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Being in the tech industry, it’s impossible to escape the conversation about AI. And with every new or improved AI capability, I find myself ping ponging between intrigue and despair. As a product designer, am I obsolete? Or am I now a super worker, able to be my most creative self because I'm no longer bogged down with the minutiae of counting pixels and redoing the same wireframe over and over?
After some careful thought, here’s where I landed: very nervous about how AI will affect all the facets of our daily lives (an article for another time) but also less worried about product designers (me) becoming obsolete.
I get the appeal of AI: it’s faster, cheaper, and accessible to a wide audience, able to spit out websites, videos, books, and images in the blink of an eye. So why even bother working with slower, more expensive humans? Well, I think it boils down to people skills. A product designer is not just a designer of products, they are a facilitator of conversation, a consolidator of ideas, and a strategy maker that understands the subtleties of human behavior and intricacies of product development. Let’s break it down a little.
Can AI help remote teams connect more easily? Sure. Absolutely. Can it deliver icebreaker prompts to ease the tension? You betcha. But you can only collaborate when you have other people to collaborate with. Additionally, when it comes to facilitating collaboration, I’m not sure AI will ever be able to read the subtle body language that people use to communicate approval or disapproval. Part of the job of a product designer is to get everyone in the same room (or call) and flesh out details, priorities, and creative direction. The process can look a little like herding cats and requires a lot of emotional intelligence and thinking on your feet. Knowing when to parking lot a thorny issue or press for more details is an essential part of establishing shared understanding without spinning all the wheels over zoom. In short, product designers create space for collaboration.
Working on digital products means trying to juggle multiple needs at a time. The marketing team may want a brand new color palette to fit with what's en vogue, but is it accessible? If not, how can we tweak it?
And while we’re on color palettes, maybe your customer service team thinks the app is too intimidating for new users. Should you redesign the entire thing? How will the power users adjust to the changes? What should definitely not be changed?
And maybe upper management is working on the roadmap for this quarter. How is prioritization being determined? Where’s the biggest bang for your buck when it comes to user experience improvements?
I think you get the picture. As product designers, our job is to constantly balance user needs with the real world constraints that exist within any company. We sit down and listen to all the stakeholders, then we go out and do our user research. Then, we put all of these disparate pieces of information together and transform them into a cohesive strategy that fits within the specifics of a product. To replace a product designer with a cheaper algorithmic solution is to ignore all of the nuances of those using the product and the product itself.
Okay, this one might just be my own sadness about the internet seeming to morph into a lot of pixel perfect websites full of stock images with nothing original to say. As human beings we are all flawed in some beautiful way and we bring those flaws into our designs, our art, and our everyday point of view. When everything becomes formulaic, unblemished, and flawless it all starts to look the same.
Besides, a little bit of chaos is good for the creative process. Think about all of the unexpected inventions that came about from throwing things at the wall and seeing what stuck. Ever enjoyed the sheer delight from a water fight with a Super Soaker? Well that was a happy accident invented by Lonnie Johnson who was working on an alternative to Freon. He was experimenting with different delivery mechanisms and sprayed some water across the room. And voila… the super soaker was born.
So, when it comes to simple, more rote tasks like creating a wireframe layout or making a one dimensional website, AI can absolutely save you a lot of time and energy. But best to leave the more complicated, nuanced product development to the humans.
