More New Words for New Work

I gave a talk recently for the very excellent Rosenfeld Media “Designing With AI” conference. It was called “New Words for New Work,” and it was my collection of 30 purposefully ridiculous terms to define this ridiculous AI-infused moment. (I workshopped this list on the podcast as well as the newsletter a few months back, so some of these will be familiar if you’re really locked in to the Aboard Cinematic Universe). 

Here are my top ten:

1. Praygency—A product company mixed with an agency. Everyone is sure this is the future of the industry, but no one knows how it’s supposed to work. That’s why we need the “pray.” Aboard is living through this.

2. IllustrAItor—An illustrator who uses AI image generators.

3. Oftware—Vibe-coded software that changes constantly, with no documentation or even a specific plan.

4. Agentrification—What happens when AI moves into software development. It was a nice neighborhood of engineers, product managers, and designers, but now agents have moved in and are complaining that the deli doesn’t stock craft beer.

5. Promptotype—A simple hacked-together bit of code built with the prompt, often presented as finished software under deadline pressure.

6. Wrapplication—The next state of promptotype: A web app that’s been slathered with chat interfaces in order to show “AI progress.”

7. MVPTSD—What happens when people have to deal with too many promptotypes and wrapplications.

8. Skeumorgue—Where old design systems are sent because they aren’t AI-friendly enough.

9. Reorgasm—The chaos unleashed when CEOs and boards insist on restructuring a company around LLMs.
   
   
10. Scalegoats—The teams that get blamed when “just add AI” doesn’t ship and the promised scale doesn’t deliver.