Current design tools will cease to matter soon
Apr 1, 2024
2024 is going to be the year everything changes for product designers making digital experiences. At least the start of it.
What is coming is a simple change, but one that might blindside you if you're not ready for it. That is, the work you do will soon become more like our Graphic Design and Communication Design counterparts. You will soon be only asked to solve problems of purpose or business, and not spend time on design systems—or rendering a product at any level of fidelity in Figma or Sketch. Those tools will cease to be useful in the next few years.
Why will it change?
Because the new set of tools that use AI will make it such these activities will no longer be needed to be performed by people at scale, but only by a few craftspeople. It's not so much different than what happened when typography became widely available via the printing press, or what game designers do these days with building vast 3D worlds where natural objects are synthesized from realistic computational models.
You may believe that means product designers or anyone involved in the product design process will be out of a meaningful job, but I predict the opposite will happen. When freed from the chains of being a pixel pusher, most of us will rise to new heights professionally.
Those that fight it for too long will ultimately succumb to the satisfaction that will arise from actually solving problems for the people on this planet in our own unique—and digital—way.
Don't dig in and fight it. Embrace it and move forward.
- Andrei