AI: Friend, Foe, or the Future

Hey there—hope your week’s going well!

Today’s newsletter dives into how we're evolving as designers. As the industry shifts, so must we. I’m going to be sharing a few things I’ve noticed and heard recently about how people are fearing that AI might put them out of job—hopefully I can cover some questions that you might have in mind already, and maybe they'll resonate with you too. Let’s dive right in!

What in the AI? 🤖

If you’re on earth for the past 2 years, you probably would have witnessed the incredible advancement of AI. From ChatGPT being the first widely used AI chatbot, we now have variations of AI chat bots ranging from Perplexity to Grok, and have even expanded to generative user interfaces, with complete UX writing and visual assets in seconds.

It sure is fast, easy, cheap and sometimes free. And because it’s too easy, sometimes decisions are made recklessly to use AI to “replace” certain things.

The Fear 😰

I’ve heard from people who’s had the fear of losing their jobs—first-hand from designers and engineers alike. I wouldn’t say this fear is irrational, but I do think that history has shown, when new technology comes into play, there are jobs that disappear as the new industry comes in. For example, the automobile industry had put horse as a primary mode of transport out of business, and in its place, a few industries sprouted to support this new industry.

Where’s the opportunity? 🤔

The impact of automobile industry changed pavements and had the roads redesigned for cars. At the same time, cars run on petrol, so companies like Vacuum Oil Company and Standard Oil Company could flourish to become ExxonMobil (even though its impact on the environment is pretty rough—but so is AI). However, horse-riding today is considered leisure or a luxury item, where it’s associated more with recreation or sports, or just a lifestyle. When the industry shifted, it reshaped the entire transportation job market, with workers moving into the automotive sector. Now, with these generative AI tools, they are limited to what is in the world today.

AI Limitations:

• Knowledge and information cutoff date

• No real-time awareness

• Outdated or incomplete data

While impressive and can help solve problems, what AI cannot do, is to predict the future, and as we all know, the best way to predict the future is to create it. Being designers, the opportunity for you is to have the ability to think beyond pixel-pushing, solving a larger problems—which would allow you to do evaluations with current UI, where the pain points are, what the new UI’s goals are, and what it would solve.

At the same time, with Systems Thinking, knowing what the systems that the interface is reliant on, is just as crucial and important. For example, Product Managers might give a requirements that they need to upload 1 million data records, but instead of designing bulk uploads, the question that needs to be asked(if you understand how the systems work), is whether a data migration would be a better choice, and get advice from the engineers on how it could be done. And because if the product manager uses an AI to ask them to design a screen for bulk uploads, it would do just that. It would just design a screen that caters to bulk uploads.

Just by shifting the lens ever so slightly, you have helped solve an issue without ever designing a screen. As such, you have elevated the ‘experience’ of the user without ever needing the user to manually upload data on their end.

AI am here to stay 🤩 (sorry for the dad joke 😅)

While I don’t deny that the word AI is being thrown around too carelessly these days as a marketing gimmick, it has made a profound impact in our lives—to the point where now TikTok has videos of people using AI to answer online interviews in real time. There’s a lot you can leverage on AI today. If you’re a designer who has some coding background, you could generate code from your designs and have things built from your vision. But always remember, you are the one with the vision and the strategy. AI can only generate things they know. You mind, your creativity and understanding that human element is what allows you to move forward with AI.

Reflect: Again, I want to emphasise that instead of replacing us, AI a co-pilot that speeds up and enhances our thinking, extends our bandwidth, and challenging us to focus on the work that truly matters. Use it wisely and responsibly. The next skill you might need to have could be ‘prompt engineering’.

Mentor’s Notes

As you can tell, I have updated the format of the newsletter thanks to the feedback that I’ve received. At the same time, I’ve made some ever-so-slight changes to the newsletter. I have spent quite some time to make these changes, so I hope you like it. I’m open to feedback and suggestions as always. Anyway, take care and see you in the next one!

P.S. Forward this your friends if you think it’s helpful.