Design with AI, not for AI

Nov 8, 2024 · 8 min read

Apologies but these are very unorganised thoughts and a poorly written article. If you want a refined and well-articulated version, paste this in ChatGPT and ask it to polish it for you. That actually is what I want to prove at the end of this article. So, let's begin.

Someone asked me: Will AI take my job away?

The short answer is no (in my humble opinion) but here is my brain dump...

For the uninitiated, it's in the name. It's artificial, made by us, humans. AI in the product design context is a tool. It helps with repetitive tasks, generates options quickly, and can analyse data at scale. But it doesn't understand context, nuance, or the messy human problems that product designers actually solve.

What AI helps with: generating copy variations, creating layout options, analysing user data patterns, automating repetitive Figma tasks, writing documentation drafts, and speeding up research synthesis.

What AI doesn't do well: understanding organisational politics, reading between the lines in user interviews, making judgment calls about trade-offs, building trust with stakeholders, or deciding what not to build.

The designers who will struggle are the ones who only push pixels. If your entire value is 'I make things look nice in Figma,' then yes, AI will eat into that. But if your value is 'I understand the problem deeply, make strategic trade-offs, and ship solutions that move business metrics', you're fine.

My take: use AI to handle the tedious parts so you can spend more time on the hard parts. Design with AI as a collaborator, not as a replacement. The craft isn't in the output; it's in the thinking that leads to the output.

If you pasted this article into ChatGPT, you'd get a polished, well-structured version with proper headings and transitions. But you wouldn't get the honesty, the rough edges, or the actual opinion. That's the point.