If you’re someone like me who loves writing on paper, uses the same type of pen for ten years, and refuses to read books digitally, you’ve thought something like this: what the hell is design now that there is AI?
And you’re not asking it because you’re a doomer, and believe design is dead like the masses online. You probably use AI to design all the time even if you prefer the older methods. It simply helps you test faster than before, and what’s wrong with that?
Yet the question lingers at the end of every project you complete. As you prepare to share your work, you look around at the landscape of design-engineer-illustrator-super-efficient-people sharing their portfolios and you wonder what will happen to the industry and the principles used for almost a century.
Because it doesn’t seem that design is dying at all, in fact it seems it’s exploding with new and incredible ways to meet the needs of people. But mostly the needs of people who want to create faster. Is not the purpose of design to make the lives of every person better? To craft things that meet the unknown needs of the world. To bring them ease, joy and light in their daily lives. It seems right now, AI tackles only one part of the design equation—speed. So, what does it mean for you now that you’re a designer in the age of artificial intelligence? Let’s do a breakdown for what it means for us designers (we), and the clients we serve (they) in a more open format discussion than an instructionary article.
We Get New Skills… Kind Of
The amazing thing about AI for designers is how many skills it can help you acquire. Like a tool belt with infinite loops to fit as many objects into, AI gives us this capability to hold a lot of skills at once. However acquiring a skill versus understanding the skill with AI is totally different. Designers may be experimenting with 3D modeling with AI, though they’ve never touched it in their lives, but it does not imply they understand how to model three dimensional objects, why they should model three dimensional objects and so forth. They’ve merely partnered with a tool that can produce assets with them.
We (designers) are acquiring new skills— and it will be equally important as we acquire to challenge ourselves to understand.
We Trade Value for Efficiency (Sometimes)
Let’s face it, sometimes it is about getting the work done quickly and more efficiently. For designers who constantly face the endless challenges of revisions and scope creep from demanding clients, it can become critical to become more efficient with those moments within the process. The ‘Aha!’ moment is born with AI: where we can learn to create more efficient processes where there is normally drag by automating the smaller work.
The end result of AI revising or iterating for you will not be the same end result of a human designer spending the time it takes to carefully watch the details. So we may trade high valued outcomes for efficiency, and adjust the client perceptions accordingly. They (the client) may not know you used AI to refine certain moments, but you will ultimately tell. You know the difference. So we must be careful when and where we trade value for efficiency.
We Fight for Peoples Needs, Not Just Clients
Now that the position of AI is to support us and our work, we must take our responsibilities to the user more seriously. Clients always have and always will want things faster, cheaper, and better. AI has also enabled us to help them in that pursuit. We must always keep the end user at the top of our list, and fight for their place of importance for them. Whether you’re designing packaging or app interfaces, the job remains the same. Make things usable, enjoyable, and light for the end user.
We Use AI Tools to Enhance Playfulness
Being a playful designer might sound nightmarish to those who brute force their way through deliverable reviews or take their job too seriously. However it is the playful designer who stumbles across a unique solution to help clients, not the strict. We must take advantage of how AI helps us bring lightness into playing around in our skills. Make that music app, because now you can see it in production. Craft that online gaming platform you’ve always thought of in the back of your mind. Make the at home AI system you’ve seen in movies but never replicated. These acts of playfulness in our free time enhanced by AI tools will only help us create better solutions by opening our minds to possibilities we can now easily discover.
They Will Want to Do It Themselves
Put yourself in the client seat and imagine you contain low to no skill sets to produce the ideas you envision for your brand. And now imagine you’ve been given a tool that promises you can now do it yourself and at the lowest cost you could have ever imagined. So you prompt, you educate the AI on yourself and your business, and it starts producing for you. You know the results aren’t the exact same as working with a designer, but you don’t care, you’re saving money and moving quickly like you never could have imagined. It’s akin to the experiment with rats where the rodents keep pushing the cocaine button versus the food button because they’ve become addicted to the feeling of ecstasy versus the reality of life (requirement of nourishment). Clients will face the same conundrum when bringing their AI produced brands and products to the market.
And you must let them. The consequence of not doing things right the first time in business is not new, and lessons have to be learned to subsequently have them understand the value of creative work. Don’t argue for your value on the internet, continue to produce amazing things and share it with the world instead. This problem will regulate itself.
They Will Undervalue You Overtime, But Only If…
They will undervalue you when you begin to behave like an order taker and utilize AI as your only means to produce. Your value to the client is not just the outcome, but your wisdom and expertise for why the outcome is what it is and how it will work. Do not position yourself as someone who fulfills requests lest you want your value to be the same as the AI they prompt at whatever monthly fee they pay it. Lead your clients, challenge their way of thinking to help them reach their goals, and provide them with the expertise they need in their lives. If you start competing on output, you’ve already lost.
They Will Want to Forgo Principles
Sometimes clients hate designer legalism. ‘Process this, systems that, testing here… can we just ship it already and do my idea as it was?’. And AI has only made that model of thinking more tantalizing. Who can blame them if they view the design process as in the way versus for the way.
It will become your job to help turn processes and systems into something that feels like a benefit as much as it truly is a benefit. Whether it be refining your process, cleaning up areas that may lag too hard, and being willing to test quickly. Now is an important time to stand for the design principles that help our clients get their goals, while making it a better experience for the client. Improving experience is a fantastic challenge for a designer.
They Will Not Understand
No matter how many times you want to explain your value or describe the benefits of your process versus an AI, they will not understand. Simply because they are not designers.
And it is not their job to understand you, it’s your job to understand them and help them. The greater you position yourself as the designer who gets them, the less you have to argue for your place.
That concludes it.
These are merely the thoughts of someone in the industry for a while. On what I believe will become essential and what it will mean to design in the age of AI. What do you think it means to design in the age of AI?