick on first? Uh, I’m gonna pick on one of the Saras, I’m gonna pick on Sara Fisher.

Um, Sara Fisher is the director of project management at vi. And Sara, when I first met you, you were a designer and then we re-met when you were a pm and now you’re heading up an entire PM team over there at at vi. Um, what’s something that you learned as a designer that you still use every day as a senior leader?

Sara Fisher: Yeah, so I definitely still use file naming conventions, date codes and versioning, Google Doc titles, just everything, meeting notes. It is so helpful, just noting those things in the file name. And it’s a habit that. I just, well, I can’t break it ’cause it’s so good and helpful.

Galen Low: It is a helpful one. I saw a post the other day, I can’t remember [00:02:00] for the life of me, who it was.

And it was like, you know, you’re, uh, whatever, or when you have a file on your desktop that’s called, or files on your desktop, that’s called, uh, final, final, final use this one. And I’m like, that is like 75% of the, like, the deliverables I’ve ever had on a project. It’s like version 11.1 51. Final, final share.

Yeah. But I love that. It’s a great way to stay organized for sure. And like, totally necessary. Totally necessary. Uh, I, I think I’ll pick on the, the other Sara, uh, without an h. Um, and, uh, yeah, go from there. Sara Doubleday is the creative lead at SEER Interactive. And Sara, I actually saw you give a talk about change management at last year’s digital PM Summit.

Now you’re heading up the visual design brand and campaigns team at SEER Interactive. Uh, how has your experience in change management helped you navigate change with your creative depart?

Sara Doubleday: Yeah, great. Te uh, question. So my background is in design. So when I first came to seer, oh gosh, over five years ago, at this point, I [00:03:00] joined a really small but very mighty creative team where I wore a ton of hats beyond project management, as I’m sure many people here can understand.

Uh, so I really think the change management isn’t just for operations and PMs, it’s really for everyone. So last year when I made the intentional shift back into full-time creative strategy, I never stopped using the change management principles. So leaning into change has been huge for our team and our growth as well as for understanding and learning about ai.

Galen Low: Actually, your talk was so instrumental. Now it’s a life skill, right? Like, it’s like running water. It’s, it’s like you kind of need to understand how change can be done. Well, um, you know, to the, to the point of like what we’re seeing in chat, right? Like, things are changing so fast, uh, entire teams are being asked to pivot.

We’re gonna get into that as we get into the discussion. But yeah, what a, what a useful slash superhero skill change management. Awesome. Uh, um, last but not least, uh, Mr. Greg Storey. Uh, Greg is a designer, a creative strategist, and honestly, one of the coolest humans I know. [00:04:00] Uh, so I’m really honored to have you here, Greg.

You actually surprised me in our prep call because you literally just published a book on like, almost this exact topic. Um, the book is called Creative Intelligence. Don’t Ask ai, think With ai. And it’s been getting a lot of praise in the community right now in our community. I remember, uh, like way back, not that far back, but anyways, way back in the day, years ago, a year ago.

Uh, like I remember you not being very hot on AI at the outset. Um, I’m wondering at what point you like turned a corner and embraced AI in the creative process, and then also like what made you decide to like write a book about it?

Greg Storey: Uh, the, the switch flipped for me when I saw it was a incredible tool beyond the generation point, right?

Um. The, the generating things, whether it was cartoons or video or whatever, that just didn’t impress me. But once I saw that, oh my gosh, this thing can help me, uh, expand my thinking, you know, [00:05:00] uh, it helped me. It’s an incredible research tool. And the more I dug into that and used actually my background in design as a researcher, explorer, designer, you know, being, being curious and in creative ways.

And when I, when I talked to other people about how they were using AI and people talking to me, it was clear that nobody knows how to use this, or nobody has a really good idea of how to use it. And so that made me think I, well, I’ll write a book about it. I love that. So basically documented everything that I had been doing, um, in a more friendly way.

Galen Low: I like that. And it’s in there in the title, right? It’s like, you know, the, the, the, the facilitating the creative process, not doing the thing for me. Right. And like generating the thing and that’s the output. And off we go ship it to ship it to client. Ship it to stakeholder X. Exactly. I like that. Yeah. And it’s like, not the technology problem, it’s like the human problem.

We just weren’t using it. Well. Yes. I love that. User

Greg Storey: error. Yeah.

Galen Low: User, yeah. Yeah. Somehow it’s always a [00:06:00] human, you know? That’s the problem. Uh, alright, let me tee this up. Um, I would say arguably one of the areas that felt the most immediate. Impact of AI was the creative field. Like one day it was promising to take on like all the administrative stuff so that creatives could focus on their craft, and then wham, suddenly it’s like doing the design instead.

Uh, like tools like Midjourney and Adobe Firefly, they like led the pack with ai image manipulation. Uh, tools like Wizard and Figma UX Pilot are like generating wire frames, site maps, and even functioning websites in seconds. Heck even, uh, chat GBTs image generation engine. You know, we give it flack, but it is also starting to get labeled as, you know, a creative marketing team killer.

Uh, but. For all. Its disruptiveness. I mean, it looks like AI is here to stay and some creatives are embracing it with open arms. Um, new creative possibilities are being unlocked, tedious parts of the process can move quicker. And in some ways it can be easier to get on the same page creatively before pouring weeks of work into something that a client doesn’t like.

[00:07:00] But the big question is value. How do we distinguish between areas of our creative projects that can be AI led with human intervention and areas that should be squarely human led, and how do we tell the Storey of value while still meeting these rapidly evolving expectations around the creative process?

Um, so with that, I thought, I, I thought this time we would dive into the meaty question first. Um, and I’ll let any of the panelists weigh in. Um, but, uh, I guess when I talk to folks in, in, in our community, I would say that, you know. Saying that some creative teams are feeling undervalued in the shadow of AI might be like a huge understatement.

I mean, you know, clients are, are, are labeling things as like, oh, was that created by ai even though they spent weeks laboring over it. Uh, or on the other hand, some folks, including project managers are like, Hey, couldn’t we just use AI for that? And like, we’re often simplifying the value, um, that a creative team delivers.

So the meaty question is, how should [00:08:00] digital creatives frame the value of their work in an age of ai? And also how can project leaders help uphold that value? I mean, we don’t pick on Sara Doubleday first.

Sara Doubleday: I have, uh, one of my favorite quotes is from Spider-Man. Uh, with great power comes great responsibility.

It’s something I reference frequently because, you know, we have this amazing new technology at our fingertips. It’s changed how we work to overnight, and we’re so focused on outputs. So the next question that I’m always asking is, why are clients paying us all this money if we’re just gonna use AI to give them assets?

And to me, the focus really needs to be on as a creative, what is the strategy and why are we doing this? Because now that anyone can create an image, you have to really think about how is the image that you’re generating driving value on a website or on a campaign? How is it standing out? How is it addressing the problem you’re trying to solve?

In a time where users are expecting more personalization, more answers to their questions. So just creating an image and slapping it [00:09:00] somewhere is not gonna be addressing that.

Galen Low: Oh, that goal Orientedness and always love a Spider-Man reference.

Sara Fisher: Yes, I’m definitely here for the Spider-Man reference.

Galen Low: How about from your perspective, Sara Fisher?

Sara Fisher: Uh, for me, I think that teams should lean on, like humans bring authenticity. Authenticity that AI just can’t ever claim. So if we can find ways to use language when we’re talking to our clients and our customers about what are we bringing as humans that are human elements, and also tying that together with goals that might appeal to like leadership.

And I’m talking about elements like trust, emotional engagement, loyalty. Those are things that, I mean, ai, it’s not really trusted very well and people are gonna be skeptical about it. It’s new, everyone’s getting used to it. So leaning on those human elements and what we bring as [00:10:00] humans to the projects, like even if AI is being used, let’s enhance it with our humanness.

That’s kind of how I see.

Galen Low: I love that. Yeah, I agree with that sort of authenticity. That’s awesome, Greg. Yeah.

Greg Storey: So before I get to the AI thing, just to add some perspective to this, to that, in my career, uh, you know, we’re talking Photoshop one, you know? Right. Uh, I feel like as, as technology has, um, you know, evolved, design has always taken a hit, there’s always been an assumption that what we do is just, I had one client one time look at a, uh, logo, uh, word mark that we’d created with the logo branding package, and he said, that looks like a type out.

And he kept using this word type out, and he is like, what are you, I can’t stop. What does that mean to you? And he’s like, it looks like you just went into Microsoft Word and just, you know, [00:11:00] selected a font and typed it out. And, and, you know, I was like, whoa. Like how do you come back from that? It’s the same, same thing, right?

Of like, you just, I had a, a boss one time that just assumed that we scanned designs and the computer coded the web for us. Right? There’s always been assumptions and, and design has been one of those things that I think it’s because it’s so visual, right? It’s one thing that everybody has an opinion on.

Uh, or they have an opinion not to have an opinion, but it’s, it’s an easy mark. And I, I think one of the things that especially PMs can do is to, especially in sales, it has to be sales to PM to delivery is here’s the process and even show, here’s how we work with ai. Hmm. Here’s how we’ll not work with ai.

Uh, and I think it’s important, uh, to build on, uh, Sara and Sara, what you were saying is to show that if we simply just rely on AI to do these things for us, we’re gonna get [00:12:00] generic crap. It’s just, there’s not gonna be anything unique and speak to, you know, the, the, the bringing the humanity to it and the trust and the, uh, you know, solving the user problems or what is whatever we’re trying to do.

Distinctive AI will not do that for you. It it cannot. It won’t. It just won’t.

Galen Low: I love that you brought it back to the, the sales strategy of it, and I’m like looking at some of the larger agencies, you know, the global behemoths, um, and it’s front and center, right? What you said, it’s like, here’s how we use ai, here’s how we don’t, here’s our stance.

We’re building this AI tool. I think, I can’t remember if it was WPP, um, you know, they’re like, they’re being very clear about what lane they’ve selected and how that delivers value. I think there’s a lot to like learn. From that, even if you’re a smaller boutique agency, if you like, you could be a five person agency.

And I think it’s important to like have that stance and communicate that value, you know, as part of the value proposition, not just like by accident during the project. So I love that, like the, like at the [00:13:00] beginning at like, it is the value proposition.

Greg Storey: Yep. Yep.

Galen Low: I love that. Um, I thought maybe I could just go from there and like kind of talk about the process because I’m imagining, um, you know, Sara and Sara, you’re like in the trenches every day.

You’re leading teams, uh, of creative folks. Like how should creative teams decide when to use AI and when not to, like in their, in their workflow? Like what are some of the criteria that you’re using to guide the teams?

Sara Fisher: Yeah, I can start with this one. I think. It’s really important, first and foremost to make sure that you’re aligned with clients on what AI usage is going to be happening, just so that they’re aware.

I’m always a fan of consent culture. Just people need to know what’s happening and be on board with it. And if they’re not okay with something, you can still deliver a product, a deliverable without it. Just talk it through. Have that honesty and that like build that trust with your clients. So that’s [00:14:00] really important to me.

So just being really clear, like how you’re using AI in your projects, and I think there’s a few questions that you can ask yourself when you’re trying to decide like, should this be an AI thing? Do we wanna try and use it here? Will the use of AI significantly impact the end deliverable and the client relationship in a positive way?

If not, like, maybe it’s not the best use case. Hmm. And kind of touching back on what I said in that last answer, um, just being able to augment what humans do with AI to deliver something better. Like I try to view it like that. Um. Another question you can ask is, have we originated ourselves and left our mark before adding AI to the mix again, like, let’s focus on that human element.

AI can be really helpful. Um, like some tasks are better suited for ai. I’m remembering my days in like, like Craig mentioned Photoshop [00:15:00] one, like having to edit out backgrounds. Now we have content aware and you can just click it and remove clouds in the sky, and it’s things like that. I’m all for it. But when you’re doing like big campaign ideas and I feel like that’s where you need to lean on human expertise, human experience, rather than let’s just plug this in AI and see what it throws out at us.

Galen Low: I, I love like picturing that line item. It’s like a really good way to like bring it into sharp relief. Like I’m imagining the line item on like the invoice. It’s like. Cloud removal, you know, 17 hours, you are like, yeah, that, that seems like a lot to pay to remove clouds. Yeah. It’s, it’s lot. But if you said a lot, you know, deliver creative campaign that’s gonna like, you know, 10 x your revenue.

Yeah. Cool. That, yeah. That, that seems like value. That seems worth it. Um, yeah, exactly. A really interesting framing on like what you do. I was, uh, at a conference, um, earlier this week and, uh, someone in the context of, of, of developers, you know, they’re like, you know, writing code is [00:16:00] only a part of a developer’s job.

There’s strategic decision making, there’s communication, um, and I’m like, wow. There’s like, you know, that’s great because there’s a lot of parallels here, right? In the creative field, there’s a lot of parallels in project management. Um, you know, there’s these chunks. And Greg, you, you know, when you, we mentioned like, we’ve been through these things before, especially the creative industry where change has happened and, you know, it’s like an easy target because everyone kind of understands this visual language and can have an opinion about it.

Uh, and then we, we, we, we kind of feel attacked and we forget, and everyone kind of forgets that there’s more to the job than like, you know, removing clouds or, you know, generating, uh, an image. Like there’s a strategic thought behind it. And Sara, coming back to what you were saying about like yeah, goal oriented on brief.

Presently, humans are still better at that in terms of like approaching that creatively, um, and not just sort of doing something that’s been done before.

Sara Doubleday: Yeah, I really feel like AI is not a replacement for thinking and strategy. And also as we’re working with our [00:17:00] clients, that transparency piece is so important because if we’re taking important documents, like brand guidelines, there are platforms, uh, strategic documents and feeding that into ai, we need to make sure that, you know, the algorithms aren’t taking that learning off of it.

Creating opportunities for other companies to be able to use that. That’s something that we take really, really seriously and make sure that anytime we are using ai, it’s in a closed sandbox where that’s not being released anywhere. And I just always bring it back to, you know, we’re managing client brands.

Most of these brands have invested millions of dollars into their reputation and their standards, and we really shouldn’t treat that lightly. And, you know, as designers that are creating branded elements, our client is putting trust in us that we’re not just gonna grind that up in the AI machine. So I, I say that not to be anti ai.

I think there’s a lot of fantastic use cases for it. Um. But just to be mindful and aware, going back to that Spider-Man quote of when and why we’re using it. So, uh, our team will often use it [00:18:00] whenever we’re needing to distill down a ton of information. So recently we just had a eight hour client workshop and we ran all of the notes and transcripts that we had through AI to pull out themes that would’ve taken at least half a day’s work, otherwise, um, or we’ll often be using AI for production work.

So resizing campaign assets, creating, um, imagery or iconography. And that’s all really downstream after we’ve solidified the strategy, after we’ve decided how and where we wanna use ai.

Galen Low: Those are also good use cases, right? Because like in the process there is tedious work that is not necessarily high value.

Um, and especially like the workshop thing I find really interesting because, you know, ai, um, the way we use it today, uh, you know, like the sort of mainstream AI is excellent with language. Right. It’s excellent at like parsing language, natural language processing. Like it’s a, it’s a very good use of it and it’s quite good at it.

Um, and also I remember the days coming back with like [00:19:00] the rolled butcher paper full of sticky notes, hoping that we rolled it carefully enough that all the sticky notes are still there, and then like three fly off and you’re like, oh gosh. And then we have to like, transcribe ’em and like, you know, I like, in a way, I’m like, I can’t believe we did that, actually.

You know, it wasn’t, and people are still doing it today, right?

Sara Fisher: It’s hard to think back to that time. ’cause I feel like using transcription tools like Otter is one of the ones that I frequently use. Mm-hmm I think back to all the years of like feverish note taking on the side while trying to lead a meeting.

And it’s like three conversations at once and I’m constantly going back and trying to edit or people will ask for my notes. This was pre auter days. Like, oh Sara, I saw you were taking notes. Can I have them? I’m like, you can’t make sense of them yet ’cause it’s in my weird shorthand. Give me like 30 minutes and I will clean these up.

So it’s really nice to not have to do that anymore. Like I, yeah, it’s so helpful.

Galen Low: Or like the book days where you’re like, let me just put it in the photocopier for you. Yeah. Yeah. Game is different. Uh uh, [00:20:00] Sara Fisher, I, I wanted to come back to something ’cause I also see some like, uh, comments in the chat.

Um, Jonathan’s saying, you know, I’ve, I’ve lost clients because they wanted to use ai. I ended up paying a graphic designer. Um, which is, you know, like, that’s a, that’s a tough one. Um, you mentioned something, uh, uh, earlier you said, you know, almost giving clients a choice, being like, listen, we could do this with ai, but if, you know, you’re not really like, cool with that we have another way, um, like is that like a key decision point in your flow?

Like at the start to be like, we have this path that goes, we can use AI and then we have this path that’s like AI free. Is that like built into your operation

Sara Fisher: right now? It’s not, but it’s being talked about for sure. And some of the places I’ve been at in the past that was more at the forefront. So it’s like this is a new technology.

It’s starting to catch on. It’s definitely being talked about on a daily basis. Used on a daily basis. Um, I had a client in the past, this was a few years ago, where they. [00:21:00] Specified in their contract that we could not put any of their proprietary information in chat GPT. And this was kind of like at the very beginning of it.

Mm-hmm. So at the time I hadn’t really even tested chat GPT yet, but that was like my introduction to it with clients. ’cause this was a, a client with a really like household name and technology, like they’re also making products like that. And yeah, it’s a scary thing. Like you don’t wanna plug in their.

Proprietary information, even if you’re privately working on a campaign and it’s not being shared out publicly, but it is being shared into the tool which adds to the hive mind. And it’s like you just have to be really careful about things like that because there is a domino effect that can happen. And it’s just, I like being on the safe side.

Um, yeah, just have that upfront conversation first, if there’s anything that’s in question so that you don’t have to deal with the maybe some messy dominoes down the road.

Galen Low: Yeah, I like that due caution comes back to that transparency and like say Doubleday, like you had mentioned, [00:22:00] I hadn’t even thought about it, but like we’re always like, oh yeah, like personally identifiable information and financial data, you know, really confidential stuff.

But wait, you’re right. You know, like people spend millions on their brand and it’s not always the thing that are like, I dunno, in my, I’m not a, you know, I don’t have a creative background, I don’t have a creative background, but, um, I. I’d be like, yeah, brand guidelines perfect. Like chuck it into GPT, you know, like, off we go.

’cause that’s gonna tell me, you know, whether a lot or not, I’m aligned with, you know, what this company is all about. But also is that an artifact that requires sort of more caution, more, you know, um, yeah, more safety around that actually. And, uh, Sara, double date, uh, I’m gonna get this at some point, we, we debated whether to be Sara one and Sara two or the other, Sara, and we thought that was probably a little mean, but uh, like is that part of the, the, the sort of, um, value prop as well when you’re being transparent with clients?

Like, we’re only using like close closed systems with your brand. That’s policy. Like [00:23:00] that’s how we work.

Sara Doubleday: Absolutely. Yeah. We have language that we’ll sign off with a client on if we’re ever using AI for any of our processes with them. And there’s clients that opt in and there’s clients that opt out for a variety of reasons.

Like they might be working in finance or healthcare and just have a lot of sensitive information, or they might just be hesitant about ai. So we are very respectful of that and definitely don’t wanna put any information in that they’re not okay with. And the other consideration here is, and I I do this all the time, is the knee jerk reaction to use AI is so strong.

Something ha like a email comes in, a design request comes in and you think, oh, just use AI. And we need to really speed bump that and ask ourselves why we’re using ai. Is it actually useful to use ai? Or could I just take two seconds to look at the brand guidelines and say, yes, this is accurate or not.

Sometimes we don’t need that additional layer of feeding something through AI to know if it’s working or not.

Galen Low: I love that. And Greg actually in the green room, you mentioned something, and I won’t, [00:24:00] I won’t give away the spoiler. Um, but that idea that it’s still important for the human to understand, um, something before also think with ai, right?

Get that involved. And almost just that like the comparison is actually the collaboration. Um, not necessarily one is right or one is wrong. Um, it’s just, yeah, I don’t know. It’s that kind of what you do with a human colleague as well, right? Like I wouldn’t necessarily just like trust my, you know, day two intern to be like, cool, read these brand guidelines, do a thing.

Greg Storey: Yeah. And in fact, um, I have a, a, a chapter near, near the end of the book about recognizing if you’re relying on AI too much, right? Like, here are warning signs and Sara Doubleday, like, you’re spot on. You know, like when you Oh, cut paste, cut paste, you know, um, it’s too easy and it’s, uh. It’s, we can lose our ability to just think for ourselves pretty [00:25:00] quickly, you know, without, you know, recognizing and realizing it.

So, I wanna go back to one thing about the, the comment about the using ai, uh, in, in the, in the process. And, and that it speeds things up. Because, you know, I don’t know about you all and your results, but just using AI to do a thing doesn’t mean that you’re gonna get, you’re likely not gonna get good results for one.

And so, like, and we talk about being a designer. Uh, when you use AI in this way, you’re, you’re really being more of like the creative director or art director, right? So your, your role is simply just kind of gone up one level, but at the same time you’re still having to say, nope, you know, make the logo bigger or move the button over.

But you’re, you’re still gonna have the same problems. It’s just a roll of the dice if you’re gonna get a out proper output. Right. And not on the [00:26:00] first time, more like after your 40th try. You know, I, what I found in, in my use of, of these tools is that you can go from just like band. This thing is just like clicking and then five minutes later it’s like, whoa, what, what just happened?

I went from, you know, university professor, academic quality output to, I’m dealing with a five-year-old. And I don’t know what happens on that technology and I can’t explain what happens. I just know that even in, in a half hour’s use, you can all of a sudden the the, what it’s doing is just falling off a cliff.

And there’s been a couple times I just had to say, I gotta go, I gotta walk away. I can’t, I gotta go, go do something else. ’cause no matter what, I try in my response, my work with this thing, it’s just not capable of doing it right now. So, and I just bring that up because y you know, there was mention of Canva earlier in [00:27:00] the chat way back in the day, we had a thing called re draw.

And I remember when people would say that they were a designer, you know, like you’d go to a Kinko’s back when people did that and there was a quote designer at Kinko’s and you could buy a logo and, and your business card and they would give you the curl draw book and say, pick your logo, you know, pick your clip art image.

And that’s, that’s what past is as design, right? And so it’s, um, again, people are always gonna be looking for shortcuts. They just, they, they assume that it’s easy to do. And I don’t back to, uh, the question of the client that, that does wanna pay for design. They want to use ai, just they shouldn’t be your client anymore, right?

If, if that’s the type of people that you’re working with, and you are in design, or, uh, Sara, I know, you know, Sara double that you guys work in SEO, you know, I could use the robot to come up with my SEO strategy, right? And if I don’t value it, then I’m, [00:28:00] I’m probably gonna be okay with the output. Whereas I know if I sat down with you and, and will, uh, and the rest of the crew, I would be getting so much better results, right?

So it’s just a matter of, um, you know, I like this idea of like being upfront to kind of weed out, are these people that I should be working with, are they gonna value me and my work?

Galen Low: That’s like a huge, um, I, I’d love to dig in there, uh, because like that is, you know what I’m seeing in the chat, you know, folks are like, I’m losing clients because, you know, they’re, they, they don’t want to pay for graphic design.

Uh, and Greg, what you’re saying is those probably aren’t the right clients. Um, but they’re out there, there are clients that do want, you know, um, sorry, double day, what you mentioned at the beginning, right? It’s like, how do we achieve a strategic outcome, right? How do we like hit the goal? Like what decisions do we make to get there?

Not how do we, you know, uh, like resize a bunch of images. How do we like, you know, draw a line on a page that’s not what the design is about. That’s not its role. Um, it’s a [00:29:00] tough one though, because like. A lot of, uh, I’m coming at this from a bit of an agency context, but a lot of agencies, the smaller ones are struggling because in some ways they don’t have that.

Um, you know, the, the buffer, the cushion to like lose a bunch of clients and then acquire a bunch of new clients that are the right clients. Um, that, that all takes time and energy. Like the, the cost of ac uh, acquisition is actually, you know, really expensive. Um, I don’t remember where I was going to go with that other than to say that, you know, like are there strategies that you all are using to, to kind of say, yeah, listen, like actually this client might, I might have to make the recommendation that this is not a client that we work with and, or, hey, we need to be like more clear upfront about who we’re selling to.

You know, the economy is tough, everyone wants to like land the deal, but some of these deals are gonna be the wrong deals. I’m like, are you driving that conversation in the organizations that you’re working with?

Sara Doubleday: I’d say it’s really important that we consider ourselves not just creatives, but also consultants, whether we’re working internally or with clients.

[00:30:00] Because if someone is working with us, odds are they are not a designer or a creative, they’re coming to us for that. So I. It makes sense that people would be attracted to the new and shiny ai. They can get something immediately that previously they couldn’t. Like if suddenly I could use AI to do my accounting, I’m not saying I would do that, but you know, just comparing it to something outside of design and something that I don’t have the skillset to do.

Um. It is our job to explain why creative is important and why creative is solving our clients, our internal team’s business problems. We’re not just pulling together wire frames or mood boards or design elements. We’re using these to support a larger strategy and to hopefully, ultimately create more revenue and grow our client’s business.

And I don’t have a explanation as to how AI is currently doing that. So that’s where the human mind is really plugging in at that point and saying, you know, you can go this AI route, you can generate these assets, but in one month, two [00:31:00] months, when these aren’t performing, come back and we’ll put together a sound strategy that will actually get you the results that you’re looking for.

So then the money that you’re investing is now, you know, paying off because you’re seeing that ROII

Galen Low: like that. It’s like, yeah, you go and try it. I’ll see you in a few months and then we’re gonna be that puzzle piece that fits into the bigger puzzle. Um, rather than, you know, you kind of outsourced to ai.

A piece of the puzzle that’s just not gonna fit in the, in the broader strategy. I like that. Very cool. I wonder if I can shift into workflow a little bit because I think we’re kind of segueing there anyways, but like, obviously things have changed. How we’re spending time is different. Um, and we’re also talking about value and like in this, uh, particular, uh, like, or like what we were just talking about, like the, the clients, um, like client value and, you know, what they’re, what they’re paying for, I guess I should say.

Um, I’m just wondering like, yeah, like. How is AI changing the workflow in your creative projects today? Like for example, is there really less time needed [00:32:00] on some of the things like we’ve been talking about, like note taking and like, you know, synthesis from workshops, but like the actual, um, like the more visual stuff, like things like mood boards and wire framing.

You know, I’m seeing examples online of like, yeah, it can just spit it out. Um, is it really, uh, that much of a time savings? And if it is, then like how does that change the workflow and how you estimate time and you know, like if it’s like, great, we needed two weeks to do wire frames, now we need two days.

Like, then how does that impact like the rest of the, uh, the work? That was probably three questions, but either way I’m going to challenge miss double day over here.

Sara Doubleday: Uh, well this is definitely a topic I could talk about all day, so I’ll share my thoughts and then definitely wanna hear from everybody else.

But we really plug in AI for production and scaling. It has a huge impact on speed to market, so we’re using it less upfront with the mood boards and with the wire frames because that is all being informed by user research, customer journeys, business strategy, brand platform. And those are [00:33:00] elements that if we plugged into ai, we would not be getting.

A really great result. So if you’re just looking for a design to be created, you could certainly plug it into ai, but it won’t necessarily move the needle. So we’re taking the time that we originally spent on production and putting that upfront in strategy and then moving much, much more quickly on production and speed to market.

So, you know, hopefully gone are the days of versioning out hundreds of assets for campaigns, like having to make copy updates, having to resize things. I will happily trade all of that for more time and ideation and strategy, and our clients seem to really respond to that as well.

Galen Low: That’s cool. I would say,

Greg Storey: can I, can I build on that real quick?

I, you know, so I imagine a future taking this, taking your, your, what you just said, back to the personalization thing you talked about at the very beginning when you have things, uh, uh, tools like design systems. Where, um, you don’t have to have a bunch [00:34:00] of assets. You simply are evolving or iterate, iterating them.

Um, but going back to the personalization thing of there’s gonna come a time when, uh, when we go to the web and we’re gonna be seeing different versions of the same site, right? Different images, different language. And I don’t just mean, you know, uh, different, uh, languages like English versus Spanish, I mean, you know, different.

It’s gonna speak in, in the voice that we most resonate with, right? Um, and that to me is where it’s gonna be so interesting when you get to the having more time to, uh, ideate and come with the strategy. Right now we’re looking at that as kind of like a, a single channel or like a, uh, a localization problem challenge.

But ICA table, we’re gonna have to be like, no, there’s actually 12 different personas. Just this language or something along those lines, right? The different data points [00:35:00] that we have to then come up with these multi-variate, uh, campaigns and, and the strategies for them. So, um, that’s, I’ll say, you know, like, buckle up because I see that kind of work that Sara, you just mentioned as being vital, right?

To develop the, the cognition, the, the capacity to do that kind of work because the demand will be there.

Galen Low: I love that idea. And like, if I’m understanding you correctly, like the upfront work is creating the personas so that the downstream work is like that multivariate, the, like multiplicity. You’re not spending like, you know, whatever, if you have eight personas, you’re not doing like eight projects.

You’re actually spending the time up front and using, you know, AI and humans to create a more personalized experience that is gonna be different for those personas.

Greg Storey: Yeah. Psychographics, um, is gonna be, I think, become more and more relevant. The, the farther we get into this new world that we’re in.

Galen Low: Boom. I [00:36:00] love that.

I wanna talk more about the future if we have time later. Um, I, I also, uh, I’m keen Sara, uh, Fisher, uh, about like, what does workflow look like for you today going down an AI path? Similar, like more sort of like more time spent in the upfronts. Um, more AI use, uh, downstream or maybe something different.

Sara Fisher: Yeah. For me it’s similar to what Sara Doubleday shared. I’m not seeing a big change on the overall workflow, but I am seeing things sped up once you get to the product. Like creative production phase, like I mentioned, it’s real quick and easy to like use auto, um, generative AI to fill in a background if you need to do quick edits.

That said, it still requires a human eye at the end of it, like. It might, if you’re doing video transitions, it might make a really weird funky transit transition. And this came up recently where it was like, and it was a hand thing, like AI hands are getting better, but it was still just like not a [00:37:00] smooth transition.

So I keep using the word augment, like AI is augmenting the workflows. But I think the general start to finish the steps and the process has been largely the same. It’s just using AI to kind of shorten bits and pieces here and there, or maybe ideate some things and synthesize meeting notes from clients and that kind of thing.

Sorry, allergies are acting up right now.

Galen Low: All good. You’re all good? No, I, I, uh, I, I think that’s really interesting. Um, this idea of like, sort of like the meaningful human interaction and like, Greg, you mentioned like, you’re kind of like, you’ve, like you role is kind of leveled up. You’re kind of like overseeing work whether you like it or not.

Um, and that’s like a, a, a, a skill. Um, and also like a, uh, a sort of threshold to mind, right? Of like, how many revisions is too many revisions, like, you know, with a junior designer, like, you know, like it’s 12 too many, and they’re like, okay, well listen, this is like, let’s just go another route. [00:38:00] Um, and then what is it for sort of each whatever, um, AI tool that you’re working with?

Like, that’s really interesting. Um, I thought maybe I’d like dial it back a little bit, zoom a bit out. Um, because the other thing that, like we were talking about as we were kind of putting this together was just this notion of like, I don’t know, um, creative role stereotypes, right? Um, and especially as a project manager, I, I, I got that a lot.

I witnessed it a lot. I, uh, maybe have been guilty of it sometimes too. Yeah. Like it’s kind of the like, oh yeah, you know. The design team, they just like draw pretty pictures. They just, they never care about the business constraints. They always go over budget, you know, and then we’ve blown the budget up front and you know, like there’s not enough time to do all the other things because, you know, they’ve just been creatives doing creative stuff.

Um, does AI present an opportunity to like rise above these stereotypes or could it actually maybe deepen them

Sara Fisher: real pandemic? For me, I feel like [00:39:00] it’s going to be a recurring theme, whether AI’s included or not. I feel like in my career, like starting out as a designer, trying to explain what you do again, like Galen, you were mentioning like you’re just making pretty pictures. Like I could just sit down and pull up Microsoft Word and plug in like

Galen Low: hype out.

Sara Fisher: Yeah. It’s more, for me, it comes down to, in order to overcome that stereotype, it’s all about education. Like educating your clients, your potential clients, people around you to let them know what really is it that you’re doing, what is the value that you’re bringing? And if AI is part of it, you can incorporate that as part of the, the answer.

But I feel like the heart of it is, is really that education piece of telling the world, like what are you doing as a creative professional? That could mean many things. Graphic designer’s, one thing, videographer’s one thing. I mean, creative professional. Some people have that title and it’s like, what is that?

Is that strategy? Is [00:40:00] that, so yeah, comes sounds education for me. I

Galen Low: love that about the education and having the words to kind of frame it and, you know, spoiler alert, like you three have been using that language all throughout this, um, this session. So like folks, uh, in the audience, if you’re looking for the language, just like figure out how to frame and educate people about what you do.

Like I’ve been hearing a lot of it throughout. So yeah, bonus, bonus there. Yeah, I dunno. Greg, miss Doubleday, uh, thoughts on stereotypes and where it can go?

Sara Doubleday: I would say that the best way to overcome those types of stereotypes is to not bury your head in the sand around ai. You need to understand it in order to properly explain where your job is happening and where AI is happening and how the two are combining.

Because I, I do think that. Moving forward, creative and AI are going to be combined just like so many other professions, [00:41:00] and we need to evolve beyond, uh, you know, just having Figma or the Adobe Suite, other design tools we need to be able to show on our resumes and in our processes that we are incorporating AI rather than ignoring it.

And I have found that once you are open to AI explaining it, talking about it with colleagues outside of creative, you kind of hear their, see their ears perk up a little bit, they become a bit more interested because they see, you know, you’re not just a designer sitting around making pictures. You are, you know, talking about that strategy piece.

How you are create, you know, developing impactful creative for your clients and using AI to save time for yourself and for them. So I, I think that by grabbing ai by the horns, instead of letting it kind of push you around, that is the best path, best path forward.

Greg Storey: I, so I was trying to think like, well, what is the stereotype to rise above?

And the, the one that comes to mind is the, the [00:42:00] creative that, uh, doesn’t take critique well. Right. Um, it’s too personal. It’s my passion. This is, that’s me in that design, in that button color, you know, or whatever. Uh, and I, I think to, to build on what’s already been said is using AI to, um, lemme put this, to understand the critique that comes at you, right.

And to take it and, uh, try to use it to translate what that person is trying to say. Often, uh, in my career when I’ve received critique and it just, you know, pissed me off or hurt my feelings or whatever, uh. You know, I, the, the, the language being communicated to me, the words being said, didn’t reflect the tone of how it was said, or even like the, the, you know, physical [00:43:00] language that was being expressed, but it’s, you know, designed.

It is so funny. Everybody has, uh, such a, a visceral, immediate reaction to design creative work, but they don’t know how to talk about it, right? They don’t know how to express it. And so you, you, you use words like type out and, you know, made up language and try to understand like, what the hell did that person just say to me?

Like, I, I don’t know what to do with this. Um, and I think it’s, it’s trying to use it to help improve the communication, to take then that feedback and so that not only can you understand it, but to use it to turn it into a positive, right? Because. A lot of times the, you know, when people give a response there, there is some meaning to it.

They’re trying, they just don’t, they don’t know how to say the what’s in their brain, what’s in their reaction. Uh, and, and meaning that what they’re saying is actually very [00:44:00] helpful. But when we take it, ’cause you know, we’re, let’s face it, a lot of creative people are snowflakes, right? Uh, especially with the younger, when, when you don’t have just simply haven’t had time to, to live through some of these experiences.

The, you know, feedback. I think that’s a way to use ai, right? Is, is to take all of that in and see help helped you build your perspective and, and see better work from it.

Galen Low: Love that idea. I also love the threat of steel going on here about like, education, right? And communication. Not just kind of being isolated in a vacuum, trying to figure this out.

But actually, you know, we all need to share more about how we contribute, how, you know, what we do, what we’re passionate about, and how that drives impact. Um, and, you know, understand one another better I think is like that theme so that we can move forward and not really just think we know what design is and think that other people know what design is and what it means to be a creative and the value of creative work.

And like, like actually start talking about it a little bit more. [00:45:00] Um. I’ve got about 12 minutes here, so, and, and I see some really good questions, uh, coming in. I was gonna do my futurist question, but I might save it to the end if we have time. Uh, I have this question from Ashley, uh, and the question is, how do you create healthy boundaries between project managers and like creative strategist roles, given that AI makes it so that everyone can, you know, quote unquote, do the work?

Sara Fisher: That’s a good question. I, for me, my mind immediately goes to. Sometimes people’s personalities can really be the driver of why they excel at their job. So for project managers, even though maybe a creative strategist could plug in, like, give me a timeline and tell me how to set up these tasks. Project managers, their brains are already there.

They’re on the ground doing the day-to-day, very detail oriented, and I don’t wanna speak for like all project managers or all creative strategists, [00:46:00] but working with creative strategists for like the past 15 years, I would say they generally tend to have like head up in the clouds. Big ideas might not be considered the most organized.

That’s not a bad thing. Like we’re all different, right? Let’s use our strengths. I feel like keeping that boundary is really important and letting the execution kind of fall to who it makes the most sense. Um, if it’s detail oriented, setting up tasks in. Your project management software, just let the pm do that.

Creative strategist, like that’s where my mind goes. Hopefully that helped give some, some feedback on that answer. I’ll let the other panelists chime in if they have other thoughts.

Sara Doubleday: I’d say as a designer turned pm, turned designer, I don’t wanna make another timeline. I know how much work project managers spend on the work that they’re doing, and I know that it’s really different from what I’m doing.

And both are [00:47:00] important and they’re meant to be separate tasks. So even if a PM feels that they could hop into address some feedback, or if a designer feels they could happen to answer a timeline question, it’s really important to keep those lanes separate. And if I wanted to do all of those things, I would go freelance versus working on a team.

I, I like to have those individual roles and to see everyone’s strengths come out. And it’s really helpful to have those healthy debates of, you know, maybe I want a round four of mood boards and my PM saying we don’t have budget for that. That’s not a conversation I could have with myself. That’s something where you need multiple people in the room.

Galen Low: That idea of like playing to strengths. Um, and I, we won’t get into, won’t get into it now, but I think the other, well, this should be a whole other session. The other one is, um, we didn’t have that conversation and the PM came back and said, Hey, I did the mood boards, then what do you do? Um, but yeah, I think it’s all about open communication, about yeah, roles and responsibilities and, and, and who, what are our strengths and are we playing to them?[00:48:00]

I like that. Um, I’ve got a question here from Francesca. Um, and, uh, the question is, how would you apply these same insights to internal teams and higher ups who want your team to utilize AI without any direction of what that looks like? Um, so like, I know we’ve been very agency focused, but yeah, there are a lot of like, you know, this, the challenges on the internal teams are, are, are quite the same.

And I, yeah, I hear that about the, you know, please use ai, the end, right? Like not giving them a lot of direction. Um, but yeah. Could these be applied? Uh.

Greg Storey: Sorry, it’s, it’s not, please use ai. It’s more and more you will use ai, right? Mm-hmm. So Amazon started with, uh, Shopify, then it’s, uh, Spotify. Anyway, Amazon, Microsoft, they’re all coming down with these mandates that you will use it, but they don’t, and that’s it.

They don’t say, Hey, here’s an idea how, right? Um, there’s no training. [00:49:00] So, uh, super big sign of bad leadership, right? Um, it’s, it’s fear from shareholders type of thing. Uh, and this, I’m, I’m so passionate about this ’cause it really, it irritates me, it pisses me off, right? That, that there’s these folks that are just being, this, this being forced on people that already have a lot of anxiety, uh, about it anyway, um, there’s just, there’s a lot of fear and, and yet they’re being forced through it.

So, um. Francesca one, if that’s you or anybody else, uh, follow me on Brilliant Crank because I see you, I write for you all the time. Um, but two, I think it’s in, uh, it’s like to me it would be half and half of using it. Looking at what are the tools you can do. There’s, there’s a lot of emphasis on speed, right?

Um, I want it cheaper and I want it faster. Um, companies are trying to get to what I call the minimum viable human number, [00:50:00] right? How was the fewest humans we can have on payroll to get the same amount of work done or more right? And this, what we’re seeing now is a race to the bottom, uh, of, to get, I want cheaper, I want out faster.

So you have to do some of that work. ’cause I think the unsaid or unwritten expectation is you’re going to be able to deliver, uh, more with less, uh, faster with less, like whatever that is, right? But then I would also spend 50% of the time of looking at what it is you can do. And a lot of what we talked about here of like being able to amplify your perspective, challenge your bias.

Uh, I talked to a design team, uh, global design team just, uh, last week about, you know, uh, research design, UX research, what, whatever you wanna call it, less time, patience, money is, is being afforded to that area of work, right? Um, even 10 years ago, it was a fight just to get time to go talk to a few users, let alone enough.

[00:51:00] And so I’ve heard of teams taking their personas, their profiles of their users, creating virtual, uh, versions of them in ai, and you know, basically doing kind of virtual user research. And you think about that, it’s like, oh, that’s terrifying. That’s scary. There’s, there’s some of it that yes it is, but at the same time, it’s better than nothing.

Of like, use these tools, uh, not just to generate and, and to create work quickly, but expand the thinking like Sara double you were talking about, of like spending more time in the strategy and then the ideation. Um, it’s just as important. It’s just that leadership doesn’t, they don’t see this yet. They don’t, ’cause they don’t know, they don’t have that an informed opinion.

I’m excited about that topic, by the way, if you can’t tell.

Galen Low: No, I super love it. Super love it. Sara, has anything to add?

Sara Doubleday: Was there a specific Sara you were going? Yeah,

Galen Low: which one? I was, [00:52:00] I did the Sara plural thing.

So if I cop out, move either, either. Sara?

Sara Fisher: Yeah, go ahead, Sara. Oh, no, we’re, yeah, it’s so polite. Um, for me, I just had something short to add on that question from Francesca. What stuck out to me was the without any direction, and so many agencies are dealing with this, even like agencies I’ve worked at in the past when this was like first coming out, like it’s still being talked about.

People might still not have parameters around what, how to use it and if you’re trying to get internal teams to use it and no one’s telling you how, if you have the ability and the bandwidth to define it yourself or just write out like what your plan is and how you wanna use it, then share it with your team, get team feedback.

You can kind of get that ball rolling and then share it with leadership later and say like, this [00:53:00] is what I’ve already kind of found with the team. This is what we’re thinking works best. Sometimes it’s easier to give them something to look at instead of waiting to be told. This is how you need to use it.

So if you’ve got the time and the energy and you wanna solve that problem, like I would suggest trying to come up with parameters on how your teams use it. That’s just my, my 2 cents there.

Galen Low: Yeah. Like the how might actually be part of your job. Yeah. Figuring out that out.

Sara Doubleday: Yeah. I’d say just a huge plus one to everything that Greg and Sara said.

And I know that a huge part of this also is tool discovery, and there’s been some questions about that. Um, I am definitely here and available for anyone that wants to talk tools for image creation. Uh, myself and our team have tried dozens at this point, and there’s definitely pros and cons to each of them.

I think that’s a really big part of this exploration process as well, is just choosing one place, starting testing with [00:54:00] that free versions of these tools are fantastic. And then, like the group was saying, taking that back to your leadership or to your network or to your team and just sharing and going from there.

Galen Low: Love that. Actually, can we spend the last 30 seconds doing Tama, because I have some really good questions from folks about what tool are you using to execute final files? What tools are you using for versioning and scaling? What tools are you using for creative production and resizing? If you have any that you wanna just like round table, shout out this tool for this thing.

Sara Doubleday: I’ve got a grocery list. Um, so we’re, we’re exploring quite a few right now we’re using Google Labs Whisk, which is a great way to mix different images together to create video and imagery. Uh, we’ve been testing light Tricks, LTXV, which is a great tool that creates up to 62nd videos, which is really exciting because so far most video generation tools have been around like the five to ten second mark.

Uh, we’re also using Figma Buzz quite a bit. It’s something we’re exploring for resizing and bulk editing, images and copy and assets. [00:55:00] And then of course the tradi, the chat, GBT, the Gemini for, um, synthesizing large amounts of information as well as for helping us to write prompts for these image creation tools and asking them how we can make them better and adhere to guidelines.

Galen Low: Amazing list.

Sara Doubleday: Yeah. No notes. I have nothing to add.

Greg Storey: Yeah,

Sara Doubleday: I’m like racking my brain. So

Greg Storey: are you writing about this anywhere?

Sara Doubleday: Uh, it is something that our team is working on. I definitely can’t take all the credit for it. Everyone at SEER is researching this and it’s something that we publish on quite frequently on our blog, and we’re in the process of putting together a more formal list right now that we’ll definitely be sharing out on the SEER blog soon.

Galen Low: Awesome. That’s amazing. Um, I know we’re at time, Martin, I’m sorry I didn’t get to your questions. Um, I will actually grab the questions we didn’t get to and I’ll shuttle them over to these lovely panelists and if they are, you know, um, willing to provide an answer, I will, uh, I’ll share it out, um, maybe in a future newsletter.

Um, but I know folks have [00:56:00] probably either run to other meetings or need to run to other meetings. So I just wanted to wrap here and say thank you so much for being here. Thanks for attending. Uh, and to my lovely panelists. Uh, thank you for volunteering your time, your expertise, your insights, like there’s a lot of gold here in here.

Um, and I hope uh, everyone in the audience also feels the same. Um, I appreciate you all. Thank you so much for being a part of this, and enjoy the rest of your Thursday, the last day of July, unless you’re in Australia or New Zealand, in which case you’re probably ahead of us anyhow. All right, we’ll see you guys for the next one.

Sara Fisher: Bye everyone. Thank you.