The pressure to embrace AI: a designer’s take
One of the most alluring aspects of the tech industry is its relentless pace and constant evolution. Designers have watched industry-standard tools shift from Sketch to Figma, embraced ever-refined agile processes, and adapted to countless new ways of delivering value. Now, the next seismic shift is on the horizon: AI — a force that promises either to upend the role of product design as we know it, or at the very least, make our workflows a thousand times more efficient and productive.
As someone dedicated to her craft, I’ve made a conscious effort to weave AI into my daily routine in pursuit of becoming the best designer I can be. I use ChatGPT almost every day, asking it questions that range from the deeply professional to the delightfully trivial. It’s an undeniably useful tool. If I can ask it for a list of AI courses tailored to product designers, it saves me from an hour of scrolling through search results myself. And if I want it to call me “Queen” and draft a meal-prep plan in a Gen Z tone? Well, who says multitasking can’t also be entertaining? I contain multitudes.
Most of my prompts lean toward the personal and low-stakes variety — if ChatGPT gets it wrong, the consequences are negligible, even if mildly annoying. But I’m still grateful for a tool that, just two years ago, didn’t exist for me, now saving me real time and mental overhead on the logistics of life.
That said, the magic occasionally wears thin. When I recently asked ChatGPT for AI course recommendations, four out of five links led to 404 errors. It felt eerily similar to texting a charming, self-proclaimed intellectual ex — all surface, no substance. The illusion of AI’s omniscience shattered in an instant.
Of course, AI hype is everywhere. Dozens, if not hundreds, of new products claim to be the silver bullet for productivity, promising to make software creation lightning fast. Tools like v0 can spin up a landing page in seconds, which understandably sends a ripple of anxiety through the design community. On paper, it looks like a few clicks could replace weeks of thoughtful, human-centered design work.
The thing is, ChatGPT — like most AI tools — excels at sounding smart. Under the hood, it’s not magic, but pattern recognition. Trained on an enormous library of text — books, articles, conversations, websites — it predicts what words typically come next, assembling responses that feel coherent, clear, and impressively human. Think of it as an improv artist armed with the entire internet’s worth of knowledge and the unshakable enthusiasm of a golden retriever.
But here’s the catch: AI can only remix what already exists. It can draft a script that sounds like an HBO pilot, and to an untrained eye, it might even pass. But put that same script in front of a seasoned Hollywood writer and they’ll spot the clichés, recycled plotlines, and lack of originality within seconds.
As a design lead with a decade of experience, I’m not losing sleep over AI’s creative output — at least, not yet. The problems I tackle daily are deeply human, nuanced, and context-rich — the kinds of challenges no algorithm can fully grasp. So much of product design relies on understanding human psychology, and frankly, even humans struggle to predict human behavior.
In six months, this post might already be outdated — and I’d welcome that. I’ll keep experimenting with AI, and I’ll keep using tools like ChatGPT for the things it does well, because it does make life easier. But when it comes to claims of radically transforming my work? The burden of proof still sits squarely on AI’s shoulders.
