Here’s what I’m seeing after 15 years in design.
Bad designers used to ship obviously bad work. Broken hierarchy, inconsistent spacing, unclear CTAs.
Now they use AI and ship work that looks…fine.
Not good. But passable.
Average designers used to differentiate themselves through craft. Clean execution. Attention to detail. Solid fundamentals.
Now, AI does that baseline craft better and faster than they can.
Strategic thinking.
Understanding users deeply.
Connecting design to business problems.
Defending decisions to skeptical executives.
Knowing when not to design something.
AI can generate a checkout flow in thirty seconds.
It can’t tell you if checkout is actually the problem.
It can’t explain why your solution will reduce cart abandonment.
It can’t navigate the political landscape of getting engineering to prioritize it.
The designers surviving this aren’t the ones with perfect portfolios. They’re the ones who can think beyond the interface.
If you’re valuable because you make pretty things, well, AI can do that now.
If you’re valuable because you make smart decisions about what to make and why, AI can’t replace that!