Lately I’ve been thinking about which parts of design work are becoming less valuable, and which parts are becoming more essential.
There’s a lot of talk about how AI is making us faster. And yeah, it is. But the real shift isn’t about speed. It’s about what that speed makes space for.
We’ve spent years refining workflows, polishing systems, and building for efficiency. But now that the tooling has caught up, we have to ask a different question: what are we actually here to do?
It’s not to create another UI layout faster. It’s not to deliver more in less time. We’re not short on deliverables.
We’re short on time to think.
We Got the Efficiency We Asked For
The tools are finally doing what we hoped they would. They help us move faster through the repetitive stuff. Research synthesis, content generation, component updates — AI is cleaning up the mess. That’s a good thing.
But I don’t want to use that extra time just to ship more. I want to use it to ask better questions and sit with the ambiguity. To design things that feel intentional, not just polished.
It’s a shift from production to perspective. From building quickly to thinking strategically about what’s actually worth building.
That’s the change I’m feeling. Less output, more insight. Less “look what I made,” more “here’s what this needs to be.”
I’m not here to compete with AI. I’m here to do the work it can’t.
“The real opportunity isn’t speed. It’s what that speed makes space for.”
The human parts are becoming more valuable
Designers are being asked to lead in ways we haven’t always been invited to. Not just on screens, but in how we make decisions. How we shape experiences. How we help teams navigate change.
That means leaning into the parts of the job that don’t show up in metrics. Judgment. Taste. Awareness. The ability to zoom out and say, “this doesn’t feel right yet.”
It also means stepping confidently into more strategic conversations about creative direction, about brand, about what kind of experience we’re actually building.
It means spotting patterns that aren’t obvious. How something feels. What’s not being said. What doesn’t quite sit right.
I worked on a project where we were designing a new tool from scratch. It was a clean, focused experience. But as we got into reviews, there was pressure to include a set of secondary and tertiary CTAs that didn’t support the main task. I pushed back and made the case for keeping it simple. If we cluttered the interface, we risked users missing the point. Simplicity wasn’t just a design decision — it was about making the tool usable, and something people would want to come back to.
These aren’t soft skills. They’re what make the work land.
And the better we get at holding space for them, the more impact we’ll have.
If the tools are getting better, our questions should too
I don’t think AI takes away the role of the designer. I think it clears away the parts that were never really the job to begin with.
What’s left is the thinking. The listening. The shaping. The strategy.
Not just what to make, but why it matters.
I’m trying to spend more of my time there. In the friction. In the questions that don’t have clean answers. That’s where the value is. And it’s where design, at its best, actually moves things forward.
Because the goal isn’t just to make work faster. It’s to make it better. More honest. More thoughtful. More human.
That’s the kind of design I want to practice.
And that’s the kind of design AI still can’t touch.
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