Changing Shapes

What's the point? And who cares?" Sabine Devins asks those two questions before she writes anything. Every founder I know who freezes at the blank page is freezing because they haven't answered them yet. Sabine is a digital storyteller and creative content director based in Berlin. Before that she was a journalist for National Geographic, Voice of America, NHK, Handelsblatt Global. Sh...

"Everything you build eventually teaches you something about yourself. The question is, are you paying attention to learn it?" This episode is for anyone building anything in public, a product, a company, a content practice, and wondering whether the metrics are telling them the real story. Tom went into this interview thinking they were going to talk about running. They talked about so...

The AI era didn't create a crisis of purpose. It made the absence of one harder to hide. When anyone can produce, the question of why you are the one making this becomes impossible to avoid. There's one thing no tool can replicate. Not because the tools aren't good enough yet, but because of what they are. AI has never lost anything. It has no experience to draw from, no moment that ch...

AI can show us what a good friend looks like, but it can’t teach us how to be one. In this episode, Clicqui founder Cynthia Mensah‑Neglokpe and host Tom Horak unpack why AI cannot replace friendship, what most brands get wrong about “community,” and the small mechanics of hosting that actually make people feel seen. “I really just love people… Every person I talk to gives me a little bit of a puzz...

“Strategist and artist Onika Simon explains how art can change brand strategy from the inside of big systems. After years at global agencies and B Corps, she shows founders and operators how artists see the ‘first touch’ with customers that businesses keep missing. If you care about design, strategy, and art in business, this conversation is for you. "Brands are like systems trying to find a...

“In this episode, investor and operator Angeley Mullins explains how investors evaluate founders before they even read your pitch deck. She shares what she listens for in the first meeting – resilience, grit, whether you’re a decent human – and why real traction means one thing: has anyone actually paid you?” "My first and primary motive is to make sure I'm backing good people. Then we go...

Most AI tools are trained to give you something. An answer, a rewrite, a suggestion. But what if that helpfulness is quietly pushing everyone toward the same voice, the same style, the same median? Ben Perreau is a former journalist, founder and CEO of Parafoil — a leadership intelligence tool that uses real meeting transcripts to help managers understand how they’re actually leading, not how they...

Most tools today are designed to remove friction. AI writes the essay, surfaces the answer, smooths the path. But what if that’s precisely the problem? Dr. Khairunnisa Mohamedali is a social anthropologist, MD and Chief Innovation Officer at the Smarty Train — an award-winning learning, onboarding and behaviour change agency. She works at the intersection of human-centred design, the science of ho...

Most of us have that guilt—forgetting to check in, meaning to reach out but postponing. Jules (Gulin) Olcer, founder of Village, believes we've passed a cultural tipping point where connection tools need to evolve. Tom and Jules explore why 93% of our Instagram time isn't spent with people we actually know, how AI can facilitate (not replace) human connection, and why Village is building w...

Most software for clinicians gets built twice - once for compliance and then again when teams realize clinicians and patients won’t actually use them. Tom and Hiba break down what separates the winners from the expensive rebuilds. We examine real examples—C the Signs in primary care, Viz.ai in imaging, Tempus in oncology—and extract six actionable design principles that healthtech builders can imp...

How AI, logistics, and thoughtful design are reshaping the humanity of care This week’s Wish I Thought of That digs into a part of healthcare most people never see: the admin. Clinicians today spend 30–50% of their time documenting, coding, chasing insurance forms or navigating clunky digital systems — a staggering shift that’s reshaping both patient care and contributing to clinician burnout. In...

How trust, empathy and lived experience shape better digital tools This week’s Wish I Thought of That opens a mini-series on health and wellbeing by asking a blunt question: why do so many health apps feel clever, but not caring? We dig into the messy, human side of health-tech design — from journaling tools to nutrition platforms to long-term coaching systems — and what it takes to build products...

How emotional intelligence in design might help rebuild human connection In this week’s Wish I Thought of That , we explore Village , a quietly ambitious app using AI to help small circles of people stay connected. After years of isolation and algorithmic noise, we’ve lost some skills on how to stay connected IRL. Village asks whether technology can help us remember. We look at what happens when A...

How AI-first browsers are reshaping information literacy, trust, and product design. In this week’s WITOT, we ask what happens when the browser starts “driving.” With OpenAI’s Atlas and Perplexity’s Comet, AI agents can remember your sessions, act across tabs, and deliver confident answers… fast. But speed isn’t the same as sense. If we outsource the route-finding, we risk losing the mental map th...

How children’s toys are teaching us better product design. In this week’s episode of Wish I Thought of That (WITOT) , Hiba Ganta and I look at what innovation really means in the space of children’s play — and what it reveals about how we design technology for adults. The conversation starts with a simple idea: healthy play in the age of addictive screens . From Bluey to Yoto and Lovevery , we exp...

When a UX experiment became the world’s default way to talk to AI In this first episode of our new weekly segment Wish I Thought of That (WITOT), Hiba Ganta and I explore how chat became the interface for everything, and whether it should stay that way. We talk about why ChatGPT’s text box was never meant to be the final form of AI interaction, and how a design experiment scaled into a global patt...

A conversation about leading with care in competitive spaces, building AI hackathons that mix speed with friction, and how communicators can balance hype, trust, and authenticity in the age of AI. Changing Shapes – Episode 7 I sat down with Tim Weinheimer, Chief Marketing Officer at Hahn, to explore how he’s navigated decades of agency change — from the early digital days to today’s AI-powered cam...

A conversation about simulated worlds, agents that find clever exploits, and building call-centre AI that’s faster, kinder, and still human-centred. Changing Shapes – Episode 6 In this episode, I sit down with Alex Platonov, a UX engineer and former technical artist who spent eight and a half years at DeepMind, to unpack how simulated worlds train real capabilities, why agents find exploits humans...

A conversation about AI tools, cultural shifts, and why products still need a human touch to feel alive. Changing Shapes – Episode 5 “Finding meaning in the mess of product design.” In this episode of Changing Shapes , I sit down with Hiba Ganta, a Berlin-based product builder and writer whose career spans startups, community, no-code, and design, to talk about what it means to work fast, embrace...

How a jazz drummer turned SaaS founder leads with trust, creativity—and a healthy dose of humility. Changing Shapes – Episode 4 “Wonder. What if. Let’s try.” In this episode of  Changing Shapes , I speak with Evan Yudell—founder and CEO of Sales Made Simple—about what it takes to build trust in teams, navigate failure, and lead creatively in a world increasingly shaped by AI. Evan left a corporate...

🎙️ Episode Overview In this episode of Changing Shapes , Tom Horak sits down with Onika Simon—cultural strategist, brand thinker, philosopher by training, and co-founder of creative studio OK Sorted. With a career spanning two decades across New York, London and Berlin, Onika brings a singular voice to how we should think about creativity, ethics, and the role of technology in shaping culture. Fro...

🎙️ Episode Overview In this episode of  Changing Shapes , host  Tom Horak  talks with  Felix Rossknecht —a fractional CMO, growth strategist, and advisor to over 50 companies across e-commerce, consumer tech, and health innovation. Felix grew up in a family business, spent years honing his expertise in global markets, and has now turned his attention to how AI is changing the foundations of produc...

Amy Daroukakis: AI, Culture & The Future of Human Insight 🎙️ Episode Overview: In this episode of Changing Shapes , Tom Horak sits down with Amy Daroukakis , a cultural strategist and global trends expert who has spent over 20 years decoding the future for brands like Google, LVMH, and Airbnb . Amy doesn’t just observe trends—she sees the cultural forces shaping them before the rest of us even...