Near Future Podcast
A regular podcast covering design and AI from the founders of Near Future, a boutique AI consultancy focused on teams that care about craft. It covers both what they're seeing on the ground and industry trends, ways of working, and occasional guests from the design world.
Episodes
Ep #13: Randy Hunt (Notion & SVA): Speed as a Quality Strategy, Killing the Handoff, and Teaching Design in the AI Era
Tom and Jonny sit down with Randy Hunt, Head of Design at Notion and chair of MFA Design at SVA. They dig into why speed and quality were never a trade-off, unpack the weekend build that turned into a two-week code review, and go behind the scenes of how a graduate design programme is rewriting itself around AI.Chapters0:04 — Two institutions, one calendar: how Randy keeps both plates spi
Ep #12: James Storer (Monzo): Fake Banks, Real Learning, and Being Monzo's Biggest Token Burner
Tom and Jonny sit down with James Storer, who leads design in Monzo's AI and personalisation collective and is the biggest token burner in the whole company. They dig into the fake Monzo his team built to prototype with, why he stepped off the leadership track to get back in the tools, and what he went to Config to ask Figma.CHAPTERS00:00 Introducing James Storer02:12 Why go back to doing
Ep #11: No Shortcuts. Backyard Designers, AI Slop, and the Leadership Squeeze
Tom and Jonny are back for a duo episode after a month of guest interviews — Jonny has just about got the internet back after a house move and a camping trip. They reflect on what the recent guest run has taught them, dig into Backyard Designers Club and the hooha it sparked, and talk through why design and engineering leadership is such a hard place to be right now. Plus: Tom built a 3D
Ep #10: Ini Abiodun (AirOps): Designing at AI Startup Speed, Personal Workflows, and Palmwine Wireless
This week Jonny moves house, so Tom hosts solo. He’s joined by Ini Abiodun, lead product designer at AirOps, to discuss designing inside a fast-moving AI startup and the systems she’s built to move faster. Ini explains how her 90-day onboarding plan collapsed almost immediately due to pace, and how internal AI assistants like Fantino and Clara helped her learn the codebase, accelerate a l
Ep #9: Hollie Lubbock & Josh Payton (Wise): How Wise Is Rebuilding the Designer's Workflow for the Age of AI
Hollie Lubbock (Design Director) and Josh Payton (VP of Design) at Wise join Jonny and Tom on the Near Future Podcast to unpack how their design org has rewired itself around AI — from prototyping kits that let anyone "hold" an idea, to the hidden operational grind behind every flashy AI demo. They dig into why disciplines aren't collapsing (they're specializing further), why AI is "an av
Ep #8: Domingo Widen (Fin): Why Fin's designers now ship straight to production
Tom and Jonny are joined by Domingo Widen, Staff Product Designer on the Front-End Infrastructure team at Fin (formerly Intercom)Domingo shares how designers at Fin have moved from prototyping in sandboxes to shipping directly to production, and unpacks his team's mission to build the platform and tools that let every team move from concept to production faster with AI.The conversation tr
Ep #7: Going AI-first as a design org with Avi Ashkenazi, Senior Design Director at Deel
Tom and Jonny sit down with Avi Ashkenazi, Senior Product Design Director at Deel, for the podcast's first-ever guest episode. Avi shares the story behind Vidit, an internal screen-recording tool he built (and vibe-codes on weekends) that now has 600 daily users and 10,000+ videos produced — and which he's now made free for anyone at viddit.video.The conversation dives deep into Deel's AI
Ep#6: Figma Config, Source of Truth, and Craft in AI Adoption
Tom and Jonny share updates from Tom’s Mostly Working meetup in London with Kate Pincot (Multiverse), focused on scaling design impact through tooling and agents, and preview upcoming podcast guests in July.They reflect on how the meetup format has evolved as more people have hands-on AI experience, shifting from first experiments to practical, scaled adoption inside teams, with more focu
Ep#5: Are middle managers actually finished? Plus: personal software, Ideogram & Midjourney goes medical
Tom and Jonny are back for another wide-ranging episode. Jonny starts by recapping his golf trip to Mallorca — where a non-technical friend used Lovable to vibe-code a fully functional scoring app for their annual 16-man Ryder Cup-style tournament, the Stryder Cup. It's a perfect case study in personal software.From there, Tom brings a meaty topic: the "death of the middle manager" narrat
Ep4: Who Controls Your AI? Europe's Sovereignty Crisis and the Race to Build Independent Tools
Jonny and Tom dig into the uncomfortable reality of Europe's dependence on US-controlled AI — sparked by Anthropic's Fable 5 being banned outside America days after launch. They explore what the dystopian narrative Europe 2031 predicts for the continent, debate London's surprising rise as an AI talent hub, wrestle with what it means to build a business in the age of AI, and Tom reveals hi
Episode #3: Kazam! From 15 minute etch-a-sketch to 70 years of Eames
Tom and Jonny reflect on their live workshop at Product Unleashed in London, explore the history of designers building their own tools, and dig into how AI can be used as a counterbalance to your own working style — not just an amplifier.ChaptersBuilding a Design Tool in 15 Minutes at Product UnleashedTom and Jonny recap the workshop they ran at Product Unleashed, where they built retro d
Episode #2: AI, Figma's Future, and Why Design Teams Need to Find Their Own Path
Tom and Jonny dig into the outcomes of Tom's Mostly Working event featuring James Storer from Monzo, unpacking how leading design teams are using AI not to ship faster, but to learn faster — and why the language of "design vs. product" is getting in the way. They get into the state of Figma: is it losing its grip on the design workflow, or is it actually thriving? And they draw an unexpec
Pilot: Tom and Jonny find their feet (and microphones)
Near Future Podcast – Pilot EpisodeWelcome to the Near Future Podcast, where Tom and Jonny explore what they're building, learning, and experimenting with as AI reshapes how we work.In this episode:Agentic Murder MysteryJonny walks through his experiment building a six-agent murder mystery game using NanoClaw. He created a cast of AI suspects — each with their own secrets, personalities,
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