Meet Marichen Grobler, Senior Product Designer at RIB Software, who thrives on turning complex challenges into human-centered solutions with real impacts. Working at the forefront of data-heavy and AI-driven innovation and technology, she reminded us in this interview that the human connection still remains the core of user-centered product design and a key differentiator when it comes to creativity, trust, and transparency in a rapidly evolving digital world. 

Interviewed by Nafisa Raihana 

As a Senior Product Designer, you work on turning complex challenges into clear, human-centered solutions. In a moment when AI is reshaping digital products so quickly, where do you see the biggest risks in AI adoption and what are the implications for the future of Product and UX Design? 

AI is already a massive part of my daily workflow, supporting my research analysis, patterns spotting and large-scale information processing. When used intentionally, it is an incredibly powerful accelerator. However, one of the biggest risks right now is the temptation to blindly trust AI’s output without validating it against reality. You have to constantly ask yourself whether this output genuinely reflects the facts at hand, or if AI just smooths over important nuances and produces a generic answer instead. 

This is where human judgment is really irreplaceable. AI tools naturally love to agree with you and reinforce the direction you are already leaning toward instead of challenging your thinking. Therefore, I often find myself playing devil's advocate, explicitly telling AI to disagree with me, challenge my assumptions, or find gaps in my research.  

The real value doesn’t lie in letting AI make the call for us but in using it to help us make better and faster informed decisions. We are moving away from manually building interfaces toward interpreting signals, validating insights, and questioning outputs. AI can give us incredible speed, but good design still requires human context, critical thinking, and empathy. 

That last element is incredibly importance since I don’t believe AI will ever get to the human level of empathy. Human connection, both in person and virtually, is what sets us apart. When it comes to genuine relationships building, whether it is with colleagues, clients, or stakeholders, AI can serve as a guide to help us understand the context, but it will never be able to truly replace people-to-people connections.  

AI can give us incredible speed, but good design still requires human context, critical thinking, and empathy. 

You have extensive experience in leading the design process from research to execution, specialising in conducting user research and usability testing. How do you bridge these research results to align with product strategies and bring real value to businesses? How do the principles of user-centered design need to adapt as users increasingly interact with intelligent or generative systems? 

Research only matters if it helps teams make better decisions. When users consistently struggle to navigate, complete key tasks, or achieve their goals, it is no longer just a UX issue - it becomes a business problem because it directly impacts adoption, retention, and revenue. As a result, I evaluate design challenges through the lens of their business impact. A key part of UX leadership is analysing and translating these human behaviors into strategic insights, helping product, engineering, and leadership teams align around the problems that matter most. 

AI also fundamentally changes how we think about user experience. Traditionally, software was predictable, but AI systems now behave differently depending on context, training data, or confidence levels. From a design perspective, we are no longer just designing for usability; we are designing for trust. If users feel the system is making important decisions on their behalf without context, explanation, or control, their confidence drops quickly. Most importantly, users must feel in-control rather than being controlled. 

Designers need to establish clear boundaries around what AI can and cannot do, provide transparency around uncertainty, build regular feedback loops, and design recovery paths for when mistakes happen. Depending on the context of the company and the project, putting these internal guardrails in place becomes increasingly important. They can serve as the hard metrics around which product designers frame our work on, allowing us to have more confidence in our decisions which is based on real, hard data.  

You work in Digital Innovation and Technology, a sector that is evolving at an unprecedented rate. What skills do you think are most valuable for product and UX designers to stay ahead of the curve and navigate new technological developments?  

The most valuable designers are not necessarily the ones who adopt every new AI tool first. They will be the ones with strong critical thinking underneath those tools. Three skills stand out to me: information architecture, critical thinking, and facilitation coupled with leadership. 

First, as products become more data-heavy and AI-driven, structuring information properly becomes highly important to avoid friction.  

Second, critical thinking is vital. AI can generate endless ideas instantly, but speed does not automatically equate to quality. Designers need strong judgment to evaluate what is ethical, useful, and aligned with business goals, rather than blindly optimising metrics.  

Lastly, facilitation and leadership go hand in hand. Teams still need alignment, communication, and human direction. AI can support creativity, but it cannot replace leadership. As automation increases, human skills, namely communication, negotiation, emotional intelligence and empathy, become the differentiator. As AI makes execution easier and faster, human judgment becomes the real value. 

AI can support creativity, but it cannot replace leadership. As automation increases, human skills, namely communication, negotiation, emotional intelligence and empathy, become the differentiator. 

AI tools are becoming more embedded in products, reshaping workflows and designs. How do you envision the responsibilities of product designers to evolve in terms of shaping trust, transparency, and usability? 

UX is becoming less about pure usability and a lot more about trust. In the past, software only needed to be easy to use. Now, with the development of AI, users want to truly understand why and how something functions. We need to move away from "black box" experiences where systems make important decisions without providing meaningful context. 

Designers also need to stop assuming that less friction is always better. In some cases, introducing intentional friction is actually the responsible design choice. This can mean asking users to review AI-generated content before committing it, or making it easier to reverse AI-driven decisions.  

The role of the UX designer is evolving beyond interface design into something closer to "accountability design". In AI-driven products, trust is no longer just a “nice-to-have"; it is a fundamental part of the product itself. We even see AI-powered design tools starting to embed this kind of transparency into their workflows by showing how the AI reasoned its way to a final design. 

For me, trust means being involved in all phases of the design process, from interviewing the clients for their needs, facilitating a workshop, or doing hands-on design work. Context matters every step of the day. To know, trust, and have confidence in the support that AI gives you, you need to understand the workflow and how it aligns with its surrounding context.  

You are a young female talent working in a highly technical field. To you, what role does female representation play in inspiring the next generation of women in STEM?  

Female representation in tech matters because technology reflects the people building it, and it is never completely neutral. If women are not involved in shaping products and leading teams, you risk creating systems that overlook how a large part of the population experiences the world. Representation directly impacts product quality, innovation, and inclusivity. Visibility is key; when young women see female leaders in software engineering and product, it changes what feels possible for them. 

Women also often bring valuable perspectives around collaboration, empathy, ethics, and systems thinking, all of which are increasingly important in this AI-driven environment. Ultimately, the goal should not be for female leaders in tech to feel unusual or exceptional; it should feel normal because the future of technology should be shaped by everybody who lives in it. 

Representation directly impacts product quality, innovation, and inclusivity. Visibility is key; when young women see female leaders in software engineering and product, it changes what feels possible for them.