The information volume about AI and design is already overwhelming right now. So, to help me break my own learning into logical categories, I'm always thinking about an intersection of AI and design into two main frames: *designing with AI* and *designing for AI*. When I talk about designing for AI, what I'm talking about is a whole new world of design challenges and opportunities
that we have to navigate when building products in the age of AI. AI interactions in our products require a new way of thinking. And in an article published by Jakob Nielsen, he announces AI as the first new UI paradigm in 60 years. What does this mean? In conventional systems based on command interactions, the user issues commands to the computer one at a time until they reach the desired result, if – hopefully – the system is user-friendly enough to allow people to figure out
what commands to issue at each step. The computer listens to our commands and executes them, hopefully as instructed. In the world of the new AI systems, the user doesn't tell the computer what to do, but instead they tell it the *outcome they hope to achieve*. So, Jakob Nielsen calls this *intent-based outcome specification* and argues that, compared to traditional command-based interactions, this paradigm completely reverses the locus of control.
Where we once ran the machine, now we let the machine run itself. An example would be creating images. Let's say we want to create a digital illustration of a mountain. In a traditional UI system, we'd probably open Photoshop and start adding one instruction on top of the other, draw a triangle, add fill, round corners, add texture, and so on. With AI systems, we go to image generators like Midjourney or DALL-e and instruct it on what kind of image we want to get through prompts: "Draw me an image of a mountain at sunset." And then the computer does the work for you.
So, if you think about it, we'll be designing for a new realm of experiences, completely new user expectations, mental models, and fundamentally different interactions. Many of the traditional products we use are adding AI capabilities. And this is a trend that we will see expand through our product companies. So, it's pretty likely that in the future most of us will have had some sort of experience designing for AI interactions in our roles.
And then, for the second framing, *designing with AI*. I want to start with an idea that has been quite viral on social platforms for the past year. AI won't replace you. A person using AI will. What this means is that AI by itself doesn't hold a power to replace us, mostly because it's infant technology and it holds multiple limitations, some of which are not resolvable in the foreseeable future. For one, it can't figure out what problems to solve yet. AI has trouble understanding context, and because we're still in the age of narrow AI
where AI tools can only do one type of task, it's very hard to solve complex problems with AI alone. It's true that research is being done in the space of collaborative intelligence where under the guidance of a governing AI different AI models work together to tackle more sophisticated tasks and solve complex problems. But right now AI is mostly a one-trick pony, so it can't possibly understand complex systems like a person's context. Their psychology, environment, background, needs, goals,
aspirations, relationships interpret all the connections and understand how they might make this person's life better. Only humans can understand humans deeply enough to really address the problems they struggle with. Then, design solutions require *multi-disciplinary efforts*. Any design solution requires systems thinking making connections between multiple fields and sciences. Understanding interface design, human psychology, information architecture,
visual principles, accessibility design, anthropology and sociology, business strategy, content strategy, user research, and so on. AI systems can't handle this level of complexity in grasping landscapes and putting different perspectives and disciplines together. *AI also lacks empathy and a good understanding of human psychology*. Also, its ability for creativity and imagination is subject to debate. For a long time, I've hated the term "empathy".
I felt it was overused to the point it lost meaning, it became overly diluted. But I believe it's making a spectacular comeback in the age of AI because I personally can't think of a better word that captures what will essentially make us different from computers forever. We have the capacity of imagining and attempting to even feel what the other person feels. Even though computers might mimic a conversational apparent empathy or compassion, computers will never really feel, regardless of how well they'll be able to emulate that.
Also, human creativity and imagination are quite special, even magical I would say. Even though AI can successfully simulate human creativity by putting together existing elements to create something new, in a similar fashion in which people do that, that human special spark comes from imagination: To be able to think of something new. And if you think about it, just looking at AI-generated art will sort of tell you it's been generated by AI.
It's pretty stereotypical; you get the feeling it all looks the same, like something we've seen before. AI still needs a lot of guidance, handholding, and gets lost outside its context. AI can easily go wrong and hallucinate. This is a real technical AI industry term. We've seen some funny and some very worrying examples, but the gist of it is that AI needs us to hold its metaphorical hand. It doesn't perform very well by itself. But even with all these limitations, designers who understand that AI is an opportunity for an exoskeleton
that enhances and augments their natural capabilities will increase their chances of remaining competitive in a market where most of the work will be produced by human-AI collaboration. AI can already support us with making better decisions faster, reducing our cognitive load from having to process large volumes of data, spend time on more meaningful and creative work, kickstart our work projects, artifacts faster, increase the accuracy of our efforts, and so much more.
In the end, there's probably not going to be much escape from AI changing the way we work; so, you might as well prepare to become the person that uses AI to remain competitive.