When AI designs (and delivers) for us, what do we still own?
What is our role as designers when AI can do our job?
If AI can design, build, (and ship) whatās left for us to shape?
What happens to design when execution is no longer ours to own?
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š Whatās Inside
- From creators to architects
- The state of AI
- When pixels lose their meaning
- No more pixel pushing
- How to gain control over creative work
š§± From creators to architects
At its core, being a designer has always meant holding a dual awareness.
Of the surface and the system behind it.
Our job has never been solely about how things look. It has always involvedĀ considering how things behave, how they support user goals, and how they fit into broader contexts.
This is where the term āuser experienceā was born.
Not from visual trends, but from a need to think holistically about systems, flows, and outcomes.
When we reduce it to visuals alone, we abandon the very essence of the discipline.
Yet, in recent years, weāve seen a noticeable shift towards prioritising visual polish, largely influenced by emerging tools capable of rapidly producing high-quality graphics and visuals.
This ease of visual output has subtly pushed the industry towards immediate visual gratification, often at the expense of deeper, more deliberate UX considerations.
Itās been happening quietly, an increasing prioritisation of surface-level polish over deeper UX thinking.
But now, while all these tools keep upping their visual game, a completely different tool has been evolving alongside them ā one that doesnāt help us design better visuals, but takes over the act of designing altogether.
AI is not only assisting now, it is starting to replace the very tasks we once called our own.
With AI now able to render those visuals at a higher standard than most of us could match by hand, maybe itās time to leave behind the illusion that visual polish is our core value?
As of recently, it now transforms images or sketches directly into deployable systems, prompting us to reconsider our role fundamentally.
So now, with execution delegated to machines, we have a chance to refocus. And this change has been long overdue.
Weāre out of excuses.
Itās time to re-centre our attention on what design is meant to serve: outcomes.
Some may worry that this shift in AI puts our jobs at risk ā that it makes our roles as designers redundant.
But this moment is not a threat. It is an opportunity…
It opens space for deeper, more consequential thinking. AI may handle the execution, but it cannot define the architecture of a service, evaluate edge cases, or prioritise ethics. That responsibility remains with us. And itās here that we have the chance to expand our influence.
In fact, there has never been a better time to be a designer.
…
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