ABOUT THIS EPISODE
In Episode 67 of the E-commerce Leader Series, Eric Bidinger sits down with Baptiste Briel, Co-Founder & CEO of Antinomy Studio, the Amsterdam-based creative studio behind digital experiences for Google, Shopify, MetaMask, Adyen and more. This is a deliberately different kind of conversation — less about running an e-commerce business, more about the bigger question hanging over all of them: as AI reshapes how people discover, shop and interact, what does the next generation of digital experience actually look like?
The episode opens with a rapid-fire round of five provocative statements, and Baptiste's answers set the tone for everything that follows. He disagrees that the homepage is becoming irrelevant — it's still the front door to a brand's story, even as more shopping happens off-site. He agrees that most e-commerce sites look different but feel the same, arguing predictability is often a deliberate, safe choice (it's a big reason Shopify checkouts convert so well) rather than a failure of imagination. And he's unequivocal that beautiful design without business results is just decoration.
Baptiste's central argument is that great creative work starts with understanding a client's business, not with a designer's own taste or ego — the best work, he says, comes from designers who've stopped designing for themselves. He shares how Antinomy's job is often translating deeply technical, complex ideas (robotics, AI, space infrastructure) into something that feels natural and effortless to use, and why even small decisions, like whether to add a page transition, need to be weighed against real business impact, not just aesthetic appeal.
On AI and the future of commerce, Baptiste sees interfaces moving toward conversation — the chatbot as checkout, context replacing navigation — while still believing there's a lasting place for intentional, crafted interface design at the right moments. He's candid about AI's double edge: it has made low-effort, "AI slop" branding trivially easy to generate, which paradoxically makes genuine creative distinctiveness more valuable, not less. His philosophy: use AI to handle the repetitive, unglamorous work so humans have more time for the thinking, walking and noticing that actually produces good ideas — "I want AI to do my laundry, not my art."
For anyone earlier in their career, his advice is refreshingly old-school: learn to do the work yourself before you let AI do it for you, so you can actually judge whether the output is any good.
Whether you're rethinking your brand's digital experience, wondering where AI fits into creative work, or just curious what commerce looks like after the homepage, this episode offers a genuinely different lens on where things are heading.
🎨 What you'll learn in this episode:
- Why the homepage still matters even as AI reshapes discovery and checkout
- The balance between predictable, safe UX and genuine brand differentiation
- Why great design requires understanding business objectives, not just taste
- Translating complex technical products into intuitive digital experiences
- How conversational interfaces are starting to replace traditional navigation
- Why "AI slop" branding makes real creative distinctiveness more valuable
- Using AI to remove repetitive work so humans have time to think and create
- The case for learning skills manually before automating them
- What the "agentic web" might mean for the future of e-commerce
💡 Key takeaways:
- Predictability in UX is often a deliberate choice, not a lack of imagination
- Design without business results is just decoration
- The commoditisation of easy creativity makes true creative distinctiveness more valuable
- Let AI handle repetitive tasks so people have more time for real creative thinking
🌐 Connect with Baptiste Briel & Antinomy Studio:
Website: https://www.antinomy.studio
Personal site: https://www.baptistebriel.com
About Luca
Luca is an AI operating system for e-commerce leaders — connecting marketing, finance, operations and data into a single intelligence layer that helps founders make faster, sharper decisions.
🔗 Connect with Luca here:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ask_luca
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/asklucaai/
Website: https://ask-luca.com/
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