Originally posted on Proof of Concept One of the most anticipated sequels during my younger years was The Matrix: Reloaded, the follow-up to the 1999 Keanu Reeves film that had already cemented itself as a sci-fi classic. Though visually stunning with high-octane action scenes, I felt underwhelmed by it, but this is not a movie review. One of the characters they introduced was Seraph, a pivotal protector in the world of The Matrix. I learned years later that the role was designed for legendary martial artist Jet Li, who rejected the role, which eventually went to Collin Chou. Li turned down the role because the filmmakers wanted to digitally capture and own his martial arts choreography. While the opportunity was massive, Li balked at the idea that a studio could archive his movements, effectively owning his life’s work and repurposing it indefinitely. “We martial artists can only grow older,” he said, “yet they could own (my moves) as intellectual property forever.” In hindsight, Li’s refusal feels remarkably prescient. What he resisted then is now at the heart of conversations around generative AI and digital likeness. NCAA Football 1999 and games before the NIL case only showed numbers, not the names of the players. Attribution and credit to any craft is not a new phenomenon. In collegiate sports, there was a decade-plus-long lawsuit known as the Ed O’Bannon case, which challenged the NCAA’s ban on compensating college athletes for the use of their name, image, and likeness (NIL), after O’Bannon saw himself featured in an EA Sports video game without pay. The 2014 ruling found that the NCAA’s rules violated antitrust laws, helping pave the way for future NIL reforms. It marked a turning point in how college athletes are viewed, not just as students, but as individuals with marketable rights. Despite the “win” of the case, the players eligible for the lawsuit outcome were only compensated with less than $10,000 as a one-time payment. In 2016, Star Wars: Rogue One was released with a scene of the iconic Grand Moff Tarkin in the prequel to A New Hope. There was one issue, however: Peter Cushing, the legendary actor who portrayed the Imperial commander, passed away 22 years prior. What was released was a CGI-generated portrayal of the actor with quite an uncanny valley. As models increasingly train on the labor of artists, writers, and performers, new questions emerge around consent, ownership, and compensation. Li’s stance wasn’t just about martial arts; it was about control over the soul of your craft in a world where replication is effortless. That tension is now at scale. When everyone can build _everything_ with AI, the scarcity shifts. Execution is no longer the bottleneck— _taste_ , _judgment_ , and _originality_ are. And that’s why I believe foundational human skills are becoming the new currency. Take H&M’s announcement that they’ll create digital twins of 30 models. While the models retain rights to their likeness, key jobs in greater iconic photoshoots, such as photographers, stylists, and the rest of the crew, could be rendered obsolete. What happens when the commercial value of a person becomes detached from their physical presence? This may sound like science fiction, but it’s already unfolding. When technology commoditizes an industry, one of three paths tends to occur. The first is that the entire industry may collapse entirely, replaced by more efficient systems. Computer word processing did this to the typewriter industry. The second path may be the remaining artifacts of the disrupted industry that increase in value due to scarcity, such as mechanical watches in the digital watch age. Third, entirely new economies and creative surfaces emerge from the disruption. I’m not arguing for one outcome over another, but these are the common patterns we see. As generative AI continues to expand what’s possible for anyone to create, the most valuable asset may no longer be how much you can produce, but the quality, meaning, and how uniquely you think. Foundational skills like discernment, storytelling, and design intuition are no longer just ways to shape output. They _are_ the product. * * * ## Commoditizing your skills Consider this: we are doing this already in a mundane way without AI. Any person selling a course, doing consulting, or selling a digital product in any way is commoditizing their skills they believe are valuable. ### Licensing human intelligence We’ve long accepted that musicians can license beats, melodies, and samples. But what happens when we start applying that model to cognition? Imagine a future where a UX designer licenses their way of solving interface problems—an aesthetic judgment API. Or a therapist licenses their method of guiding a conversation, embodied in a chatbot that mimics their voice and approach. This isn’t about monetizing outcomes. It’s about a valuing _approach_. The IP isn’t just what you create—it’s _how_ you create it. Your worldview, methodology, and decision-making frameworks could become the licensed layer, not just the artifact you produced. * * * ### Your skills as a module In this future, foundational skills might become modular—think of them as plugins for AI systems. You might not hire a strategist in the traditional sense, but you might integrate their framework into your product stack. Need help prioritizing your roadmap? Load the “first-principles PM” module. Want to generate a story world with internal coherence? Snap in the “novelist worldview” engine. These aren’t just prompt templates—they’re encoded forms of human judgment. Your skill doesn’t get replaced; it gets abstracted, amplified, and distributed. ### Outsourcing your digital twin Let’s return to H&M’s digital models. While the individuals retain their rights, this raises a deeper question: What happens when the most valuable version of you is a digital one? When is your presence decoupled from your labor? We’re entering an era where people will train models on how they speak, decide, and create, effectively generating personal APIs. In that world, owning your “digital twin” becomes owning your intellectual property. Just as actors fought for rights to their likeness under SAG-AFTRA, we may soon see similar protections demanded by designers, strategists, and domain experts. * * * ## Unique skills are the differentiator I wonder if Jet Li would’ve made a different decision if his choreography had been treated not as a one-time capture, but as licensed IP, valued, protected, and compensated accordingly. Who knows? He might still have turned it down. But he saw early what we’re now being forced to reckon with: that our most irreplaceable asset is our skills. As AI saturates creative and operational domains, the rarest trait becomes being deeply, idiosyncratically human. Whether you use AI or not, what you choose to create and bring into the world represents what you stand for. Digital twins, voice clones, and even the humble “pick your brain” email all point to one thing: the value of your ability is rising. The difference now is you may have a say in how it’s used and a share in what it creates. Am I thrilled about this future? No. Working in AI doesn’t mean you have to agree with every development, but I believe it’s the evolving future, and I choose to help shape the implications of it. Generative AI has flattened the effort curve. You no longer need to be a seasoned video editor to create a cinematic sequence or a programmer to ship a full-stack app. There lies the challenge of new originality. For skills to be perceived as valuable in the AI-native world, you need to be better than what AI can allow everyone to create. It’s sometimes sloppy and generic, but don’t underestimate the general population compromising for quick and cheap. But if everyone can do everything, how do we distinguish good from great? That’s where we come in. Taste, context, ethics, and lived experiences are the new moat.

July 2025 marked my first anniversary joining Atlassian AI. It feels like yesterday when I met my new team during the week of Config in San Francisco. When I joined Atlassian, a lot of people were surprised — someone from hyper-growth startups stepping into a company more than two decades old. Truth is, nobody was more surprised than me. But the decision wasn’t about age or scale; it was about the opportunity to build something new in the era of AI. Atlassian is founder-led, which means it has the rare combination of long-term conviction and the willingness to disrupt itself. That mindset drew me in. So did the caliber of people choosing to join, like Scott Belsky joining the board, a signal that Atlassian isn’t just maintaining, it’s leveling up. And, at its core, the company has a mission rooted in continuous improvement in the spirit of agile: always learning, always iterating, always striving to unleash the potential of every team. I had high trust that craft was important with Charlie Sutton, Atlassian’s Head of Design. It’s been a few years since I’ve used Atlassian products and saw the navigation refresh work that would be rolled out. Charlie Sutton and Josh Higgins’s talk at Team ’25 highlighted how Atlassian redesigned its products around a unified navigation and refreshed brand identity, aiming to create a more cohesive, modern, and collaborative user experience. They shared behind-the-scenes insights into the design and technical decisions that brought these improvements to life, inspiring large-scale design transformation. The second was the AI investment. Atlassian is a company that’s been around since the beginning of my career. It found business success early on and built strong foundations. I wanted to make sure they didn’t hit the innovator’s dilemma. I’ve primarily worked at founder-led companies throughout my career, and it’s my favorite type of leader to work for. They have continued vision, conviction, and are not simply a professional C-Suite optimizing numbers. What’s important for me is company building and a place to have impact. I don’t need guarantees. All I need is commitment to the big swing and a shot at it. With any role I consider, I reflect and write what impact I’d like to see land. If I can’t see a possible path, I don’t join. During my morning writing sessions, I jotted this down: 1. Atlassian is known as _The Rovo Company_. 2. Define the winning AI interaction models that propel the industry moving forward 3. Transform the Design Org to _Design AI with AI_ 4. Work with Charlie Sutton to make Atlassian a world-class design team In any objective setting, you want it to be ambitious and challenge you. These goals would be plenty of work for a while I joined. ## Rovo, Atlassian’s AI experience Before starting, I knew I had to move as fast as the speed of AI progresses. Fortunately for me, I was just coming from Replit, where the pace is like the convoy with the flame thrower guitar guy from Mad Max: Fury Road. Strategy is getting condensed, and if I did a traditional 30/60/90, it would be too late. The current team was already working towards the General Availability (GA) milestone, roughly eight weeks away from my first day. As Jamil Valliani, the Head of Product partner I’d work with, said, “This is a failure is not an option moment.” During Team ’24 Europe in Barcelona, Rovo went GA. Mission accomplished? Nope. This was the starting block. What matters most is getting Rovo to our customers to start using it ## What I remain excited about ### **Bringing consumer-grade** AI experiences to the **work** place The line between personal and professional technology has never been thinner, especially as consumer-grade AI tools set new benchmarks for usability, responsiveness, and delight. As employees grow accustomed to seamless, intuitive AI in their daily lives—whether it’s a smart assistant anticipating needs or a creative tool generating ideas—they naturally expect the same level of sophistication at work. For enterprises, matching the quality and craft of consumer AI isn’t just about keeping up with trends; it’s about meeting rising employee expectations, boosting productivity, and fostering engagement. When workplace AI feels as polished and empowering as the tools people choose for themselves, organizations unlock not just efficiency, but genuine enthusiasm and innovation from their teams. ### **Studio** Studio is a game-changer because it empowers anyone—designer, developer, or business user—to build custom AI-powered agents, automations, and apps directly within the Atlassian ecosystem, often without writing a single line of code. With Studio, you’re not just consuming AI—you’re shaping it to fit your team’s unique needs, accelerating workflows, modeling real-world processes, and curating interactive content hubs, all in one unified space. This means teams can innovate faster, automate the “work of work,” and create tailored solutions that bring the magic and agility of consumer-grade AI directly into the enterprise. ### Designing AI with AI The AI Design team isn’t the only place at Atlassian where you get to work on AI and learn AI. We work across the portfolio of apps and experiences with Product and Content Designers working on AI experiences—Jira, Confluence, Trello, Loom, and many more. I’m not going to lie and say everyone uses AI at the design organization. We struggle with balancing work delivered, meetings, catching up on Looms, and of course, avoiding burnout in our personal lives. However, there is sponsorship and support to enable everyone to use AI. Joel Unger, one of our OG Principal Product Designers (on Claire Vo’s podcast, “How I AI”) shared a vibe code prototype he built in Cursor, experimenting with breakpoints to test out use cases and generating images with Midjourney. Unger kicked off Vibe Coding Fridays, where any designer is invited to share what they’re working on and learn from each other. This type of leadership will naturally scale AI literacy over time. ## Shipping impact at scale The scale and complexity at Atlassian is one I’ve never seen before. It’s no wonder Content Designers thrive on the Information Architecture of the work. Working at a company with 300,000-plus customers and heaps of apps across the portfolio is not driving a speedboat; it’s more like navigating a naval fleet. However, I’ve appreciated Atlassian’s culture of feeling small, like a few startups being infused together. The AI team has the autonomy to move fast like a startup. ## Building the AI Design org When it comes to the ingredients of a winning AI Design team, I look for these three attributes: 1. AI Acumen: people who with AI experience at previous companies, learning, and experimenting with the new material 2. Craft: From strategy to pixels, they care about leading through the craft 3. Talent density: Our team has a high concentration of very senior designers. To work on our team, you must have short toes and be willing to collaborate. I’m proud of the team for the progress they’ve made in such a short time. Our leadership team has grown with Carola Pescio Canale and Rachel Shepard joining the team. ## The community of design What has always drawn me to Atlassian is the strength of its design community—a network of people like Jennie Yip and the collaborative spirit behind our design systems. Community is essential for design teams because it fosters peer mentorship, collective learning, and the open exchange of ideas. It’s where designers grow together, support each other through challenges, and build a shared sense of purpose and belonging. Especially after years of pandemic-driven disconnection, rebuilding these bonds isn’t just a nice-to-have; it’s the foundation for creative resilience and long-term impact. This year, Atlassian Design hosted a series of Intentional Togetherness Gatherings (ITG) globally. We recently wrapped up the tour in our Sydney headquarters building LEGOs and vibe coding together. Though I love in-person time in the office, I’m grateful for Atlassian’s Team Anywhere policy. It seems like all remote roles are evaporating, and I’m glad we balance the physical and virtual community. Some of my favorite moments at work are the designers from all over the world dropping in the #design-org channel to share their work! ## Join us We have ambitious goals, and the market is chaotic. The work won’t be easy, but I assure you’ll be in great company with the people. Between developer tools, agile, AI, low-code, and no-code, the work at Atlassian is the amalgam of my entire career passion and experience all rolled into one. We are looking for Product Designers and Content Designers on the AI Design team; makers of Rovo. Our team is primarily based in the West Coast of North America West Coast and Sydney and Melbourne in Australia. Though we’re open to global talent, keep the overlap and hours of operation in mind: * Principal Product Designer, AI (Mobile), United States * Senior Design Manager, AI, United States * Lead Product Designer, AI, Australia and United States * Lead Product Designer, Studio, Australia You don’t have to be on the AI team to work on AI. Our other teams are hiring key roles too: * Design Manager, Loom * Principal Product Designer, Editor Platform * Principal Product Designer, Teamwork Graph * Principal Product Designer, GlobeX * Senior Design Manager, Confluence Core

A highly sophisticated Program called Ares is sent from the digital world into the real world on a dangerous mission, marking humankind's first encounter with A.I. beings.