5 Ways to Stay Ahead of AI + Recording for "Upstream of the Machine"

Dear Reader,

Last night we had a fun little event called Upstream of the Machine.

In the talk, I shared 5 strategies that designers can use to stay ahead of AI.

Each one is inspired by design-adjacent roles where designers can potentially have an edge.

You should be able to find at least one strategy that fits you.

The Five Strategies

1. Work the infrastructure — like a service designer
2. Generate evidence — like a scientist
3. Gather intel — like a strategist
4. Zoom out — like an urban planner
5. Make futures real — like a futurist

As a newsletter subscriber, you get to access the full video for free.

Ida Perrson shared these images in a post, and they are just beautiful. Her inspiration into possible new roles for a designer are very interesting, especially as we move away from attaching our title to the object we design (i.e. service designer as a designer of services).

​Source​

Opportunity Cost

Opportunity Cost means looking at the potential gain from alternatives that you haven't chosen. (e.g. "If the design team works on our internal AI tooling for 6 weeks, what revenue-generating work are they not doing?")

Why does it matter? Because we often only weigh the value of the decisions in front of us. If we delay a project, the opportunity cost goes up because we hold human labor captive. We won't be able to work on projects B,C, or E until we project A. And that is a real cost.

In the real world, it's very applicable to designers who stick around at jobs they hate, when they could be growing in other positions.

It's Giving...

"It's Giving..." is a free tool that watches a Zoom call for certain faces, and adds a matching meme to the video. It uses a virtual camera, and it's available for free on Github! Watch the creator's demo on Instagram her.

Basic Strategic Foresight Prompt

Last night in my talk, I mentioned that you could use AI to help you forecast like a futurist, but I didn't have time to show you an example. Try this prompt to get a feel for the type of forecasting you might do if you were a strategic foresight analyst.

Source: Opus 5; Assembled from scenario planning (Pierre Wack at Shell, via Peter Schwartz's The Art of the Long View), signals scanning (Institute for the Future), artifacts from the future (Amazon's working backwards, Julian Bleecker's design fiction, Stuart Candy's The Thing From The Future), and "what would have to be true" (Roger Martin)

Free 600-Page Innovation Guide

Last night in my talk, I mentioned designing mission statements and concept diagrams and other strategic artifacts. But I didn't have time to show many examples of how designers do this type of non-screen, strategic work. This innovation guide by Dan Hill is a good example of what upstream design work can look like. It's available for free, and it's full of the type of deliverables you need to move upstream of the machine.

​Read the guide here​

September 2026 UX/UI Salary Report from Lemon.io

Nice little report on salaries that you can change based on country just dropped on Lemon.io.

Great little breakdown of design salaries based on 3 tiers:

Key finding:

“How much does a UI/UX designer make in 2026? Senior designers earn $30–$75/hr remotely — based on 2,400+ vetted design contracts.”

​Read the full report​

Talk to you in 2 weeks! ✌️

Jeff Humble ​Designer & Co-Founder ​The Fountain Institute

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