Tom and Jonny on building, learning and experimenting as AI reshapes how we work. A new episode every week.
Tom and Jonny look back on the Mostly Working Summit at Monzo. They go behind the scenes of the software they built the day before it, compare notes on designing without Figma, and unpack Lily Dart’s two archetypes of builders and information architects.
Show notesTom and Jonny sit down with Sara Vienna, Chief Design Officer at Metalab, following her Hatch keynote on the trust gap. They dig into what designers can control in the AI race, unpack the tools Metalab's designers now build for every stage of a product, and get Sara's honest take on hiring and why nobody reads case studies.
Tom and Jonny sit down with Cassie Groos, design systems lead at Unily, to learn what happens to a design system once AI starts reading it. They dig into the prose documents that brief her agents, unpack a token architecture built for an infinite number of brands, and go behind the scenes of her first big stage at Hatch.
Tom and Jonny sit down with Christine Røde, designer at The Browser Company and the first guest under our new name, Mostly Working. They go behind the scenes of Dia’s Morning Brief, unpack why people now hand their data to AI tools so readily, and dig into the craft a designer keeps when she can ship her own fixes.
Tom and Jonny announce that the Near Future Podcast is becoming Mostly Working. They explain why they're closing the consultancy to back the podcast, unveil the Mostly Working Summit at Monzo on 22 October, and go behind the scenes of a new brand built with Claude Code.
Tom and Jonny sit down with Gabriella Hachem, co-founder of Dessn and the podcast’s first design tool founder. They dig into why Dessn runs your codebase in the cloud so you can design on production, unpack the read-only decision that shaped the product, and go behind the scenes of building a design tool while the models caught up.
Tom and Jonny sit down with Frank Bach, a product designer at Anthropic who built his own design tool during onboarding week. They dig into why he prototypes in HTML instead of Figma, unpack his Swiss Army knife career from Red Bull to Headspace to Instagram, and get his advice for designers feeling the AI squeeze.
Tom and Jonny catch up after the summer with a roundup of August's four guests, from Monzo's fake app to Poem/1's self-learning fulfilment agent. They ask whether designers are giving away their leverage to agents, answer a listener who wants the show to branch out, and share what they built, including Labyrinth rebuilt in two hours.
Tom and Jonny sit down with inventor Matt Webb, the man behind Berg, Little Printer and the poetry clock Poem/1. They dig into how he built a practice around human-computer interaction, small groups and the physical world, unpack the retro charm of his ageing AI clock, and go behind the scenes of the Claude-powered agents running Poem/1's Kickstarter fulfilment.
Tom and Jonny sit down with **Patrick Lewis**, founding designer at Klay. They dig into why "good" and "right" aren't the same thing, how AI has flattened the design experience curve and why saying no might be the most important design skill right now.
Tom and Jonny sit down with Randy Hunt, Head of Design at Notion and chair of MFA Design at SVA. They dig into why speed and quality were never a trade-off, unpack the weekend build that turned into a two-week code review, and go behind the scenes of how a graduate design programme is rewriting itself around AI.
Tom and Jonny sit down with James Storer, who leads design in Monzo's AI and personalisation collective and is the biggest token burner in the whole company. They dig into the fake Monzo his team built to prototype with, why he stepped off the leadership track to get back in the tools, and what he went to Config to ask Figma.
Tom and Jonny are back for a duo episode after a month of guest interviews. They reflect on what the recent guest run has taught them, dig into Backyard Designers Club and the hoo-ha it sparked, and talk through why design and engineering leadership is such a hard place to be right now.
Tom and Ini dig into how AI-native speed reshapes onboarding, unpack the neurodivergent-built knowledge system powering her workflow, and go behind the scenes of Palmwine Wireless — a nostalgia-fueled Nigerian radio she built from scratch with AI.
Tom and Jonny are joined by Hollie Lubbock (Design Director) and Josh Payton (VP of Design) at Wise
Tom and Jonny are joined by Domingo Widen, Staff Product Designer on the Front-End Infrastructure team at Fin (formerly Intercom)
Tom and Jonny sit down with Avi Ashkenazi, Senior Product Design Director at Deel, for the podcast's first-ever guest episode.
Tom and Jonny dig into Figma's latest releases and how they're positioned for designers in 2026
Tom and Jonny debate the future of management, explore personal software with a vibe coded golf app and dig into what Midjourney's pivot says about where AI labs are headed
Jonny and Tom dig into the uncomfortable reality of Europe's dependence on US-controlled AI.
Tom and Jonny reflect on their live workshop, explore the history of designers building their own tools, and dig into how AI can be used to shore up weaknesses.
Tom and Jonny dig into the outcomes of Tom's Mostly Working event and unpack how leading design teams are using AI not to ship faster, but to learn faster.
Welcome to the Near Future Podcast, where Tom and Jonny explore what they're building, learning, and experimenting with as AI reshapes how we work.