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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

Ward Andrews

UX Magazine Fellow
Ward Andrews

Ward Andrews is CEO at Drawbackwards, a consulting firm that dissolves complexity and delivers simplicity for customer experience and software product teams globally. Enterprise client mix includes: healthcare, financial services, hospitality and a range of consumer products. High-growth SaaS companies partnering with Drawbackwards have been acquired by the likes of Square and Experian.   Ward is a part of the Honors Faculty at Arizona State University teaching Design Entrepreneurship. He has worked with hundreds of the world’s biggest brands for over twenty years including: American Express, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Sony, Intel, General Dynamics, Insomniac Games, GoDaddy and Willis Towers Watson. His brand and design projects have garnered Addy, Prisma and Emmy awards. His CX and software product work has generated over 1B in value through cost savings and new revenue growth.

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