The Merholz Agenda
Peter Merholz's semi-weekly newsletter on organization design, design leadership, and bringing humanism into the places we work.
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The sentiment around AI + Design is... complicated
By Peter Merholz · · View online →
For the past few months, I have been digging into the mindsets of UX/Design folks at this moment. In April and May, I interviewed ~20 VP-and-above design executives around the world. At Config 2026, I worked the crowd throughout the Leadership Collective. Just two weeks ago, I fielded an "AI + Design Pulse Check" which drew over 450 responses (mostly from people in leadership roles).
Synthesizing across these inputs (as well as research published by Lenny's Newsletter: "How tech workers are feeling in 2026: a workforce splitting in two"), I believe the situation to be more complicated, and more interesting, than is typically discussed.
Forthwith are my observations, supported by data and open-ended commentary contributed to the pulse check.
- The pre-eminent narrative is a muddy kind of anti-narrative
- People are tired/exhausted/burned out
- The key predictor of sentiment is organizational behavior
- Executives have a wholly different experience from everyone else
- Restoration, even transformation, is possible
The pre-eminent narrative is a muddy kind of anti-narrative
The conversation on LinkedIn pendulums between "things