Who Gets to Decide?
An evening workshop for designers to build their voice, judgement and influence around AI
Sea Lanes, Brighton
Wednesday 23 September, 6-9pm
Food + a drink included.
Decisions about AI are being made quickly. A competitor shipped something. There’s pressure to replace robust research with something faster. Someone senior wants a bot. And by the time design gets involved, the question can already feel settled.
Designers shouldn’t just inherit those decisions. We should be part of making them.
Who Gets to Decide? is a practical evening for working out where you stand on AI, building the judgement to make a case for it, and practising how to have more influence over what happens next.
Because this isn’t about being the most technical person in the room. It’s about being one of the clearest thinkers.
And because that’s the d.MBA way: not an evening of sitting and listening, an evening of working it through.
Timetable
6:00pm
Doors, drinks.
Arrive from 6pm to settle in, grab some food and a drink, and meet the other people in the room, including the hosts and panellists. We’ll start promptly at 6:30pm.
We’re creating a friendly, relaxed atmosphere where people can try things out, talk things through and be practical together. It mirrors how we teach at d.MBA: learning by doing, with other people, in a space where you can test an idea without needing to have the perfect answer.
There’ll be grazing tables from Wood X Coal at Sea Lanes, with food available from 6pm.
6:30pm
Panel: who’s making the decisions about AI?
A short conversation about where power is moving as AI changes the economics of design: who is deciding what gets built, where designers are entering those conversations, and where we need to get involved earlier.
With James Box, Melin Edomwonyi, and Alen Faljić, co-founder of d.MBA. Hosted by Tom Prior, d.MBA.
7:00pm
Workshop: Navigating AI Politics for Design Leads & Product Teams.
This is the heart of the evening. Working in small groups, Melin Edomwonyi will take you through the decisions designers are increasingly being asked to make around AI: where it creates genuine user value, what it costs to maintain, what happens to the data, and what to do when the rationale doesn’t hold up.
You’ll practise ways of getting stakeholder conversations away from hype and back to the actual problem. You’ll test your assumptions alongside other designers. And you’ll work out what your own position actually is.
It’s quick-fire, friendly and properly participatory. Melin first ran the session for designers at Hatch’s Leadership Ateliers in Berlin and is one of those facilitators who can get a room of strangers talking like colleagues in about ten minutes.
You don’t need to arrive pro-AI or sceptical of it. That isn’t the point. The point is to leave with a position that’s actually yours: and the judgement and language to make it count.
Leave with more than notes.
A five-step AI decision checklist: a practical way to evaluate proposed AI features across user value, maintenance cost and data responsibility.
Language for the room: tested phrases for getting stakeholder conversations back from hype to the actual problem.
Your own AI manifesto: a written position on what you will and won’t advocate for, so you leave knowing what you think and why.
Find your position. Build your case. Have a say in what comes next.
Feedback from Melin's workshop'
“The speaker was exceptional: great energy, sharp moderation, and a real ability to push the room to think critically.”
“The atmosphere in that room was simply incredible. I especially loved how engaging, collaborative and open-minded the session was!”
“Melin was one of the best facilitators I’ve seen: opinionated, while creating an atmosphere where every single person contributed their own point of view.”
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Melin Edomwonyi is a Cardiff-based Creative / UX Director and founder of Seedable Studio, where she bridges the gap between high-end digital design and sustainable, human-centred technology. With a career spanning London, Turkey and Wales, Melin has established herself as a powerhouse in the UK creative scene, most notably as the long-standing host of CreativeMornings/Cardiff.
A fierce advocate for diversity in tech and leadership, Melin is known for building inclusive communities and for her deep expertise in UX strategy for the digital sector. Whether she’s discussing the ethics of digital sustainability, the nuances of UX design or leadership, Melin brings a candid, insightful and globally minded perspective to the table. She most recently ran this workshop at Hatch’s Leadership Ateliers in Berlin. -
Head of Experience Design for On Running’s newly formed AI Lab. Previously co-founder of Berst, where he led product strategy across market opportunities, customer needs and what a new product is actually worth. Before that, James was Director of Experience Design at Clearleft, where he sat on the board and co-curated UX London and Leading Design. Co-author of Undercover UX Design, and a d.MBA alumnus.
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Founder of d.MBA, the business school for designers. An ex-IDEO business designer, he’s spent his career at the intersection of design and business: first practising it, then teaching it. Since founding d.MBA in 2017 he’s taken over a thousand designers through the programme, across more than fifty countries, and built the company deliberately slowly: no investors, no exit plan.
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Programme Director at d.MBA and a d.MBA alumnus himself. A freelance designer and strategist with over twenty years in the industry, he runs the cohorts, the coaching, and the community.
SPEAKERS & HOST
Who it’s for
Designers, researchers and people working across product: deliberately mixed seniority.
You might be a freelancer trying to have a better conversation with a client. A designer being handed AI decisions downstream. A researcher watching assumptions replace evidence. Or a design lead trying to influence decisions being made above your team.
You don’t need “lead” in your job title. You just need to care about having a say in what gets built.
£30, including food and a drink.
This is a small, intimate one: capped at 40 people, because it’s a workshop, not a webinar. The room is deliberately mixed: designers, researchers and product people at different stages of their careers, working through the same questions together.
Sea Lanes, 300 Madeira Drive, Brighton BN2 1BX. Wednesday 23 September, 6:00-9:00pm.