Nik Martelaro
Associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Human-Computer Interaction Institute, researching how AI tools can support designers' thinking and creative...
“I've been working on a problem and I really thought, okay, cool. I'm going to let my agent do a lot of it. I'm going to move super fast on it because I can. And I had to throw it away multiple times. And then finally yesterday I sat and I worked in a much more methodical way. … It was a slower way of working, but much smoother. And eventually I actually got my thing done in a couple of hours as opposed to what were these weird bursty moments, which probably ended up taking me almost a week to get to bad results.”
AI and Design · AI Builders · November 2026
Context
The hosts were discussing a new optional outline-review step in Gemini Notebook. Nik Martelaro used it to bring up the Navy saying 'slow is smooth and smooth is fast' and his own week of throwaway agent-built code.
Transcript
…check and then work with that feels like it fits better with a workflow that is more conducive to actually almost working at human speed of thinking as opposed to working at machine speed. I'm going to run ahead and just, I'll get it all done, but then we're going to have to change so much of this.
…like Figma could even benefit from something like this, where it's like, okay, I'm about to render these 10 screens for you. This one's going to do this. This one's going to do that. This one's going to do that. Does this flow look right to you? Stuff like that, I think could be extremely valuable.
Yeah, there's actually a quote. I think it's from the Navy, which is slow is smooth and smooth is fast, where I definitely am starting to feel this, right? I basically just did something over the last week. I've been working on a problem and I really thought, okay, cool. I'm going to let my agent do a lot of it. I'm going to move super fast on it because I can. And just I had to throw it away multiple times. And then finally yesterday I sat and I worked in a much more methodical way. I was like, I'm driving a lot of the decision making here while still letting it come up with plans and ideas. And it was a slower way of working, but much smoother. And eventually I actually got my thing done in like a couple of hours as opposed to what were these like weird bursty moments, which probably ended up taking me almost a week to get to bad results. And so I think that there's something really here. And it speaks to also just the nature of working with the tools. I definitely have found myself recently having this more, I don't know if it's a frantic way of working or if it's just, it's this way of working that doesn't feel calm. And I'm starting to have to figure out again what makes this a calm and smooth work experience when I'm working with AI agents.
In the designing AI products and services class, we read an article from Benedict Evans where he talks a little bit about leverage, which is how much time does it actually take for humans to check and review or are you not saving time at all because of all the time it takes to check, revise and…
So also from Google, a new product that has come out in the space too of also note taking and thinking support. It's called AI Edge Foresight. And what this is, it's a AI. Meeting companion for, well, Mac OS only at this time. But the idea is that it's a small note-taking app. It can listen into…
Can we talk about how bad this name is for a minute? Google AI Edge Foresight sounds like something that Microsoft would have named in 1998. It should be Google AI Edge Foresight Pro Edition parentheses enterprise or something like that. It's just, oh, God. Yeah. I am eager to dig into this more. I…
More from AI and Design
