About

I design how people and intelligent systems work together.

I'm Isabel, an AI Product Designer with a background in UX/UI. At UBS I work as Senior UX/UI Consultant (Associate Director), an internal consultant moving across projects throughout the bank.

Portrait of Isabel Maier

Basel / Zurich, Switzerland

How I got here

I didn't start in design. I trained in public administration and worked as an immigration officer handling naturalisation cases in Germany. There I saw people give "wrong" answers on official forms, not because they meant to, but because they didn't understand them, and it had legal consequences for them.

So I redesigned the form. That was the moment I found my profession: making complex systems understandable for the people who depend on them. Since then I have designed for small businesses and non-profits as a freelancer, led UX for complex B2B commerce platforms, and now design how people work with AI.

What I do

I work beyond the visible interface. I help teams understand complex human activities, decide where AI can provide meaningful support, and define where human judgment and accountability must remain.

My work includes designing human-AI experiences, establishing human oversight, rapidly prototyping AI-enabled products, and turning methods, workflows and organisational expertise into reusable AI skills: building blocks for agentic systems and coordinated AI workflows.

Beyond projects

I'm fascinated by systems thinking, cybernetics and behavioural design: how feedback loops, structure and behaviour shape what people actually do.

I believe the role of UX is expanding: from designing interfaces to designing the context, direction, capabilities and safeguards through which people and AI work together.

How I work

Problem spaceSolution spaceUnderstandFrameExplorePrototypeTestLearnShip
Not one slow pass through the double diamond, but many fast loops through it. AI shortens building to hours; understanding, framing and verifying stay human work, so I loop through them more often, not less carefully.
  1. Understand the activity first

    How should the work be done, before deciding what AI does in it?

  2. Give AI the right context

    What does it need to know to support people reliably?

  3. Draw the line

    What AI can execute, and where human judgment and accountability must remain.

  4. Turn expertise into skills

    Methods and know-how packaged as reusable AI skills teams can build on.

  5. Orchestrate, not just automate

    How capabilities work together through agents and workflows.

  6. Know when not to reuse a pattern

    Fit the form to the work, even if AI stays below the surface for now.

Let's talk

Thinking about people and AI? Let's talk.

I'm always happy to exchange ideas about human-AI interaction, AI skills and agentic UX.