The challenges I help clients with most these days include maintaining compliance with accessibility requirements, driving adoption of a design system, and grappling with how AI will reshape the experience design profession. I was eager to attend Adobe MAX 2025 and see how Adobe is enabling enterprises to tackle these challenges and deliver on its promise of “creativity for all.” Here’s my take after hearing the company’s announcements, watching feature demos, and speaking directly with Adobe leaders.

Adobe’s AI Push: Powering The Entire Design Process

Adobe is doubling down on AI to streamline the workflows that matter most to its customers. It unveiled a slew of new AI features, anchored by clear themes. Here’s what stood out for me and what it means for experience design and accessibility leaders:

  • Adobe aims to enable more phases of the design process. “Shifting left” is common vernacular in accessibility and software development circles, so it was interesting to hear the term used to articulate Adobe’s goal of using AI to enable ideation — not just creation, production, and delivery. Firefly Boards  exemplifies this shift left, helping teams move from inspiration to concept faster by generating ideas from reference images.

What it means: Audit your design process, asking yourself where AI can boost design efficiency and effectiveness. Experiment, share learnings, and clarify roles across design and product teams as AI-assisted ideation becomes the norm.

  • New features and services drive design system adherence. Consistency and standards matter, whether content is made by humans or generated by AI. Adobe announced Firefly Custom Models, trained on the customer’s assets to enable creation of brand-compliant content, are now available to all its creative cloud users. And for enterprises, it launched Adobe Firefly Foundry, a managed service that deep-trains domain-specific AI models (see my colleague Jay Pattisall’s blog for more on that).

What it means: Be one of the eight in 10 companies that Forrester predicts will invest in design systems to preempt emerging AI risks in 2026. Mature design systems are critical to avoiding mishaps when using AI agents in design workflows because they provide the foundation on which to train these agents. Organizations that already have mature design systems should explore how Adobe’s Firefly Custom Models and Firefly Foundry can strengthen adoption of and compliance with the system.

  • Meeting users where they are is a design principle. In addition to its own models, which are commercially safe — something enterprise clients value deeply — Adobe integrates an extensive list of partner models from Google, ElevenLabs, OpenAI, and others. This gives users the flexibility to select the best-fit model for a specific design task. Adobe is also beginning to integrate with tools customers use every day; for example, customers now have the option to create and edit images using Adobe Express within ChatGPT.

What it means: AI upskilling is a focus for most design leaders I speak with. That includes teaching designers how to unlock the value from AI features in the tools they use day to day. Don’t make assumptions that designers will know the best model to satisfy a given design task. Make it part of the job of AI experience designers in your organization to develop and train all designers on best practices.

  • Adobe balances new innovations with solving long-standing pain points. There’s something to be said for directing AI at use cases that may not be headline-worthy but drastically improve designers’ quality of life. A Photoshop feature that auto-renames layers drew the loudest audience applause at MAX — proof that fixing everyday frustrations matters.

What it means: Deeply understanding customers, their pain points, and their unmet needs is critical to designing AI features responsibly. Prioritize AI features that remove bottlenecks for your users, not just headline-grabbing innovations.

Closing Thoughts

I left MAX feeling optimistic. From an accessibility perspective, conversational interfaces like the AI assistant that Adobe offers within Express and is bringing to Photoshop can soon open design to more people. These features will help users who struggle to use design software, such as users with upper mobility challenges. Still, questions remain: How will Adobe apply its own Spectrum design system to ensure seamless transitions between its products? What new accessibility features will we see that make AI-generated outputs meet accessibility standards? I’ll be watching closely and helping clients unlock value from these tools.

Get In Touch

If you’re a Forrester client and want to dive deeper into these topics, or just chat about MAX, set up a conversation with me. You can also follow or connect with me on LinkedIn.