When her partner's medical residency relocated them to San Diego, she reached out to Metalab — a decision that would shape the next decade of her career. Despite falling in love with the opportunity and the team during a visit to Victoria, Canada, she initially turned down their offer to prioritize what was best for her family at that moment.

What happened next speaks to both Sara's character and Metalab's culture: they offered her a year-long remote advisory role, understanding her circumstances and keeping the door open in the years that followed. By 2019, when life brought her to Hawaii and Metalab had evolved into a more remote-friendly organization, timing was on their collective sides. Sara joined as the Director of Design, eventually rising to her current role as Chief Design Officer, overseeing research and strategy, product design, and brand design for a global team spanning from Australia to Amsterdam. 

Now, as AI reshapes the design landscape, Sara is continuing to lead Metalab’s distributed, talented team of creatives, and I had the pleasure of chatting with her before she hits the stage at Webflow Conf later this month. We chatted about everything from her lessons in leadership to shifting client expectations, as well as why she believes it’s critical to make space for human creativity.

You've been leading design teams through some of the most rapid technological shifts we've ever seen. What's one fundamental assumption about design that you've had to completely rethink as the web has evolved?

One of the first things that comes to mind is actually something important that hasn't changed in order to live through this “moment” — whether you’re a leader, a contributor, or a practitioner. And that’s this idea of flexibility, openness, and continuously trying to improve. AI puts a real magnifying glass on this, but you always have to be somebody who's willing to up your game and be willing to take constructive criticism and the hard feedback in stride.

The thing that has changed for me is the definition of craft. The definition of craft, especially way back in the day, for anybody who actually remembers pre-Figma days and pre-vector-based days of design, is this idea that the more time and attention — all those blood, sweat, and tears you put into something — the better it was. And that's not necessarily the case anymore.

There's a whole new opportunity to redefine what craft actually means, as long as what you're producing with AI in the process and for AI-based products is something that really maps to user needs, business goals, and has that more-important-than-ever taste layer.

Perhaps we prompted it in an hour, and that still can be craft in my definition of what craft is, but you have to take a really deep, hard look at what the outcomes are, rather than time intentionally spent.

We're seeing clients come to design firms with completely different expectations than they had even two years ago. Have client briefs offered a window into how their expectations have shifted?

At the end of the day, the brief is always about an interesting business problem to solve, and that will hopefully align with a human interest and user needs. But it's not the briefs that are changing; it's the stakes, in my opinion.

The expectations on all sides are heightened. The pressure, especially for a lot of early-stage startups, has changed, and the pressure for enterprise businesses has also changed because they're constantly asking us, "What does AI mean for my business? What should I do?" And they want that guidance from people who are in the thick of it every day. 

We're in a moment when making meaning sets apart businesses that win. And that can even be making meaning with a very straightforward productivity tool. Doing so with something that is, on the surface, boring, still creates an incredible “aha” moment — one that hits on that emotional element of what people are looking for. And because there's so much crap out there, being able to do that — resonate and connect — is more important than ever. 

When you're hiring or developing talent, what's one capability or skill you look for today that wasn't on your radar five years ago?

We've always looked for the right combination of hard and soft skills, and I don't necessarily love either of those terms because it others the skills that make you really human and able to both work well and relate with others. 

That hasn’t changed, but we're equally looking at those soft skills that might be even arguably more important as we start to see AI be able to do the things that only hard skills could do. A really great example: we definitely hire super talented designers with 3D skill sets, but as AI starts to be able to essentially output 3D designs, a lot of which are total slop — big, big underline — there are outputs that can actually be manipulated by a human touch and make them usable.

There's this idea of, okay, if AI can get me 75% there, whereas we used to have to start completely from scratch with a ton of manual effort, there's a moment where that hard skill set requirement changes. Then there’s the soft skill of being able to get people excited about the idea, and then you need to have the taste layer of it all to know when that AI is giving you total crap or giving you something that's actually usable — that's how developing design talent has changed a lot. 

How do you maintain what makes human creativity irreplaceable while also embracing tools that can accelerate the work?

I tend to loathe the idea of measuring design velocity. I think that when you start to do that, you actually take the magic away, and the magic is when you get those big unlock moments that literally change the game. 

People don't hire us to produce something that looks cookie cutter. They hire us to really understand how to get to that deeply seated user need and human truth and find a creative path towards that. 

It's not perfect, but I honestly try to figure out every way of fighting tooth and nail for the space for people to be able to use their creativity. Sometimes a time constraint actually produces something that's unexpected and beautiful, but there's also moments that beg for space in the creative process. If you don't, why bother? Why not just go use a template? 

Don't get me wrong: that doesn't mean that we can totally ignore deadlines or realities regarding delivering on something that actually impacts a business. But there’s tension because a lot of designers are also super artistic or artists, but our work is not art. It is a different practice that does need constraints.

If it's not art, this gives us the ability to remove our ego and identity from the work we're doing a little bit, too. This is ultimately really freeing because you remove a lot of the pressure that comes from the mindset of "I'm only as good as the thing that I create." As designers, you have to create something that is influenced by many other people, users, the business itself, the clients themselves, and the business goal itself. Art does not function in that way. So when you remove that from yourself, there's a freedom in that. 

If you had to give one piece of advice to a design leader who's feeling overwhelmed by all the technological change happening right now, what would it be?

Being super curious about it all is one thing, but ultimately, you do you is my biggest piece of advice. There's always going to be too much. We're in a world of too much, and so you need to develop your filter for how you want to take what's happening in the space and build it into your practice. 

Now, you want to make sure that the filter keeps you relevant. Stay curious and use that curiosity along with the things that you're learning along the way to build your own filter. Don't worry about everybody else. You have to do your own thing. When it feels authentic, it's easy, and it's fun. When it feels inauthentic, it feels like pulling teeth. 

What does your gut say? What's your intuition say? How are you going to feel about your design decisions at the end of the day? That's your call and in your control. There's something unique we all have to share that's innate and deeply inside of us that makes us who we are as humans. Trust in yourself.

Sara Vienna is the Chief Design Officer at Metalab. To hear more about her perspectives on design, creativity, and AI, she’ll be hitting the stage at Webflow Conf on September 17th for her exclusive breakout session, “Ctrl+Alt+Design: Rebooting creativity in the age of AI.” You won’t want to miss it and any of the amazing programming we have in store, so be sure to register for the free online event today!