In this episode of Catalyst, Jod Kaftan sits down with Shelley Evenson, an academic service design pioneer, management consultant and designing-for-AI advisor. Shelley’s career spans Accenture, Fjord, Facebook and Microsoft. Today she is an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon’s School of Design. Jod and Shelley explore what it means to keep humans at the helm as agentic systems become part of everyday work.
Highlights from the episode include:
- Flow is the antidote to slop. Borrowing from the concept of flow, Shelley describes the ideal state of human-AI collaboration as one of productive challenge and deep absorption. The goal is not removing effort. The goal is better thinking and better outcomes.
- Humans at the helm. Shelley prefers thinking of AI as a semi-autonomous collaborator rather than a tool. The sailing metaphor says it best: you can work with the wind, but you can never let go of the tiller. Stepping back entirely is how agents run amok.
- The opportunity to redesign attention. AI power users are not just doing old tasks faster. They are using AI to sharpen their focus, question their priorities and push their thinking further than they would alone. That is the upside worth measuring.
Check out the full episode to hear why user research is still necessary and what the Super Bowl halftime show has to do with optimism about AI in 2026.
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Please note that the views expressed in this episode may not necessarily be those of NTT DATA.
Episode hosts and guests
