Rosenverse

This video is only accessible to Gold members. Log in or register for a free Gold Trial Account to watch.

Log in Register

Most conference talks are accessible to Gold members, while community videos are generally available to all logged-in members.

AI-Readiness: Preparing NASA for a Data-Driven, Agile Future

Gold
Tuesday, June 10, 2025 • Designing with AI 2025

This video is featured in the Designing with AI 2025 playlist and 1 more.

Share the love for this talk
AI-Readiness: Preparing NASA for a Data-Driven, Agile Future
Speakers: Erika Flowers
Link:

Summary

NASA faced increasing complexity in managing data, meeting customer needs, and streamlining processes across its diverse missions and operations. With fragmented data sources, manual workflows, and a lack of integrated AI tools, teams struggled to maintain efficiency, consistency, and innovation. Through a cross-organizational AI-readiness initiative led by the OCIO, NASA engaged stakeholders across Service Lines, Centers, and Mission Support Offices to identify challenges, articulate use cases, and prioritize AI opportunities. Workshops, assessments, and stakeholder collaboration provided a roadmap for integrating AI solutions, enabling secure data usage, and automating repetitive tasks. Focused efforts on training, governance, and iterative implementation ensured alignment with organizational goals.

Key Insights

  • Organizational culture is more critical than technology in successful AI adoption.

  • AI readiness requires understanding people’s workflows, hopes, fears, and data landscapes first.

  • Incremental, low-stakes experimentation builds organizational comfort with AI over time.

  • Today’s AI tools are rapidly changing, so organizations should focus on stable strategic destinations rather than specific tools.

  • Cross-departmental communication is vital to bridge siloed data and enable AI use across teams.

  • Many AI implementations fail when tools are adopted prematurely without aligned strategy or culture.

  • Human-centered design applied to AI integration helps align AI capabilities with actual user needs.

  • Safe, sandboxed environments encourage employees to explore AI without risking sensitive data.

  • Bring Your Own AI (BYO AI) is the emerging model, letting organizations control their AI core rather than vendor lock-in.

  • The people who build and support AI systems within an organization are like the unseen heroes, akin to mission control supporting astronauts.

Notable Quotes

"Culture over technology is all that matters. Technology can’t help you out of cultural problems."

"Focus on the destination, not the vehicle, because AI tools will change every single day."

"Hope is the only thing that lets the conversation continue and reach forward."

"You have to hold people’s hands through your organization—not just hype about AI."

"If you don’t know the type of trip, how do you choose your vehicle?"

"Most of us are not Neil Armstrong; we’re the ground control building the scaffolding."

"Bring your own AI and keep control over the process rather than being locked into vendor solutions."

"Start small and learn in low-stakes ways so you can train the organization to think, act, and react to AI."

"Cross-silo communication is huge because AI is only as good as the permeable membrane between data."

"This is a paradigm, a civilization-altering step change in human capability on the scope of Prometheus bringing fire from the gods."

Ask the Rosenbot
Brad Orego
Bringing Customer Research to More Internal Teams
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Johanna Kollmann
Insights-Driven Product Strategy: Get your Research to Count
2022 • Design in Product 2022
Gold
Kwabena Opoku
Methodological toolkit for unique research impact
2026 • Advancing Research 2026
Gold
Patrizia Bertini
Designing Within the Lines: How the EU AI Act Can Spark Better AI Innovation
2025 • DesignOps Community
James Chudley
Decarbonising User Journeys: How minimising enables us to do more with less
2025 • Climate UX Interest Group
Dolly Parikh
Exit Interview #7: Journey of a Social Entrepreneur
2026 • Rosenfeld Community
Bryce Benton
[Demo] AI-powered UX enhancement: Aligning GitHub documentation with USWDS at Austin Public Library
2024 • Designing with AI 2024
Gold
Steve Krug
Don’t Make Me Think 3.0: What Endures and What Evolves in UX
2026 • Advancing Research 2026
Gold
Sam Proulx
Designing For Screen Readers: Understanding the Mental Models and Techniques of Real Users
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Scott Stephens
The Next Generation in DesignOps Toolsets
2022 • DesignOps Community
Peter Morville
The Architecture of Understanding
2015 • Enterprise UX 2015
Gold
Joerg Beringer
Scaling User Research with AI: Continuous Discovery of User Needs in Minutes
2025 • Designing with AI 2025
Gold
Discussion
2017 • Enterprise Experience 2017
Gold
Alex Hurworth
Designing a Contact Tracing App for Universal Access
2020 • DesignOps Summit 2020
Gold
Meghan Hellstern
The Next 100 Years of Civic Design: How Might We Better Rise to Meet the Challenges of Today and Tomorrow?
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Matt Bernius
Learnings from Applying Trauma-Informed Principles to the Research Process
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold

More Videos

Greg Petroff

"If we deeply understand outcomes and advocate for impact, we’ll be the ones making real change happen in the enterprise."

Greg Petroff

Software as Material—A Redux

June 6, 2023

Brendan Jarvis

"Why was the universe doing this to me? That was a bad question."

Brendan Jarvis

Framing Tomorrow by Questioning Today

June 8, 2022

Prerna Makanawala

"Achieving coherency across products leads to less training, fewer support calls, and more users successfully adopting products."

Prerna Makanawala

Achieving Balanced Design Consistency

June 9, 2021

Tricia Wang

"Our job is to fight context loss as data moves up layers of abstraction in AI outputs."

Tricia Wang

From Users to Shapers of AI: The Future of Research

March 25, 2024

Cheryl Platz

"Not all monetization is equal; pay-to-express models are less threatening to social dynamics than pay-for-power schemes."

Cheryl Platz

Embrace Your Fun Factor: Game Development Best Practices for Product Design

January 9, 2026

Ariel Kennan

"There’s inherent conflict that will arise when navigating many stakeholders."

Ariel Kennan

Theme Two Intro

November 17, 2022

Tricia Wang

"Web3 offers a unique chance to get involved early before some of the ethical challenges of Web2 take root."

Tricia Wang

The most popular design thinking strategy is BS

January 27, 2022

Kristin Wisnewski

"Before, we never really looked holistically at decades of UX data—now we use it to be proactive and avoid duplicative studies."

Kristin Wisnewski

Measuring What Matters

October 23, 2019

Scott Jensen

"Facilitating a shared understanding among everyone on product takes a lot of time."

Scott Jensen Sarah Delaney Carmen Liu

Short Take #2: UX/Product Lessons from Your Industry Peers

December 6, 2022