As design organizations race to adopt AI, many still measure readiness through tool fluency — who can use ChatGPT, Claude, or Figma Make the fastest. But tools, as we’ve learned, are ephemeral. The deeper challenge is defining the durable human capabilities that remain valuable as AI fundamentally reshapes design work.

This talk explores a new approach to AI readiness for design organizations: moving beyond tool proficiency to identify the underlying skills, competencies, and capabilities that scale across changing technologies. We’ll examine the distinction between skills and capabilities, the process of building an AI capability framework for design, and how we’re mapping designers against those competencies to establish a baseline and path forward.

This session offers a practical, human-centered model for building resilient, AI-augmented design organizations — grounded in durable capability, not temporary tooling trends.