Wow, nice one. I’ll be thinking about this one for at least the next few days. I’m pretty much with you on the certainty of an unrecognizable very near future. I had a short grieving of my design career as I knew it, but… there’s plenty to not be sad about losing (sayonara noodle prototypes!). I’m also the kind of person who likes to go along for the ride and appreciate where the adventure collectively takes us.
Wow that really took me on a journey 🥲🥹❤️🩹 I feel like I’m somewhere in between still. I’m in it enough that I started before ai but still early enough that I’m trying to adapt to things. I try to stay hopeful for the future but we really can’t say what design and tech is going to look like in another few years. I’m definitely adding this book to my tbr list though. ❤️ Thank you for sharing.
What a beautiful essay, truly fantastic work. Made me cry. This weekend had been tough for me watching the demos of Claude Design, as Figma stocks plunged. Things are happening so damn fast.
As I was reading your essay I was mentally combing through every creative service line across the global design consultancy I work for and thinking what she’s saying here is true for all of them, the whole industry - (advertising, social, copy, art direction, experience strategy, photography, video production and so forth), and outside of creative as well, every damn industry is impacted and the work will as you said either merge or disappear. It’s hitting me how scary it is that these technologies are controlled by like only three companies. That kind of consolidation of the services humans did as their career into just an handful of companies is astronomical.
I did not realize I was going to be reading a horror piece (joking) - that said, this is a beautiful piece of writing, well-constructed and thought out. I'm also fond of using myth as a construct for understanding the present.
That said, and maybe this is delusional optimism, things have changed and agree with you that the design train is leaving/has left the station. I don't think there will be world without human-made design. Perhaps it's small and niche and not the popular method, but historically we tend to balance out the new with the old (vinyl sales during a time of being able to stream any song imaginable, as one example). If we are to build on the trajectory of what Nicholas Carr was arguing in The Shallows about the early internet killing depth, I imagine there will be a world for the shallow (ai) and a world for depth (vinyl). Where UX/product design lands in that, if it continues to exist at all, who knows? But there's always a ceiling, or an ick, with these technologies. I think. Maybe you're right that AI will self-correct for that, but I think because AI is human-created that there will be an ick ceiling. Just not sure what it is yet because the ceiling is very high (and that does scare me).
Wow, nice one. I’ll be thinking about this one for at least the next few days. I’m pretty much with you on the certainty of an unrecognizable very near future. I had a short grieving of my design career as I knew it, but… there’s plenty to not be sad about losing (sayonara noodle prototypes!). I’m also the kind of person who likes to go along for the ride and appreciate where the adventure collectively takes us.
That is the only spirit that will endure this 🙌
Excellent!
Wow that really took me on a journey 🥲🥹❤️🩹 I feel like I’m somewhere in between still. I’m in it enough that I started before ai but still early enough that I’m trying to adapt to things. I try to stay hopeful for the future but we really can’t say what design and tech is going to look like in another few years. I’m definitely adding this book to my tbr list though. ❤️ Thank you for sharing.
What a beautiful essay, truly fantastic work. Made me cry. This weekend had been tough for me watching the demos of Claude Design, as Figma stocks plunged. Things are happening so damn fast.
As I was reading your essay I was mentally combing through every creative service line across the global design consultancy I work for and thinking what she’s saying here is true for all of them, the whole industry - (advertising, social, copy, art direction, experience strategy, photography, video production and so forth), and outside of creative as well, every damn industry is impacted and the work will as you said either merge or disappear. It’s hitting me how scary it is that these technologies are controlled by like only three companies. That kind of consolidation of the services humans did as their career into just an handful of companies is astronomical.
I did not realize I was going to be reading a horror piece (joking) - that said, this is a beautiful piece of writing, well-constructed and thought out. I'm also fond of using myth as a construct for understanding the present.
That said, and maybe this is delusional optimism, things have changed and agree with you that the design train is leaving/has left the station. I don't think there will be world without human-made design. Perhaps it's small and niche and not the popular method, but historically we tend to balance out the new with the old (vinyl sales during a time of being able to stream any song imaginable, as one example). If we are to build on the trajectory of what Nicholas Carr was arguing in The Shallows about the early internet killing depth, I imagine there will be a world for the shallow (ai) and a world for depth (vinyl). Where UX/product design lands in that, if it continues to exist at all, who knows? But there's always a ceiling, or an ick, with these technologies. I think. Maybe you're right that AI will self-correct for that, but I think because AI is human-created that there will be an ick ceiling. Just not sure what it is yet because the ceiling is very high (and that does scare me).
Like the story from the book, it is a message of hope for those who choose to hear it, and a warning for those who don’t.