What most people get wrong about the future of AI and product design

We've all heard a version of it. AI will make designers more efficient, therefore the new skill designers need to rely on is taste. Or judgement. Pick the word that makes you feel best.

Yawn.

This is the corporate efficiency messaging we're bombarded with from the c-suite, true believers, and influencers. The idea is that AI will make production work faster. But everyone listening knows the real meaning: layoffs. The threat is implied — you better hurry up and make yourself 10x more efficient or else you'll be left behind.

Here we have one of the most powerful tools imaginable... and the best we can come up with is "do the same thing but faster?" The lack of imagination is palpable.

And worse still — it's completely ineffective — instead of encouraging people to experiment with the tools, the ham-fisted messaging is just as likely (if not more likely) to have the opposite effect. Skeptics hear the productivity framing, roll their eyes, and dig in their heels. "My work is different" they say, "AI can't replace me."

It's an especially easy message to tune out when the benefit goes to someone else. Efficiency is a corporate goal, not a human-oriented one. You can't hand-wave the fear away because it's baked into the entire premise of the thing.

Creators aren't motivated by efficiency. They're motivated by the desire to shape and build new things. People are motivated by solving their own problems, not someone else’s. And the truth is, AI can actually be a powerful tool to support these goals. The shape of product design work is already starting to change. But it’s changing in ways that have nothing to do with productivity.

Let's talk about possibility instead

I think there's a more positive message about what AI means for product designers waiting to take hold. And I'd love to hear more of it. There's a lot of angst in design these days, and part of that is fear of the unknown, fear of uncertainty. Companies are scared too — scared of being left behind. But the leaders who meet people where they are, with things that they actually value, are the leaders who will drive change. Because downloading your fears onto others doesn't work.

The research is clear: negative, fear-based messages get attention, but they don’t lead to better outcomes.

So instead of always talking about productivity, I want to hear leaders talk more about possibility — not just "do more of the same thing faster" but "what can we do now that we couldn't do yesterday?".

In some ways, this is a harder road to walk. It requires challenging our assumptions about what design is, where the value is, and what the work might look like five years from now. We’ll probably need to leave some old processes behind in order to make room for new possibilities. But the benefits are worth it.

Designers who have embraced this mindset are already setting up GitHub accounts, building their own web apps, creating games as side projects, and even submitting their own pull requests. That's an exciting future for design, and it's equally true for other builders. But it's not the message coming from the top.

If you can imagine something, you have the power to build it.

That's possibility speak in action. It's the type of empowering, optimistic message that gives people agency. The simple fact is, the walls have fallen. The constraints that held us back don't exist anymore.

Designers, engineers, product managers — we're all on the same playing field now. We're all builders. So let's go build the future.