AI can generate the screens. It can ship the variations. What it can’t do is teach you to defend the thinking behind them – out loud, in real time, when the brief shifts underneath you.
In this session, Softerflow founder Kiril Karov makes the case that strategic thinking is the new senior-level skill – and the one juniors have to master fast, now that AI handles the execution. He introduces the constraint-shift exercise – a new real-time review method he is bringing into Softerflow’s live reviews, where a designer’s brief is altered mid-presentation – and unpacks what it’s built to surface: how designers actually think when prepared slides won’t save them.
Kiril also shares how he is scaling a pan-European design community out of Bulgaria on a tight budget – using AI agents as constant thinking partners, but ultimately trusting his own gut and lived European story. Expect honest reflections on community-building, founder vulnerability, and why in-person, human-to-human design feedback matters more, not less, as automation grows.
What you’ll walk away with:
- A clearer mental model of where AI ends and where strategic design begins
- A first look at the constraint-shift exercise – a new method for sharpening real-time design thinking
- Practical lessons on building a design community from scratch – in any new market, on any budget
- A grounded perspective on collaborating with AI agents without losing your own design voice
