Ioana Teleanu is running the Design Wellbeing Index, a rigorous, anonymous study of how designers are actually feeling in the AI moment, and we talk about why she built it the hard way, why the site is designed around a blur, and why adding your voice matters. Share how you're feeling: take the survey at https://designwellbeingindex.com/ (12 to 15 minutes, closes November 10, 2026).

Ioana (UX Goodies, formerly Miro and UiPath) brought in a PhD researcher and accepted clinical scales rather than running another Instagram poll, made the whole thing anonymous, and worked hard not to lead with doom so that the enthusiasts show up alongside the exhausted. From there we wander into the parts of this moment nobody has a clean answer for: AI as a comfortable echo chamber, algorithms that reward the extremes and bury nuance, what it means to feed a family as a creator, holding your identity apart from your employer, and the strange paralysis of being able to build anything at all.

Highlights

• 05:55 Why a PhD researcher and an accepted burnout scale, not a poll
• 18:23 The website is designed around the blur
• 36:38 "I wanna know if I live in the same reality as other people"
• 51:17 Casino design, presence, and asking an AI for ten viral posts
• 53:45 From "I work at Miro" to "I'm a creator"
• 1:07:40 Two futures: community councils and a boardroom with data

Share how you're feeling about this moment: take the Design Wellbeing Index survey at https://designwellbeingindex.com/. Anonymous, 12 to 15 minutes, closes November 10, 2026. Then pass it to your team and your design friends.

Ioana's music picks: Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Headache.

Find Ioana

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/uxgoodies/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ioanateleanu/
• X: https://x.com/uxgoodies
• AI Goodies newsletter: https://aigoodies.beehiiv.com/
• Honest UX Talks podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/honest-ux-talks/id1547832809
• AI for Designers (Interaction Design Foundation): https://www.ixdf.org/courses/ai-for-designers

Chapters

• 00:00 Intro
• 00:37 What has Ioana waking up excited
• 02:55 Ioana's origin story and the Design Wellbeing Index
• 05:20 Building a rigorous, anonymous study
• 12:18 Framing the study for both positive and negative views
• 17:08 Designing the website around the blur
• 20:41 What the Design Wellbeing Index measures
• 30:08 Our responsibility to contribute to the collective voice
• 37:38 Shared reality, community, and AI isolation
• 42:31 Polarization and social media algorithms
• 50:33 Being a creator and feeding a family
• 55:47 Identity beyond your employer
• 59:39 Leaving corporate paths and new careers
• 1:05:02 Choice paralysis and productive procrastination
• 1:07:30 Hopes for the study a year from now
• 1:12:36 Call to action and results timeline
• 1:21:58 Where to follow Ioana

What does it take to make a design system useful to AI agents? Kaelig Deloumeau-Prigent joins me to talk through his State of AI in Design Systems report and try its audit tools on Eddie, the design system Ian and I are building.

We explore how MCP servers, documentation, and agent skills connect AI tools to design systems, then get into the practical work of keeping those foundations useful. We also talk about the design engineer job hunt and the pressure AI-generated contributions put on open source maintainers.

In this conversation:
- Making a design system available to AI-assisted workflows
- Auditing Eddie and exploring what to improve
- Keeping documentation current through feedback
- Working at the intersection of design and engineering

Music pick: bassist Kinga Głyk.

Resources
Kaelig: https://www.kaelig.fr/
State of AI in Design Systems: https://state-of-ai-in-design-systems.netlify.app/
Kinga Głyk: https://kingaglyk.com/

Prefer to see the live audit? Watch the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKSAsRqb6LE

Follow Wake Up Excited! in your podcast app for more conversations about living an exuberant, creative, and fulfilling life.

Recorded August 14, 2026. Job-search and event references reflect that conversation.

Andy Clarke shares what excites him lately, sparking memories of his early photography career and frequent trips to Schaffhausen. His pivot from art school and darkroom work into technical sales, and lessons about good selling as an art of solving real problems. The discussion moves to creative storytelling on the web, focus and distraction habits, challenges with open-plan offices, and how he’s built a work life around late-night rhythms and self-managed attention. Clarke also reflects on family history, his father’s suicide and trauma, changing views on mental health and heredity, and a desire to do more consequential political or social work while relearning how to create for pleasure.

Topics:

• (00:00) - Introduction
• (01:17) - Rebuilding The Sinar Camera
• (08:28) - Pre Digital Car Shoots
• (14:28) - Sales Lessons That Stick
• (27:15) - Storytelling On The Web
• (37:10) - Writing Needs Silence
• (48:45) - Designing Your Rhythm with ADHD
• (01:08:01) - Turning 60 Reflections
• (01:12:36) - Mr Rogers Envy
• (01:17:49) - Providing vs Purpose
• (01:25:30) - Objects as Memory Anchors
• (01:40:43) - Music Picks and Billy Bragg
• (01:45:42) - Where to Follow

• Up (2009 film)
• Love Story (1970 film)
• Philadelphia (1993 film)
• Mister Rogers' Neighborhood
• Mister Rogers biography
• Billy Bragg
• Motörhead
• Meat Loaf
• Led Zeppelin
• Miranda Lambert
• Megan Moroney
• The Rolling Stones
• Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
• Wilco
• Woody Guthrie
• Bat Out of Hell
• Between the Wars
• Power in a Union
• Unfinished Business
• stuffandnonsense.co.uk
• Sinar P2
• Schneider Super-Angulon
• IWC Schaffhausen
• Rolex
• Hermès
• Rickenbacker
• Gibson Les Paul
• iPod Classic
• Game Boy
• Tiffany & Co.
• Amazon
• David Hockney
• Jeremy Keith
• Preston North End F.C.