What does it actually look like to weave AI into products people already love—without slapping on “sparkle buttons”? In this episode of Blueprint of a Designer, I sit down with Matt Jones — a design leader at Miro working on AI (previously Google, Lunar Energy, and BERG) — to unpack designing with intelligence as a material, not a gimmick.
Chapters
0:00 Cold open — AI, flows & vibe coding
1:27 Intro & guest greeting
1:40 Light-painting photo & the garage
2:16 Why light painting? Perception & trails
3:02 Visualizing radio fields (RFID/Oyster)
4:54 Light-painting the invisible field
5:50 Team fun: centaur model of AI
6:51 What Matt calls himself (interaction design)
10:27 From architecture school to the early web
12:15 What most misunderstand about AI in design
13:47 On-device “mini intelligences”
15:14 Designing with mature, cheap tech
19:33 Material thinking: subjectivity + objectivity
32:36 Clarifying Matt’s role at Miro (AI group)
33:02 Weaving AI into Miro (multiplayer, multimodal)
39:29 The “explain it over the phone” test
41:24 Screens live in our heads: designing for cognition
44:57 The thought-bubble storyboard trick
50:29 Vibe coding / vibe designing
52:36 Future-proofing designers (sort of)
57:02 Curiosity over rounded rectangles
1:00:45 Pushing systems beyond the mean
1:12:17 Google: Creative Lab → Research
1:14:09 Why Lunar Energy; Project Sunroof; home solar
1:16:42 Zero→One at a climate startup (hardware + software)
1:17:58 Dogfooding at Miro; slides + boards
1:18:49 Tools shape us; whiteboards & flow
1:21:05 Pace at Miro: EPD trios & hackathons
1:23:50 What’s in the garage (3D printers, etc.)
1:25:24 Remote hardware prototyping from the workshop
1:28:16 Data-center murals & wrap-up
We dig into:
On-device “mini intelligences” vs giant LLMs — why small, energy-light models may reshape everyday tools more than headline models.
Weaving AI into workflows — keeping AI multiplayer, visual, and native to the fabric of Miro.
Designing for cognition — the “thought-bubble” storyboard trick and explaining an interface over the phone.
Vibe coding / vibe designing — prompting as creative direction, and pushing systems beyond the mean.
Future-proofing (kind of) — curiosity, user research, and team intuition outlasting tool churn.
From BERG → Google → Lunar Energy → Miro — hardware/energy/research lessons (light-painting RFID fields, rapid hardware prototyping, and more).
Guest
Matt Jones — Design leader at Miro (AI group). Previously Google (Creative Lab & Research), Lunar Energy, and BERG.
Why watch/listen
If you’re a designer wondering where to place your bets in an AI-heavy decade, this is a candid, practical field guide: ship faster, stay curious, and design for the mental model, not just the mockup.
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🙏 Huge thanks to Matt for bringing such clarity and candor!
🔗 Connect with Matt: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidmatthewjones/
#BlueprintOfADesigner #AIDesign #ProductDesign #UXDesign #InteractionDesign #GenerativeAI #OnDeviceAI #MultimodalAI #PromptEngineering #DesignLeadership #FutureOfDesign #Prototyping #Miro #LunarEnergy #BERG
