From LinkedIn

May 3, 2026

From LinkedIn

This month I left industry to start a PhD at Mila and Université de Montréal, working with Prof. Ian Arawjo on Human-Centered AI for design ideation.

When I was younger I thought I would be a mathematician. I became a musician instead, and while I didn’t see it at the time, I think it was for good reason. Music, the way I approached it anyway, was problem solving. Whether I was on stage or in the studio, or writing for film and television, I was always asking some form of the same question: “does this work?”

It wasn’t until I started working with engineers that I noticed they were doing the same kind of thing: building something, testing it against an idea, and adjusting. Problem solving. That led me to product, which is the discipline of finding and defining the problems worth solving in the first place. I guess I’ve always been obsessed with “the problem.”

Researching design processes feels like going deeper on the same thread. Design is problem definition and solution at once. Donald Schön called it “the problem of constructing the problem.”

How AI fits into the picture is not straightforward. Most AI assistants try to do the thinking for you. Design requires the opposite: it’s the work of an individual coming to grips with a problem of their own construction. A design assistant, as I see it, must be something that helps you think.

The clearest version of this I’ve seen was in music. A good producer helps the artist get their own ideas out; what Socrates called the maieutic, after the Greek for midwifery. That’s the relationship I want to study, and eventually build.

If you work on design tools, AI for creative or knowledge work, or if any of this resonates, I’d love to talk.