Designing with AI

Dan Sozanski · Staff Product Designer, Meta Reality Labs

Thursday, Aug 6, 2026 · 6:30 PM · Root Down · Phoenixville

Dan Sozanski on designing with AI: what changes for the craft of product design when the tools can generate, and where human judgment still decides everything. A working designer's take, not a hype reel.

Speaker Series #2 is in the books! Dan Sozanski walked a full room through how AI has changed his day-to-day design practice: why so much AI-generated design lands as slop, and the three ways he gets past it: prompts you talk out instead of type, component libraries like 21st.dev, and a DESIGN.md that teaches an agent your whole design language. He used that system end to end on the Planetize rebrand. The questions kept coming well past the Q&A slide, which is exactly how we like it.

Dan's full deck is below. Thanks to Dan for the talk, and to everyone who came out. The next one is Thursday, August 20, when Kateri Waltermeyer will show us how to train an AI image model on your own products and brand.

Group selfie of the Greater Philly AI attendees at Root Down

An attendee asking Dan a question during the Q&A

The Designing with AI title slide projected on the mural

The audience at Root Down watching the talk

Dan walking through his product design work

Dan taking questions in front of the Q&A slide

An audience member asking a question from the back of the room

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