John Maeda
Redmond
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VP Eng, Microsoft CoreAI / How To Speak Machine (2025) amzn.to/4556o1i or (2019) amzn.to/2HjDtM6
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Articles by John Maeda
Media Lab @ SXSW 2026
A number of the speakers taking the stage at this year's South by Southwest (SXSW) conference in Austin, Texas will be members of the Media Lab community — below are some details on the people and projects scheduled to participate.
Enterprise AI: Setup ≠ Success
The Post-Deployment Challenge of Enterprise AI Indeed’s Chief Economist Svenja Gudell has mapped out GenAI’s true capabilities across different types of work. Her 2024 research reveals a surprising observation: AI excels at theoretical knowledge but struggles with full skill replacement. She expects only 5% of roles face will face full replacement, while the vast majority fall into augmentation territory.
When GenAI Feels More Creative Than Me
It feels like every mornings I wake up to news of another “breakthrough” in generative AI. Today, it’s a realtime video generator using some new AI model I’ve never heard about. Yesterday, it was a tool to render an entire user interface better than I could ever whip up.
The Efficiency Trap of Systems Thinking
Not long ago, one of my teammates, Sun Chuanqí, wrote a thoughtful piece about the tension between centralized design systems and creative agility. He described how a structured system, which was meant to streamline collaboration, started doing something unexpected: it slowed teams down. Or, more precisely, it slowed new thinking down.
Practicing CRAFT: Keeping Ahead of the Machine
As designers face the uncertainty of AI-driven change, the question isn’t whether machines will take over — it’s whether we’ll remember what it means to be human. That’s why I rely on what I call CRAFT — a set of principles that keep design anchored in human intelligence. If curiosity killed the cat, it at least died eight more times, happily. Ask more questions than you answer. Curiosity has powered my entire career. I’ve often said that staying curious is what keeps us relevant.
Why Art Still Matters (Especially Now)
In a nutshell: Art resists categorization, optimization, and numbness. In an efficient world, art reintroduces friction. Artists work within life’s enigmas — not around them. Art helps us lose our resistance — to feel again. In the age of AI, art keeps us human. There’s a tweet I wrote years ago that still rings true for me today: Science is how the world works; art is how the world feels, as work. I’ve always seen art as more than just a practice — it’s a mindset.
Not Fully Ready: A Designer’s Best Place To Start
Planning and making aren’t separate — they’re one motion. Authentic work often begins before you feel ready. Improvisation isn’t a flaw in the process — it is the process. “Aichaku” (愛着) is the love you grow for what you’ve made with care. AI is fast, but only humans can design with soul (= accountability). Imperfection is often the most honest part of the work 😉. A designer is someone who constructs while s/he thinks, someone for whom planning and making go together.
The Vision Spiral: Seeing, Sensing, and Shaping What’s Next
The Vision Equation I’ve found that vision follows a precise formula: VISION = Prediction (see the future) + Intuition (feel the future) + Realization (make the future) I try to start with prediction — using my analytical abilities to extrapolate trends and anticipate what might come. Yet I know prediction alone creates only possibilities, not certainties. I must also rely on my intuition — that unnerving sense that guides me beyond data points and rational analysis.
The Art of Desirable Accidents: Embracing Improvisation
The skill to improvise is to unhesitatingly realize a desirable accident. These moments of discovery flourish where there’s safety to experiment. Supportive making allows for creative mistaking — creating spaces where we lift each other up rather than cause tears to fall. When a community values both attempts and achievements equally, we all discover those productive accidents that lead to our most original work.
The Evolving Landscape of Design in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
Design, as a discipline, has always been at the forefront of innovation and adaptation. In recent years, the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) has begun to reshape the very foundations of design, offering new possibilities and challenges for designers and technologists alike. As we navigate this transformation, the principles of simplicity become increasingly important in managing the growing complexity of our technological landscape.
The Art of Creative Leadership
John Maeda · Follow 3 min read · -- My dad making tofu in Seattle’s International District back in the 90s Leadership, I’ve come to believe, is fundamentally a creative act. When I became president of RISD after years at MIT’s Media Lab, I experienced firsthand the tension between structure and freedom that defines creative environments. Some days I’d find myself thinking: how do you lead people who are trained to question everything? The answer didn’t come from management textbooks.
Benjamin Button-ing Myself
John Maeda · Follow 2 min read · -- I was curious to see what’s possible with all the SOTA Flux stuff out there. And my conclusion is that … it’s getting weirder and weirder these days. This isn’t me in the future. I’m glad, tho, to see that Apple’s still around ;-). Watch this time-lapse video It feels weird looking at myself age like this — if anything it’s helping me think of my springs a bit differently. How to do it yourself I used Capsule to make the cool intros/outros.
Questions that Shape Us: Reflections from Recent MIT Media Lab Talk
John Maeda · Follow 3 min read · -- Recently, I found myself back at the MIT Media Lab, hosted by the inimitable Professor Hiroshi Ishii, to talk about the hybrid paths we take in life. It was a surreal moment — coming full circle after leaving the Lab in 2008 and embarking on a journey that spanned arts, technology, venture capital, and beyond. But this wasn’t just about looking back. The Q&A session that followed reminded me of why I do this: the questions.
Embracing the Hybrid Path: Reflections on Creativity, Career, and Resilience
John Maeda · Follow 5 min read · -- Me and Hiroshi (Photo Credit: Lucy Li) In my recent talk at the MIT Media Lab with Professor Hiroshi Ishii, I shared reflections on what it means to pursue a hybrid career — one that weaves across technology, design, business, and more. Building A Hybrid Career Across Tech, Business, And Design.
Shadcn with NextJS, Tailwind, Yarn on MacOS (2024)
Be sure to have the right node version installed and use to reduce your confusion. This was the correct one in 2024 of August for me. You can either keep it simple (JS) or make it more complex (TS + linter). You get a wizard once you cast the shadcn spell. I’m so used to doing but I know makes me cooler. I’m partial to terms of services checkboxes so … Then go to and add in the sample code you found on the checkbox page over at shadcn/ui. You get a new Vercel advert like below.
What Would You Ask If No One Could Judge You?
Co-founder and CEO Aravind Srinivas wants Perplexity to be not only a resource, but an engine for curiosity.
The 10th Annual Design in Tech Report: Coming March 12, 2024
The rapid version of #DesignInTech Report 2024: DESIGN AGAINST AI will be available on Tue, March 12 via YouTube. Well, I gathered a few Design × AI themes looking back at 10 years of the rise of computational design. Should we protest AI? Compete against AI? Collaborate with AI?
The Long and Short of It: Issue no.1
This includes hot takes on human potential in the age of AI, the pitfalls of measuring productivity, and how thinking beyond your role (or getting rid of labels altogether!) might be the unlock you’ve been looking for. Want the next issue delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up here. Uphill thinking By now, we’ve all become conversant with AI.
Shishir Mehrotra’s 10 rules for leading great team meetings
Figma Chief Product Officer Yuhki Yamashita and I talked about rituals at Config 2023, Figma's annual conference; I'm told that the talk is one of Figma's most rewatched sessions to date. In the world of product development, Shishir Mehrotra is a consummate collector—not of patents or C-suite titles (though as a product leader at Microsoft, Google, and now Co-founder and CEO at Coda, he’s amassed his fair share of both)—but of workplace rituals.
AutoGen Agents Meet Semantic Kernel
November 2nd, 2023 In this blog post, we show you how you can use Semantic Kernel with AutoGen, a Microsoft Research project that shows the potential of using multiple agents together. With AutoGen, Microsoft research has shown that multiple agents can be better than one. To actually do work, however, agents within AutoGen need hooks into the real world so they can retrieve information, create content, and complete tasks.
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Dan Mall’s 10 Principles for a Worthy Design Career
With over two decades of experience spanning design, teaching, entrepreneurship, and authorship, Dan Mall has navigated diverse roles across the design landscape. He distills his experience into 10 pieces of advice for tackling complex tasks, preventing burnout, and fostering continuous learning. Hero illustration by Lorenzo Gritti. In the world of design systems, Dan Mall has built a name for himself not just as a designer, but also as an entrepreneur, teacher, and author.
Give ideas more space with Jambot
August 23, 2023 Amber Bravo Director of Content & Editorial, Figma Inside FigmaCollaborationDesignBrainstormingMeetingsAI Jambot brings the generative power of ChatGPT to FigJam, helping you take your ideas (and meetings) further. One of the delights of using a Large Language Model (LLM), like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, is its ability to simulate the act of riffing—bouncing ideas back and forth in a way that feels spontaneous, light, and conversational, but with a supercharged bank of knowledge.
Design × AI Briefing August 23
Four Things On The Design × AI Frontier. "Design × AI Briefing August 23" is published by John Maeda.
How To Use Microsoft Fabric with Semantic Kernel
August 14th, 2023 For lovers of Microsoft Fabric as their data tool of choice, there’s a terrific post up on the Fabric blog on how to get started using Semantic Kernel with your “Lakehouse” of choice. Semantic Kernel is used for the “AI Orchestration” layer in the Copilot Stack as featured at Build 2023. Kinfey Lo details how to use Azure Blob Storage, where unstructured documents are often stored, to start.
Hungry, Efficient, Resilient, Enlightened
I knew my parents as always sooo tired. If AI could have enabled them to take more breathers, boss around their hard-working children less <wink>, and/or help the business to make more money so that maybe their kids didn't have to work for free <extra wink>. I would have really loved that kind of AI. And this new kind of AI feels like it might be able to do the job - if aimed in the right directions.
Open at Microsoft: Semantic Kernel
Semantic Kernel is a new AI SDK, and a simple and yet powerful programming model that lets you add large language capabilities to your app in just a matter of minutes. It uses natural language prompting to create and execute semantic kernel AI tasks across multiple languages and platforms.
Semantic Kernel Roadmap: Fall Release Preview
July 7th, 2023 The Semantic Kernel team is thrilled to present the fall 2023 release plan for Semantic Kernel. Our focus is on delivering key developments and enhancements across three pillars: open source and trustworthiness, reliability and performance, and integration of the latest AI innovations. To ensure openness and trust, we are adopting the OpenAI Plugin open standard, allowing users to create plugins that seamlessly work across OpenAI, Semantic Kernel, and the Microsoft platform.
Enhancing AI Models with Chroma: A Conversation with CEO Jeff Huber
July 6th, 2023 To use Chroma with Semantic Kernel, visit the sample notebook on the Semantic Kernel GitHub repo. And if you like the repo, please give it a star! In this interview with Jeff Huber, CEO and co-founder of Chroma, a leading AI-native vector database, Jeff discusses how Chroma bridges the gap between AI models and production by leveraging embeddings and offering powerful document retrieval capabilities.
Revolutionizing AI Search with Weaviate: An Interview with CEO Bob van Luijt
July 4th, 2023 To use Weaviate with Semantic Kernel, visit the sample notebook on the Semantic Kernel GitHub repo. And if you like the repo, please give it a star! In this interview, Bob van Luijt, CEO and co-founder of Weaviate, shares his journey from starting an internet business at a young age to co-founding Weaviate. Bob discusses the inspiration behind Weaviate, its integration with AI SDKs like Semantic Kernel, and its role in the future of LLMs (Large Language Models).
My Four Favorite Design Quotes In The Age Of LLM AI
By John Maeda There are four quotes that have stayed with me for the last 30+ years, that I'm pulling out of the past for the upcoming 2023 #DesignInTech Report on Design and Artificial Intelligence. One is by the late Nobel laureate and CMU AI pioneer Dr. Herbert Simon (1916-2001) who had an impact on economics and design, in addition to computer science. And the second is by MIT...
A Life of Tech, Design and Computational Thinking on Apple Podcasts
Show Danielle Newnham Podcast, Ep John Maeda: A Life of Tech, Design and Computational Thinking - 26 Oct 2022
Dr. John Maeda on LinkedIn: JUST DO IT: “You’re not useful to me until you’ve made three momentous
JUST DO IT: "You're not useful to me until you've made three momentous mistakes." -Dan Wieden (1945-2022) I got to know Dan (of "Just do it." Nike fame) when he pulled me into the W+K board where I learned his unique management and business philosophies.
El valor de la simplicidad
02:48 Cualquiera que tenga hijos, o sobrinas y sobrinos, sabe que, cuando son pequeños, están dibujando sin parar. Están siendo creativos. Y lo hacen sin ceñirse a la forma correcta de dibujar algo. Si dibujan un caballo, es un óvalo morado con 20 patas. Y es un caballo y están muy orgullosos de él. Y como padre, o tío o tía, dices: “Qué caballo tan bonito”. Y cuando te lo dan, es como si fuese un tesoro. Así que el arte tiene un valor sentimental y es diferente.
Stable Diffusion-What's The Big Deal?
By John Maeda I installed Stable Diffusion locally on my Mac over the weekend in 20 minutes. For anyone who remembers typing TURN OFF LIGHT SWITCH while playing the text-adventure game Zork-instead of typing 10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD" because there were no programs to run besides the ones you could make yourself-you recall the feeling of being drawn into an alternate universe. I think it's because back then we were so accustomed to talking to the computer in...
Where should you lead from? The front? The back? Or the side? Answer: A Fourth Option
By John Maeda Post-it illustration on Leadership by John Maeda When leading where your teams are going, you also need to know whether they're following. -A Fourth Option for leaders to take As a "maker" of things, I've never been a "leading from the front" kind of person and...
The Best Books on Design
What is design? And how is it different, for example, from, say, Graphic Art? It’s definitely a big question, and one that I tried to answer in my book, Reimagining Design: Unlocking Strategic Innovation. For me, design has always represented a unique problem-solving capability, to see opportunities from a creative vantage point. That’s how I’ve leveraged design in my work and how I’ve learned design.
Unlocking Strategic Innovation (Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life) : Bethune, Kevin G., Maeda, John: Amazon.es: Libros
Compara precios en Amazon Añadir a la cesta Ver cesta 23,45 € + 6,00 € de envío Vendido por: Rarewaves ES Añadir a la cesta Ver cesta 23,44 € + 10,81 € de envío Vendido por: The_Book_Depository_ES
5 mistakes I made my first year as a content designer
Photo by Angelina Litvin on Unsplash And I hope you get to make them too. From the outside, it seems like the content design community has it all figured out. Medium articles confidently lined with titles like “New call-to-action text that helped my team save a million dollars,” or deciphering design lingo like “Writing for cold states to improve accessibility through lean UX,” can make these spaces in tech feel obscure and almost secretive.
Risky Business: Weighing both threats and opportunities is the key
But perhaps the pandemic has made me lazy, because instead of buying more books I’ve started watching YouTube videos. I’ve especially enjoyed looking at Dr. David Hillson’s videos to extract key lessons from his career in risk management. He boils it down to three questions: What are your objectives? What events in the future might positively or negatively impact your goals? Which event scenarios are most likely and most important to you?
The key to life is earning the right to always be told that, “You have potential.”
Until that point, I hadn’t considered how age-ism operates in our world. And yet I knew that whenever I imagined an older person, I’d think of someone who was keeled over, hard of hearing, and cantankerous in some way — which is how the TV and movies always seemed to depict them.
Technology Disrupts at Two Different Speeds
Image courtesy of the author Ten years ago I spoke at a Marketing Technology (aka “martech”) event that was held at the fancy New York Times auditorium; a famous Harvard economist was the keynote speaker. Although his remarks weren’t long, they certainly made an impression on me. I’ve held onto what he said and have tried to find the source material for the points he raised, with no success.
This Is What A Harvard Economist Warned Me About A Decade Ago
Although his remarks weren’t long, they certainly made an impression on me. I’ve held onto what he said and have tried to find the source material for the points he raised, with no success. It went something like this (please excuse my paraphrasing that is likely not proper Harvard economist-speak): Imagine you are the greatest country in the world. You can manufacture and deliver any kind or size of object anywhere in the world at a speed and level of quality better than any other.
The One, Simple Secret To A Successful Career
My mom was always busy running the tofu store with my father, and as a big fan of Elvis she always wanted to keep tabs on his latest resurrection from the grave. So whenever she rushed through the shopping line at the supermarket, that’s when she would pick up her newspaper. As a result, I developed a strong interest in Bigfoot, UFOs, and of course the Loch Ness Monster.
I Broke Up with Design, But Now We’re Getting Back Together
SXSW is in March 2021 and so the annual CX.Report is coming soon … That became particularly obvious to me when I bumped into a collection of my old “design-isms” over on my main site, design.co. There’s a list of my design tweets from the early days of Twitter, before anybody really cared about Twitter too much. Back in the 00s, there weren’t a lot of @people on Twitter, so it was a productive karaoke mike for me to test out ideas in what I felt was a safe place.
Machines Are Trained to Narrow Our Views, Not Broaden Them
“And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation.
Digital transformations fail because they miss the difference that just four letters can make
If you look in a conventional dictionary, the definition of “digitalization” reads: “Digitalization: The act or process of converting from analog to digital.” — Wordnik And for “digitization” it reads: “Digitization: The conversion of data or information from analog to digital or binary.” — Wordnik So if you grow up in the normal world where dictionaries matter, you’re not going to immediately make a distinction between the two words.
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