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The Agentic Design Stack  |  UX is the future of AI
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Season 7—Spring 2026  ·  12 episodes  ·  Through-line: the human architecture of institutional change
Contributing Author

Austin Brown

Product Manager | Android
Austin Brown

Austin Brown is a Product Manager of Android products at MapQuest. Previously, he was employed as a User Experience Designer for mobile products at MapQuest - specifically the redesign of MapQuest's core navigation apps on iOS and Android, and follow on features and enhancements post-launch. Prior to his tenure at MapQuest, he was a User Experience Designer at EffectiveUI where he was responsible for designing digital interactions and experiences for clients such as Microsoft, Boeing, and Navy Federal Credit Union. Before joining EffectiveUI, Austin lived and worked in Hong Kong as an industrial design intern for VTech Communications, where he helped design consumer electronic devices for the European market.Austin received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Industrial Design from the Savannah College of Art and Design and he is a speaker for industry events such as the Interaction Design Association (IxDA) Interaction conference.When he isn’t designing useful, usable and desirable interactions for clients, he can be found rock climbing and snowboarding in Colorado’s mountains.

Contributions to UXM

2 pieces
1
Book Excerpt  ·  Crisis Engineering

The Crisis Worth Using

The five indicators of a genuinely useful crisis—and the difference between the kind that opens a window for transformational change and the kind that merely accelerates collapse. Excerpted from Crisis Engineering.

7 min read April 2025 ◆ The Useful Crisis
2
Guest Article

When the Window Opens: A Field Guide to Crisis Seizing

Written for UXM as a companion to the episode. Not theory—what Marina actually does when she walks into a failing system with a 90-day mandate and no authority to hire. Practical, specific, and unsettling in the best way.

11 min read April 2025 ◆ The Useful Crisis

Ideations

1 cluster
The Useful Crisis
S7 Ep. 4  ·  7 pieces  ·  April 2025