# Paul Smith > Senior AI Interaction Designer Profile: https://flows.cv/paul I was trained in real-time multi-agent systems before they were digital. Let me tell you about a thing I worked on, because that's the fastest way to explain how I think. When I was working on Amazon's first generative AI chatbot (Amazon Q), we did the obvious thing first: we watched people use it. Not demos, but real people, real tasks, real impatience. Very quickly, one complaint kept showing up, and it wasn't subtle. People were annoyed. Genuinely annoyed. They kept saying some version of: "Why do I have to tell this thing the same stuff over and over again?" At first glance, that sounds like a UI problem. Maybe better prompts. Maybe clearer affordances. Maybe a nicer way to surface past chats. But that explanation didn't survive even a little scrutiny. The frustration wasn't about finding old conversations. It was about something deeper: people expected the system to remember them. Not perfectly, not magically—but in the way a human-like intelligence would. That's when things got interesting. So I stopped thinking about screens entirely. There was no screen to show. The question wasn't, "How do we display memory?" It was, "What kind of memory do people expect when they believe they're interacting with something intelligent?" Humans don't replay transcripts. They form impressions. They remember preferences. They generalize. They forget irrelevant details but keep what matters. Once you frame it that way, simply storing chat logs and searching them later is obviously the wrong solution. That's data storage, not experience. No screenshots came out of that work. Nothing Dribbble-worthy. But what did come out of it was far more valuable: it directly inspired the creation of a core memory service that now underpins Amazon's AI products, services, and tools. That's the kind of work I love. The kind where the most important design decision happens before there's anything to design in the visual and UI realm. Where understanding what people expect from an interaction matters more than explaining what's already broken. And where the payoff is a product that quietly feels smarter, calmer, and more trustworthy. That's the craft of product design. If you ask me what I design, that's the answer. Not the screen, but the thing the screen is trying to make possible. ## Work Experience ### Senior AI Interaction Designer @ Tanium Jan 2025 – Invalid Date | San Francisco, United States Designed AI interaction model and deployed AI systems for enterprise environments ### Product Designer (UX) AI, ML @ Amazon Web Services (AWS) Jan 2021 – Jan 2024 | San Francisco, United States Led interaction design for Amazon Q Business, conducted content research, and designed AI context model ### Senior Product Designer @ Pearson Jan 2018 – Jan 2021 | Boston, United States Redesigned eText reader, improved student engagement, and facilitated cross-functional workgroups ### Senior Interaction Designer @ Pearson Jan 2015 – Jan 2018 | Boston, United States UX design and interaction design roles ### Principal Product Designer @ Pearson Jan 2013 – Jan 2016 | Boston, United States Led iOS/MacOS product team, launched features, and increased monthly active users ### Digital Communications Manager @ Yale University Jan 2004 – Jan 2006 | New Haven, United States Redesigned Environment School website and created interactive content ### Digital Communications Manager @ The Rockefeller University Jan 2002 – Jan 2006 | New York, United States Created interactive science stories and redesigned university website ### CEO & Founder @ Smith Renaud, Inc. Jan 1996 – Jan 2002 | New York, United States Led team, created GTM strategy, raised venture capital, spun off from MIT AI Laboratory ### Full-time Parenting @ Camp One-Kid Jan 2007 – Jan 2013 | Brookline, United States Managed child development through various creative initiatives ## Education ### Master of Fine Arts Brandeis University Jan 1988 – Jan 2004 ### Bachelor of Arts Oberlin College Jan 1982 – Jan 1986 ## Contact & Social - Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulhenrysmith/ - Email: mailto:paul@placeholder.flows.cv --- Source: https://flows.cv/paul JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/paul/resume.json Last updated: 2026-01-31