As a designer research working on Conversational AI products, I’ve been collaborating with AI Researchers (Computer Scientists) and ML engineers. The cross-pollination of our two research disciplines – i.e., I bring my design thinking, storytelling, qualitative research and thick data analysis lens, while the Computer Scientists bring their logical reasoning, modeling and coding, and big data analysis lens – has resulted in a much smarter and more empathetic AI product, as well as innovations in the Cognitive AI domain. I’ll share three use cases of how we human researchers collaborate with the AI researchers and the lessons learned.