We Design Futures↗

See what AI could change about the work your team already does.

Hi, I'm Justine. For 30 years, I've helped people turn new technology into something practical, useful, and genuinely exciting to work with.

Ask about a pilot workshop

Justine Bassett, smiling, in a warm office

Right now, that matters more than ever.

Most people have used AI as a chat window: ask a question, get an answer, copy and paste it somewhere else. Meanwhile, the tools have leapt ahead. AI can now connect to email, calendars, files, spreadsheets, and other business systems, learn your context, and handle substantial parts of recurring work.

And it comes with a whole new vocabulary: skills, connectors, MCP, agents, automations.

Busy teams shouldn't have to become AI experts just to benefit from it.

I translate all of that into plain language and show people what it can do for their actual work: hands-on, at a pace that brings everyone along.

And the possibilities are exciting.

A spreadsheet becomes a dashboard you can question. An overflowing inbox becomes a prioritized briefing waiting for you each morning. The report someone rebuilds every Friday starts assembling itself.

The administrative glue work that eats your team's week begins to shrink, and people get more time back for judgment, relationships, creativity, and the work they were actually hired to do.

Designed to get the whole room working

Nobody sits through this workshop.

Picture your team on their feet, gathered around laptops and walls of sticky notes, mapping their own work, debating what drives them crazy, and watching ideas take shape in real time.

I'm an experience designer. I've spent my career creating experiences that change how people see what's possible, from visitor experiences at the Smithsonian to innovation programs at the University of New England. I design every workshop backward from the goal: a whole team activated, imagining, and ready to try something new with their own work.

AI can feel intimidating, overhyped, or threatening. In the room, it becomes something people get curious about, together.

“I've been to a hundred of these workshops. This was one of the best.”

A participant at the Finard Properties offsite, Pepperell Mill, Biddeford

“Justine helped our nurses see themselves as innovators… The design sprints brought our team's idea for a microlearning app to life, turning a concept into a tangible, practical tool. Our team left with not only a strong prototype but also the confidence and leadership mindset to continue driving innovation.”

Kathleen Sheehan-Tarte
Director of Nurse Education, MaineHealth

Justine standing beside a long wall covered in colorful sticky notes from a workshop, arms raised in celebration

What AI-enabled work can look like

Monday morning, before

A property manager starts the week opening email, checking maintenance requests, scanning a lease spreadsheet, and reconstructing what needs attention.

Monday morning, after

A briefing is waiting with open issues, upcoming renewals, unanswered requests, and draft follow-ups ready for review. She still makes every decision.

She just doesn't spend the first hour finding the work.

That's the shift we explore: given what's possible now, why are we still doing it this way?

Bring the work that drives your team crazy.

Your team doesn't need to know much about AI. They just need to know what feels repetitive, tedious, unnecessarily manual, or harder than it should be. Everyone knows that.

Map the work

Together we get the real work out of people's heads and onto the table: recurring tasks, handoffs, reports, meetings, follow-ups, searches, and all the little things that quietly consume a week.

Find the friction

We look for where people are repeatedly searching, copying, summarizing, checking, formatting, chasing, or recreating something that already exists.

See what AI can carry

We sort what today's tools can genuinely help with, what they can't, and where human judgment still matters. I bring the AI know-how. Your team brings the work. Then everyone gets hands-on right away, with a sample workflow we build together in real time.

Watch one transformation happen

Before the workshop, we choose one example relevant to your team. I build it in advance, then show the before-and-after live so everyone can see what changed and how it works.

Take something back

Participants identify one piece of their own work worth experimenting with and leave with a prototype, redesigned workflow, or clear next step they can test right away.

Different jobs. Familiar friction.

Your workshop is tailored to your organization. During our planning conversation, we choose the examples most relevant to your team. Here are some of the patterns we might explore.

Sales

The CRM nobody updates

Calls happen. Notes live in notebooks. Follow-up depends on memory. AI can help turn meeting notes into structured updates and draft the next communication for review.

Reporting

From spreadsheet to something you can question

Instead of sorting, filtering, and rebuilding the same analysis, turn the data into an interactive view you can explore: What's changing? What's unusual? Where should I look next?

Leadership

Walk into meetings prepared

AI can pull relevant context from notes, files, calendars, and other sources so a leader starts with a useful briefing instead of assembling one from scratch.

Institutional knowledge

When one person carries too much in their head

Examples, standards, processes, and hard-won expertise can become AI-assisted resources that help others work more independently, while judgment stays with the expert.

What people say about working with me

“It was such a success! The team loved it.”

Finard Properties
After a hands-on offsite at the Pepperell Mill campus in Biddeford, Maine

“While framed as an ‘icebreaker’ it really was much more than that: team building, problem-solving, collaboration, strategizing, and fun! It was so effective that we would like to explore… building such a session into the standing agenda.”

Bi-College Deans
University of New England

The tools will keep changing.

The durable skill is learning to look at familiar work and recognize when a different way has become possible. The people who understand the work best are often the people best equipped to redesign it. They just need to see what's possible, know what to look for, and have a chance to try.

Meet your guide

I've always been a translator.

I was a political science major who ended up leading a mainframe development team. Since then I've mapped how work moved through Bath Iron Works, built a system adopted across Iridium's 11 global gateways, redesigned how the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History develops visitor experiences, and founded the University of New England's Office of Innovation.

Different rooms, same job: take something new and intimidating, make it make sense, and help people feel capable using it. That's what I bring to AI.

Named a 2022 Mainer of the Year by Maine Magazine.

“The solution that you built, with virtually no user requirements, was a phenomenal accomplishment…”

Vice President, Business Operations, Iridium

See more of my work →

Three ways to work together

Start with a talk for your group, bring the workshop to your team, or go deeper and build together.

For chambers, associations, and peer groups

Talks for groups

A lively 45 to 60 minute live demonstration of what AI-enabled work looks like, with plenty of time for questions. A hopeful, practical introduction for business owners and leaders.

Select community talks offered at no fee. Speaking fee for conferences and private events.

Invite me to speak

Where most teams start

AI-Enabled Work Workshop

$2,500

Pilot fee. Standard fee $3,500.

a planning conversation with your leader
a 90-minute hands-on workshop
live examples tailored to your organization
one relevant before-and-after transformation demonstrated live
a short written recap of the strongest opportunities and next steps

In exchange for the pilot rate, I ask each organization to measure one promising experiment afterward and let me share the before-and-after story if it produces a meaningful result. Three pilot spots, scheduled by December 15.

Become a pilot partner

After the workshop

Build alongside you

What happens afterward? Nothing has to. Your team can take what it learned and keep experimenting.

If something especially promising emerges and you'd like help turning it into a working system, I can stay and build alongside you.

That might mean connecting steps across tools, turning a recurring handoff into an automated workflow, or building an AI-assisted process that moves work from one system to another with less manual effort.

The real goal is redesigning the work that happens between your tools.

Scoped and priced after the workshop. No ongoing consulting commitment required.

What could your team be doing differently three months from now?

Tell me a little about your organization and where work feels slower, harder, or more manual than it should. A 20-minute conversation is usually enough to know whether this workshop would be useful.

justine@wedesignfutures.com