Before You Add AI, Ask These 5 Questions

🎟️ **WHO GETS TO DECIDE?** Brighton, 23 September 2026 Want to experience Melin’s workshop for yourself? Join us at Sea Lanes in Brighton for an evening exploring where designers fit in leadership as AI changes our work. You’ll work through real AI decisions, practise navigating difficult stakeholder conversations, and leave with a practical decision checklist and your own AI manifesto. Tickets are just £30 including food and a drink, £25 each if you bring a friend, and even less if you come as a team. 👉 Get your ticket: https://d.mba/sessions-brighton Before you add AI, ask these 5 questions. Designers are increasingly being asked to put AI into products, processes and workflows. But how do you know when it’s actually the right decision? In this episode of In Practice, I’m joined by Melin Edomwonyi, founder and UX Director at Seedable Studio, to explore five areas we should be questioning before reaching for AI: value, trust, cost, safety and ethics. We talk about starting with the problem rather than the tool, the risks AI can introduce to users and brands, and how designers can bring balance and critical thinking into conversations about AI without getting caught up in either the hype or the backlash. Melin also shares how designers can use the skills we already have to ask better questions, bring evidence into the room and have more influence over the decisions being made around AI. FIND MELIN Seedable Studio: https://seedable.studio LinkedIn: https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&redir_token=QUM4Zm9rUzhWbnpDRmI1azZSNDdYa2R5VThCVXxBTl9pYzRlSnlqYkV6bDZXTmpzTUJFaEw2ZnZRMXI3ZHRfY0xHSmNLS0Y0ZGtMamZrN0d6NjNCN2NPUmFnVmFwUWhzR19jZ0NzRVBFUlNLTjBZZlZadzZkaUx4b01QQ0huRTFH&q=https%3A%2F%2Fuk.linkedin.com%2Fin%2Fmelinedo&v=SB-XGNR4b14https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&redir_token=QUM4Zm9rUzhWbnpDRmI1azZSNDdYa2R5VThCVXxBTl9pYzRlSnlqYkV6bDZXTmpzTUJFaEw2ZnZRMXI3ZHRfY0xHSmNLS0Y0ZGtMamZrN0d6NjNCN2NPUmFnVmFwUWhzR19jZ0NzRVBFUlNLTjBZZlZadzZkaUx4b01QQ0huRTFH&q=https%3A%2F%2Fuk.linkedin.com%2Fin%2Fmelinedo&v=SB-XGNR4b14 / melinedo  🎓 APPLICATIONS FOR d.MBA ARE OPEN Our next five-month d.MBA cohort starts on 5 October 2026. If you want to build your confidence around business, strategy and having more influence in the decisions that shape your work, applications are open now. Apply: https://d.mba/apply 00:00 The AI mess that took years to clean up 01:30 Conversation starts: meet Melin 02:06 Pressured to use AI in 2023 — and the fallout 04:54 Inside "Leading With Clarity in the AI Era" 07:09 Love and hate: how you really feel about AI 07:51 Personal values vs organisational values 10:27 The five hard questions 11:09 Value: don't start with the tool 14:24 Trust & UX: hallucinations and who's accountable 18:03 Cost: compute, maintenance and the tech giant risk 22:12 Safety & ethics: bias, data leakage, energy 25:03 ChatGPT vs Gemini vs Claude 27:42 Pushing back without being "the AI skeptic" 34:45 Writing your AI leadership manifesto 38:00 Seedable Studio and where to find Melin