How are designers actually feeling? Ioana Teleanu's Design Wellbeing Index

Ioana Teleanu is running the Design Wellbeing Index, a rigorous, anonymous study of how designers are actually feeling in the AI moment, and we talk about why she built it the hard way, why the site is designed around a blur, and why adding your voice matters. Share how you're feeling: take the survey at https://designwellbeingindex.com/ (12 to 15 minutes, closes November 10, 2026).

Ioana (UX Goodies, formerly Miro and UiPath) brought in a PhD researcher and accepted clinical scales rather than running another Instagram poll, made the whole thing anonymous, and worked hard not to lead with doom so that the enthusiasts show up alongside the exhausted. From there we wander into the parts of this moment nobody has a clean answer for: AI as a comfortable echo chamber, algorithms that reward the extremes and bury nuance, what it means to feed a family as a creator, holding your identity apart from your employer, and the strange paralysis of being able to build anything at all.

Highlights

• 05:55 Why a PhD researcher and an accepted burnout scale, not a poll
• 18:23 The website is designed around the blur
• 36:38 "I wanna know if I live in the same reality as other people"
• 51:17 Casino design, presence, and asking an AI for ten viral posts
• 53:45 From "I work at Miro" to "I'm a creator"
• 1:07:40 Two futures: community councils and a boardroom with data

Share how you're feeling about this moment: take the Design Wellbeing Index survey at https://designwellbeingindex.com/. Anonymous, 12 to 15 minutes, closes November 10, 2026. Then pass it to your team and your design friends.

Ioana's music picks: Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Headache.

Find Ioana

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/uxgoodies/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ioanateleanu/
• X: https://x.com/uxgoodies
• AI Goodies newsletter: https://aigoodies.beehiiv.com/
• Honest UX Talks podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/honest-ux-talks/id1547832809
• AI for Designers (Interaction Design Foundation): https://www.ixdf.org/courses/ai-for-designers

Chapters

• 00:00 Intro
• 00:37 What has Ioana waking up excited
• 02:55 Ioana's origin story and the Design Wellbeing Index
• 05:20 Building a rigorous, anonymous study
• 12:18 Framing the study for both positive and negative views
• 17:08 Designing the website around the blur
• 20:41 What the Design Wellbeing Index measures
• 30:08 Our responsibility to contribute to the collective voice
• 37:38 Shared reality, community, and AI isolation
• 42:31 Polarization and social media algorithms
• 50:33 Being a creator and feeding a family
• 55:47 Identity beyond your employer
• 59:39 Leaving corporate paths and new careers
• 1:05:02 Choice paralysis and productive procrastination
• 1:07:30 Hopes for the study a year from now
• 1:12:36 Call to action and results timeline
• 1:21:58 Where to follow Ioana