Again, thank you. I’ve long struggled to articulate what I do as an interior designer, that I’m not just plugging furniture and pretty things into a floor plan. I’ve always had to dig deeply- into a person, a house, a space, a story, and look for that something meaningful to hook onto. My client gets to be part of that discovery. It’s an exciting, indescribable, multi sensory, back’n forth creative human interaction that would be entirely dumbed down by AI. And I know it’s also where the Beauty I want to create lies.
AI will make it easier for developers to use design systems properly, but it won’t help businesses innovate. (At least not by itself.) I think at least 80% of design isn’t “design”, but relationships and analysis and synthesis and strategy. Designers’ skill sets are hugely valuable for these things, if we’ll just stop self-marginalizing.
I think you're agreeing with me? I'm not quite sure :)
I definitely agree that design is a social process. That's one of the main points of this book. The fact that we have to put quotes around it to talk about more than one person doing it is emblematic of the problem.
Can you tell me more about the self-marginalizing you're talk about? Not sure what you're referring to, although I have guesses.
We do agree, Scott. I think a lot of what you’ve been writing about covers the ways designers marginalize themselves—focusing on the wrong arguments and metrics; holding a romantic, idealized idea of what a designer is (thanks, Ayn Rand); refusing to compromise; etc.
Designers wanting “a seat at the table” is the dog catching the car. Most of us have no idea of how to meaningfully influence the stakeholders and business owners around the table. Quick aside: at one point I was feeling very unsure of myself as a designer, so I went to a portfolio review. The creative directors engaged with the strategies behind the work, and said I should be on their side of the table. The art directors talked about kerning.
I forgot one more self-marginalizing trait rampant in design: the shade thrown at design thinking. One might think that training others to see the value in thinking about stakeholders and their needs, defining problems clearly, exploring divergent solutions to the problems at hand, and prioritizing would all be helpful skills designers could leverage with their clients and partners. But most designers seem to think design should be credentialed (be careful what you ask for!) and therefore separate. Informed clients are the best clients.
The credential thing is always a red herring to me - as you're suggesting. Designers who call for this don't seem to ask anyone in credentialed fields what problems that actually solved (or created).
Design thinking - I'm split on this. I agree with you there is too much shade here. The spirit of sharing what we know and giving simplified frameworks is what any good profession does and we should celebrate a rare opportunity where the general business world is interested in what we do. The bad has been the abuse and misuse of simplification, but this is a problem in every field (e.g. books like 10 day MBA profess to teach a person two years worth of education in 10 days. Really?).
Design as production is unambiguously a bounded profession, while design as planning is not always so. That’s a bit like the difference between design as a job and design as a human activity. Design as planning is *embedded* in many professions, and that makes designers anxious (see below).
Practically, designers probably need to accept that design as production is being automated (interestingly, it’s almost always production that’s automated across history, regardless of the profession/expertise), while design as planning specifically for that production is the new scope of future designers. That’s a drastic scope-down compared to “the glory days”.
In other words, when the design profession is scoped down towards a narrower niche, the dynamics of the job market shifts. Sure, there are still people hand-crafting shoes – but how many of them are there? Where do they stand on the market? Is that a promising profession/career choice for an aspiring young professional? Inevitably, only a small bunch of people will end up doing that, and they are also extremely good at what they do. The rest of the aspired have to find other means of employment.
The prospect of facing a niche where experienced expert/veterans happily dominate is not a good one for aspiring young professionals. That’s where the anxiety comes from.
AI is to design what Macromedia Flash was to web animation making. The key shift is probably not even that designers end up doing less design production (yes they will, and the profession would require redefining), but perhaps it’s more like far more non-designers end up doing more of it.
Canva is a recent example: its impact is much less about graphic designers end up doing less graphic design, but that far more non graphic designers can now create graphics of their liking/needs.
Thanks for this thoughtful comment Noah. Lots to think about here. I definitely agree there aren't many shoemakers anymore :) The industrial world is tough on craftspeople, but that's been true for a century or more.
The question of what to tell young folks is tricky, but always has been. Everyone has to make the tradeoffs between doing what they love and what they can be paid (well) for.
> but perhaps it’s more like far more non-designers end up doing more of it.
I agree. I'm out of my depth in trying to predict how things like this shake out. The fear is always this means the end of jobs once "non-designers" have more access, but often it really does just shift what it means for a company to differentiate their products and it simultaneously creates more opportunities.
I don't think you're wrong about the value of design as planning, but I think you may be underestimating the importance of production in terms of economic outlook for the majority. (Adding this in concurrence with everything Noah Fang said.)
In the centuries since the industrial revolution began, the application of industrial technology has never stopped displacing workers, consolidating wealth, widening inequality, and expanding abysmal working conditions. I'm currently (nearly finished) reading Brian Merchant's Blood in the Machine, which makes this abundantly clear.
In addition, as production becomes concentrated among fewer, large-scale mass producers, the planning opportunities become both fewer, and more under the control of entrepreneurs and business owners. (When Noah wrote "non-designers end up doing more of it", who do you think those non-designers are?)
I get your point about how many planning jobs can there really be. Not sure! I think as long as there are software teams building software someone has to plan releases and what's in them. That's design as planning by another name. I don't see that ever going away.
Would you recommend Blood in the Machine? I'm well versed in the general history and argument of the social downsides of technology progress - but this book seems more focused on AI, correct?
Yes, I recommend it! Blood in the Machine tells the story of the Luddite uprising (the circumstances that led to it, its peak in 1811-13, and its legacy) with interludes that draw connections to today’s big tech, workplace automation, and AI. So, I’d frame it as focusing on workplace automation and its social, economic, and political contexts.
The Luddite uprising was much, much larger, more popular, and more consequential than most people think. Merchant’s retelling is dramatic and engaging, though it might not be satisfying to someone looking for a thorough, academic history. The parallels between that time period, and what is happening now with unaccountable, unregulated tech giants, are powerful.
Thanks Dan. I'll check it out. Does he confirm/deny where the name Luddite comes from? There's a popular myth it's named after Ned Lud, who might or might not have actually existed :)
Unfortunately, there's no big reveal about whether Ned/Edward Ludd really existed, or was only a story (an updated Robin Hood?) Merchant says he "likely never existed at all" and discusses possible derivations of the name. In the apocryphal story, Ludd was a boy and an apprentice who, in 1779, smashed two knitting frames with a "great hammer" after being whipped for slacking off at work.
But we do know that the Luddites named themselves after this legendary figure. By 1811, groups of workers in towns throughout the English Midlands were planning and carrying out organized attacks on factories. Each group would refer to their leader as General Ludd (or Captain Ludd, King Ludd), and they would often post warning letters signed with that name. The use of the name was a deliberate tactic to maintain anonymity of group members and allowed them to build a movement despite being decentralized, without top-down coordination between towns.
Edit: And meant to add, they frequently used hammers in those attacks :)
AI is definitely a game-changer. I welcome it to relieve me from UX drudge work. For the past 10 years, I’ve felt the way we design for screens is like designing handles for buggy whips as cars crowd the road. Time to take inventory of transferable skills, step away from the Figma, and design for the brave, new, emerging HCI world.
THere's always so much hype for sure. I do think better tools always eliminates certain parts of jobs, so there's more substance here than blockchain, but how much is hard to predict.
Again, thank you. I’ve long struggled to articulate what I do as an interior designer, that I’m not just plugging furniture and pretty things into a floor plan. I’ve always had to dig deeply- into a person, a house, a space, a story, and look for that something meaningful to hook onto. My client gets to be part of that discovery. It’s an exciting, indescribable, multi sensory, back’n forth creative human interaction that would be entirely dumbed down by AI. And I know it’s also where the Beauty I want to create lies.
AI will make it easier for developers to use design systems properly, but it won’t help businesses innovate. (At least not by itself.) I think at least 80% of design isn’t “design”, but relationships and analysis and synthesis and strategy. Designers’ skill sets are hugely valuable for these things, if we’ll just stop self-marginalizing.
I think you're agreeing with me? I'm not quite sure :)
I definitely agree that design is a social process. That's one of the main points of this book. The fact that we have to put quotes around it to talk about more than one person doing it is emblematic of the problem.
Can you tell me more about the self-marginalizing you're talk about? Not sure what you're referring to, although I have guesses.
We do agree, Scott. I think a lot of what you’ve been writing about covers the ways designers marginalize themselves—focusing on the wrong arguments and metrics; holding a romantic, idealized idea of what a designer is (thanks, Ayn Rand); refusing to compromise; etc.
Designers wanting “a seat at the table” is the dog catching the car. Most of us have no idea of how to meaningfully influence the stakeholders and business owners around the table. Quick aside: at one point I was feeling very unsure of myself as a designer, so I went to a portfolio review. The creative directors engaged with the strategies behind the work, and said I should be on their side of the table. The art directors talked about kerning.
Thanks for clarifying. Ayn Rand is always to blame for something! I appreciate that story about the portfolio review. Wow.
I forgot one more self-marginalizing trait rampant in design: the shade thrown at design thinking. One might think that training others to see the value in thinking about stakeholders and their needs, defining problems clearly, exploring divergent solutions to the problems at hand, and prioritizing would all be helpful skills designers could leverage with their clients and partners. But most designers seem to think design should be credentialed (be careful what you ask for!) and therefore separate. Informed clients are the best clients.
Good ones. Thanks.
The credential thing is always a red herring to me - as you're suggesting. Designers who call for this don't seem to ask anyone in credentialed fields what problems that actually solved (or created).
Design thinking - I'm split on this. I agree with you there is too much shade here. The spirit of sharing what we know and giving simplified frameworks is what any good profession does and we should celebrate a rare opportunity where the general business world is interested in what we do. The bad has been the abuse and misuse of simplification, but this is a problem in every field (e.g. books like 10 day MBA profess to teach a person two years worth of education in 10 days. Really?).
Design as production is unambiguously a bounded profession, while design as planning is not always so. That’s a bit like the difference between design as a job and design as a human activity. Design as planning is *embedded* in many professions, and that makes designers anxious (see below).
Practically, designers probably need to accept that design as production is being automated (interestingly, it’s almost always production that’s automated across history, regardless of the profession/expertise), while design as planning specifically for that production is the new scope of future designers. That’s a drastic scope-down compared to “the glory days”.
In other words, when the design profession is scoped down towards a narrower niche, the dynamics of the job market shifts. Sure, there are still people hand-crafting shoes – but how many of them are there? Where do they stand on the market? Is that a promising profession/career choice for an aspiring young professional? Inevitably, only a small bunch of people will end up doing that, and they are also extremely good at what they do. The rest of the aspired have to find other means of employment.
The prospect of facing a niche where experienced expert/veterans happily dominate is not a good one for aspiring young professionals. That’s where the anxiety comes from.
AI is to design what Macromedia Flash was to web animation making. The key shift is probably not even that designers end up doing less design production (yes they will, and the profession would require redefining), but perhaps it’s more like far more non-designers end up doing more of it.
Canva is a recent example: its impact is much less about graphic designers end up doing less graphic design, but that far more non graphic designers can now create graphics of their liking/needs.
Thanks for this thoughtful comment Noah. Lots to think about here. I definitely agree there aren't many shoemakers anymore :) The industrial world is tough on craftspeople, but that's been true for a century or more.
The question of what to tell young folks is tricky, but always has been. Everyone has to make the tradeoffs between doing what they love and what they can be paid (well) for.
> but perhaps it’s more like far more non-designers end up doing more of it.
I agree. I'm out of my depth in trying to predict how things like this shake out. The fear is always this means the end of jobs once "non-designers" have more access, but often it really does just shift what it means for a company to differentiate their products and it simultaneously creates more opportunities.
I don't think you're wrong about the value of design as planning, but I think you may be underestimating the importance of production in terms of economic outlook for the majority. (Adding this in concurrence with everything Noah Fang said.)
In the centuries since the industrial revolution began, the application of industrial technology has never stopped displacing workers, consolidating wealth, widening inequality, and expanding abysmal working conditions. I'm currently (nearly finished) reading Brian Merchant's Blood in the Machine, which makes this abundantly clear.
In addition, as production becomes concentrated among fewer, large-scale mass producers, the planning opportunities become both fewer, and more under the control of entrepreneurs and business owners. (When Noah wrote "non-designers end up doing more of it", who do you think those non-designers are?)
I get your point about how many planning jobs can there really be. Not sure! I think as long as there are software teams building software someone has to plan releases and what's in them. That's design as planning by another name. I don't see that ever going away.
Would you recommend Blood in the Machine? I'm well versed in the general history and argument of the social downsides of technology progress - but this book seems more focused on AI, correct?
Yes, I recommend it! Blood in the Machine tells the story of the Luddite uprising (the circumstances that led to it, its peak in 1811-13, and its legacy) with interludes that draw connections to today’s big tech, workplace automation, and AI. So, I’d frame it as focusing on workplace automation and its social, economic, and political contexts.
The Luddite uprising was much, much larger, more popular, and more consequential than most people think. Merchant’s retelling is dramatic and engaging, though it might not be satisfying to someone looking for a thorough, academic history. The parallels between that time period, and what is happening now with unaccountable, unregulated tech giants, are powerful.
Thanks Dan. I'll check it out. Does he confirm/deny where the name Luddite comes from? There's a popular myth it's named after Ned Lud, who might or might not have actually existed :)
Unfortunately, there's no big reveal about whether Ned/Edward Ludd really existed, or was only a story (an updated Robin Hood?) Merchant says he "likely never existed at all" and discusses possible derivations of the name. In the apocryphal story, Ludd was a boy and an apprentice who, in 1779, smashed two knitting frames with a "great hammer" after being whipped for slacking off at work.
But we do know that the Luddites named themselves after this legendary figure. By 1811, groups of workers in towns throughout the English Midlands were planning and carrying out organized attacks on factories. Each group would refer to their leader as General Ludd (or Captain Ludd, King Ludd), and they would often post warning letters signed with that name. The use of the name was a deliberate tactic to maintain anonymity of group members and allowed them to build a movement despite being decentralized, without top-down coordination between towns.
Edit: And meant to add, they frequently used hammers in those attacks :)
AI is definitely a game-changer. I welcome it to relieve me from UX drudge work. For the past 10 years, I’ve felt the way we design for screens is like designing handles for buggy whips as cars crowd the road. Time to take inventory of transferable skills, step away from the Figma, and design for the brave, new, emerging HCI world.
I've been hearing this for so long. I feel like it'll be 2048 and we'll still be asking this question.
This is the blockchain of 2024
"It's going to take over, I promise."
THere's always so much hype for sure. I do think better tools always eliminates certain parts of jobs, so there's more substance here than blockchain, but how much is hard to predict.