Jenna Fizel

Don't watch AI — build with it.

Maker-technologist who demystifies. Hands-on and hype-allergic.

Jenna Fizel leads IDEO's Emerging Technology practice, working across computational design, XR and digital fabrication. Her instinct is to make new technology tangible fast. At SXSW she ran a session where the audience used custom AI tools to collectively author a manifesto in the room — the point being that participation teaches you things spectating never will. At last year’s Summit she ran a lively experiment on collective decision making and perspective taking with AI involved. Chaotic, yes, but we learned a lot!

Her recent writing with Savannah Kunovsky makes an argument we support: AI does not think like us, and that is precisely what makes it worth designing with. The gap is the useful part, not a defect to be engineered away.

"Build to find out" is designing under uncertainty as a working method — using tools as probes into questions you cannot answer in advance.

You'll take away: the confidence to stop waiting. She'll show you how to run a small, cheap experiment against a question you have been churning forever, and how to interpret the result — the antidote to organizations still forming a committee about AI strategy.

ONE READ — "AI doesn't think like us. That's what makes it worth designing with," IDEO Edges, with Savannah Kunovsky.