Joshua Crowley
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Meet Joshua Crowley, an award-winning designer and educator based in Sydney, blending creativity, AI curiosity, and community spirit—when he’s not wrangling three kids or Donkey Kong.
Introduce yourself
Hi, I'm Josh. I'm a designer and educator. I'm based in Sydney's Inner West, on the lands of the Wangal people. I love cooking – which is often my chance to relax with a busy home life with 3 young children. I'm a Nintendo tragic, currently we're playing Donkey Kong Bonanza!
What do you do for work?
I'm an interactive designer at the Federal Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries but also really a generalist. In practice, my role varies between projects/phases from UI design, to service design, wrangling DevOps and even programming. I love it, I feel like I've been soaking up a lot of expertise from colleagues, and I've gotten lots of praise for being adaptable and collaborative. I've had the opportunity to deliver impactful work, modernising how we track trade quotas, which our team won a Good Design award for in 2024.
What do you do outside work?
Outside of work I co-host the Cursor Sydney meetup. Our next meetup is September 10th, you should come along! I also run free evening workshops for individuals wanting to learn how to build with AI, and pride myself on making them fun, hands-on and accessible to non-programmers and informative for seasoned developers.
How do you predict your role as an interaction designer will change as a result of both new and emerging AI tools?
Most (!) designers feel that AI is quite existential, they don't see themselves fitting into this new vibe-code workflow, and I have a lot of empathy for that. At the same time, I see AI as quite jagged, and the hype falling flat exactly when you need it to step up. Those are clear design challenges, where the capabilities of navigating uncertainty are required.
Personally, I see AI tools as a chance to renegotiate the experience of using a computer. I'm enjoying using my voice more, to control my computer and also using voice memos that I can transcribe into detailed prompts. I'm drawing more, I'll sketch on paper away from a computer, with the confidence I can use a photo to describe my intent with AI vision capabilities. Those experiences are pushing me to create AI features that replicate the workflow.
I'm spending a lot of time learning about and explaining the inputs and outputs of different AI models, and thinking about systems to support that, and how to express that to the user. So I can see a lot of designers moving into that emerging field (Context design?) as this stuff is remarkably less technical than you think, plus you can rely on the capabilities of LLMs to help explain and implement it.
Any podcast you are currently listening to, or a book you are reading?
Dwarkesh Podcast! It's a podcast that's introduced me to a lot of ideas and characters in AI and in SF. Dwarkesh is meeting the moment on AI, asking the right questions and feels grounding and elevating at the same time. I think Dwarkesh is generous and thoughtful and I honestly idolise his commitment to making a useful, accessible resource for the community.
What is your favourite tool or resource, and why?
I'm obviously quite a big fan of Cursor. It's enabled me to build a side project Tiny Talking Todos at a time of my life where I have almost zero time for side projects. Through the meetup I've had the chance to meet Cursor team members and international pro users, and I'm really enjoying sharing notes about their experiences with AI as practitioners. I also appreciate Cursor for how using it and experiencing it as an AI-first product gives me a framework for my own work. Many of Cursor's features like fast-apply, agent mode and context tabs have inspired my work in Talkies. You are what you eat!
Toughest work moment?
Getting fired from my job as a letterpress printer's apprentice! I was trying to fix a machine I wasn't allowed to touch, because I didn't want to disturb my boss. It was my first job out of uni and you could say it was depressing.
Most rewarding work moment?
Getting a certificate of appreciation from the Secretary at the Department of Agriculture to recognise our Good Design award for my team's work at the department. We got lined up school assembly style at a meeting and got some very kind words and a handshake, and I beamed at my colleagues and felt genuinely appreciated.
Your one-sentence work-related advice
"It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit." - Harry S Truman
