As generative AI becomes increasingly embedded in how we design and build products at ServiceNow, I wanted to step back and better understand the fundamentals behind the tools we’re using every day. While I’ve delivered AI-enabled features in prior roles, the pace and scale of AI adoption across initiatives like CPEx's OneX initiative, along with earlier internal explorations such as the Sales coaching demo, prompted me to cut through the noise and get clearer on what we’re actually working with.
This article reflects how I’ve been grounding my day-to-day design and platform work in core AI concepts to inform both tactical decisions and longer-term strategy. Rather than focusing on surface-level tools or techniques, I explore the underlying principles, such as loss or gradient descent, that shape generative systems and draw parallels to how design has always evolved through cycles of learning, iteration, and sense-making. My goal was to share a mental model that helps product designers and experience strategists navigate this shift more thoughtfully, both in our work at ServiceNow and across the broader industry.
Check it out on UX Collective: From design to direction: Bridging product design and AI thinking