Are we all Strategic Designers in the era of AI?
Every week seems as if though a new uproar and controversy about AI and its usage makes the rounds across social media. It typically trickles down across Linkedin, Instagram and BlueSky, which by then means something has really been trending. If everything we go through in life is a series of repetitive cycles, one doesn’t have to go very far back to be reminded of the flurry of questions and sheer panic that occurred when Covid appeared and all our lives suddenly changed. But much to the credit of human nature, we’re quick to forget, and we simply want to get back to our previously monitored and habitual existence. Something similar is happening with the topic of AI, where it dominates all the conversations, generating many questions, and also a considerable amount of panic (the most common one being of course, is this going to take away our jobs). Ironically, during 2024 I conducted a series of workshops with a variety of professionals on this topic, and none of them demonstrated fear of being phased out, their concerns mounted more around the fidelity and integrity of the data AI pushes out. Bringing all these threads into the Design world, where does this leave us? And is AI going to assist or takeaway? Or both?
Forecasting and Speculating. Before diving into this part of the article, I’ll start by saying that I’m a bit of an information hoarder. I’ve been recording and documenting articles on Design, Technology and Innovation topics for the last 10 years. As you can all imagine, I have documents with a considerable amount of pages, and one of the those articles that I captured from a few years back indicated that AI would impact the following aspects: Understanding Individuals at a Scale, Identifying Opportunities, Predicting and Personalizing Features, Optimizing Permutations, and creating New Interfaces. Now that AI has matured a bit more, one can attest that these make absolute sense. If you do just enough research and reflect on the power of AI, you realize it has the ability to parse through considerable amounts of data, understanding and processing patterns, and eventually being able to provide recommendations or suggestions. It does an immense uplift of so many tasks that before took us a considerable amount of time to go through. Another example I can provide: I recently went through the process of doing a POC for a tool called “Dovetail”, and was pleasantly surprised at the virtuosity of their AI features, as it provides a substantial agility in the clustering and synthesis of research findings. It is not by any means “the ultimate” mechanism in terms of capturing everything that is relevant for a Research study, but it does enable a team to move faster, particularly when you understand what it can do, and how it can supplement how you, a Designer/Researcher works. This leads me to the next point, in terms of what lies ahead for Design professionals (as a side note, my newsletter of March 28th 2025, lists an interesting article on the impacts of AI, Low Code/No Code platforms on developers).
I’ve said this before in so many other words, but the concept of the Designer as a pixel pusher has always been a grating one for me. And not because being a Product Designer or UI/UX Designer is about “problem solving” (note to all Designers, think about that statement more as you are asked about what makes you stay in the profession), but mostly because it robs Designers from a fundamental aspect of their craft: understanding users/clients (for some this aspect brings to mind the eternal topic of “Empathy” towards the User). Designing is not solely about problem solving, it’s about solutioning for a situation in a certain context, and just as importantly, for someone. When you think about the expression “I love problem solving”, that in itself is an abstraction which can literally be applied to someone doing Sudoku for instance. Designers and true practitioners of this discipline, go beyond pixel pushing, and beyond trying to decipher a problem statement. There’s multiple layers to what they do, and that includes understanding context, situations, expected outcomes, constraints, and users, because no matter what, Humans have not been removed from this entire interconnected ecosystem, whatever it may be (well at least not for now).
I’ve heard in the past “This project doesn’t require Designers, since it’s all about APIs, therefore we don’t need any UI”. Until professionals in the Product or Development or any other arena realize that Design is not synonymous with a visible UI output, we’ll continue to have to address products, features, flows, that are not entirely functional, or that simply lack a tangible value element, because at the root of it all, there’s a user, one whose behaviors and needs must be understood (and addressed), even if it’s one that needs to access a portal, or a gateway, to eventually retrieve the API to accomplish their task. Going back to the pixel pusher professional, or a production facility type of worker bee, this is similar to what The Simpsons illustrated in one of their couch opening gags (which you can see here), which is indeed quite bleak, but that ultimately reduces people, professionals, to a sliver of what they can actually do. And with the constant advancement of AI, this aspect of repetitive tasks such as delivering edits to UI elements, is something that will become more and more simplified. Which posits the question: are Designers going to be impacted. Of course they are, everyone already is. But for the craft, for Product Designers who understand the craft, across all its ramifications, they are also quick to realize that AI can compliment what they do enormously, giving them more ability to produce better outcomes for their clients, and just as importantly, for the business that they are also supporting.
Are we all Strategic Designers? I’ve been called a Strategic Designer before on a variety of situations. Whenever I heard this as an official title, it always puzzled me, since at is core I’ve always thought all Designers were in so many different ways (and with different levels of maturity), Strategic. To give you some additional context into the situation and context, the title was used to differentiate what some people consider a Designer who practices the Design craft based on Design Thinking and Human Centered Design philosophies versus a UI/UX Designer, who for the sake of this situation, was being equated to a professional who pushes pixels and delivers UI assets. This of course will shock many professionals in the field, but it is one of the situations I’ve witnessed. Another situation that I believe is needed to illustrate this point of the article, pertains to another Design professional whom I witnessed pontificating on Linkedin that the expression “Everyone is a Designer” does a disservice to Design professionals, since only these professionals understand a solutioning process, the various design deliverables, and are the only ones able to deliver the proper value to a Product solutioning endeavor. This latter statement personally puzzled me for its sheer arrogance, defensiveness and ultimate lack of understanding of roles, and what it truly means to be a Design professional (check my previous point for clarification).
Any professed Designer in the field, independently of Academic Background, is at its core, a Strategic one. There, at the risk of being controversial, I’m making that statement. I’ve worked with Product Designers who did not go to college, and who are excellent professionals in the field, due to a constant self-education process and investment in understanding the discipline, due to a finely carved strategic mindset, which enables them to comprehend problem statements, situations/contexts, motivations, desired outcomes, constraints, the users they serve, all wrapped up in a business model in which they have to operate. Strategic Designer, now more than ever before, implies awareness across a variety of fields that go beyond the Design universe, since economic, environmental, social factors (to name but a few), all have an impact on users of any solution that is made available to them. We live in a highly inter-connected global ecosystem, where the differences that apparently drive us apart, are becoming more and more marginal: meaning that we collectively are picking up influences from all over, and Design as a discipline that converges both a Humanistic perspective, but also a scientific one, has to be able to be strategic about devising pathways where they both work in unison, as opposed to one in detriment of another. That’s the core reason of why each and every Designer, at least one who truly embodies and understands the discipline, has as part of its DNA, strategy and adaptability as core traits. AI is bringing additional capabilities, and further cementing the ability to better understand the variables of Problem/Context/User/Constraints, with all the nuances that make each of one those chapters highly complex ones. It’s no longer a matter of someone staying in their own lane, it’s a matter of realizing that whatever lane you’re in, it’s part of a large highway, and in order to get to whatever destination you want to go, you have to be strategic about the movements/decisions you make.
Reality Check. Anyone who works in the Design or Technology world eventually realizes that Design Thinking/Human Centered Design is something that has permeated across Product, Marketing, Customer Engagement, Development fields, even if for some of them, those are just nice labels without much meaning. However many of the professionals in this field do want to solve problems for their clients, and in that regard, are on a parallel path with what Designers do. However, as AI creates a massive uplift, and also disrupts how professionals in these fields work, collaborate, and shape different solutions, it’s interesting to realize that moving forward, continuing to understand an ever changing user base, where people live longer, have ever evolving needs, in a world where life isn’t a linear pathway, having a strategic mindset, can be what differentiates a lengthy career journey, from one that hits a dead-end rather abruptly. Those are the choices facing not only Design professionals, but those in the technology world.
I’m finishing this article with a quote from George Bernard Shaw.
“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything”.
