Where's the AI Design Renaissance?

Summary

I create and sell online design courses for many folks in tech – designers, aspiring designers, design-adjacent – and one question I’ve gotten a lot over the last two and a half years is: what is AI going to do to design? I’ve been hesitant to answer too confidently, since things have been moving very quickly, and – as a teacher of design – I fall straight into a trap put so memorably by Upton Sinclair a century ago: It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it. ― Upton Sinclair That being said, if the robots are taking all the design jobs any time soon, I also would like to find my next act. So you can take this article with a grain of salt, and feel free to push back in the comments, on X, or via email 🙂 This post attempts to answer two questions: Will AI take design jobs? If so, which ones? In light of that, what should designers focus on? This is a long article. Here are a few theses: After 2.5 years of insane hype, there’s no evidence that current AI is making the design process faster Good design comes from a broader process, not a one-off conversation – meaning the one-off chat paradigm is unlikely to generate good design for non-designers AI architecture means it will continue to be worse at designs that are “out of the training data” – the bold, the novel, designs with very tight constraints Today, AI design tools show the most promise for personal projects, internal prototyping, and small public projects (with some other constraints) The current state of things In 2022, I sent out some then-new Midjourney generations with the caption: If this doesn’t revolutionize design, I don’t know what will. Three years later, I am surprised to note… there hasn’t been a revolution! This is particularly notable, since the last 3 years have been a non-stop firehose of AI hype. And yet, so far as I’ve found: There’s no evidence of massive designer productivity increases due to AI There no evidence of designer jo...