Dropbox VP of Design and Research Shannon Butler was featured in a Fast Company interview with Doreen Lorenzo. Butler is guiding the evolution of the Dropbox platform with a human-first approach to design. Her conversation with Lorenzo dove into her perspective on technology and design, and AI’s potential as an accelerant for creativity.

Butler previously worked at Google, YouTube, and Airbnb, and is now helming design and research at Dropbox, where she leads a team developing the next generation of content management and collaboration technology for creative professionals. As Butler explains, “Dropbox isn’t using AI to replace people or 'steal' from creatives. We’re inserting it into creative workflows so that output is amplified and accelerated...Humans must provide talent and judgment [that] AI can’t."

Butler believes design is a key differentiator in the AI era: “Design has gone through cycles of being valued and devalued. After several years of devaluation, I believe we’re entering a period where taste will again be the differentiator.”

She continues: “I believe the next era for design should be more design founders and design-minded entrepreneurs, a new crop of companies that show a fundamentally different way of working and doing business. I believe that if design leaders were truly leveraged, we’d have fundamentally better products and a healthier digital society.”