How AI Changes the way we design: Collaboration [1/3]

For the past month or so, I tried an “AI-first” workflow with a few of my teammates. While I still followed a typical design process — the classic Research -> Design -> Test flow that has remained largely unchanged since I was in school — I tried to use AI tools as much as possible in every step of the process.

Here’s a TL;DR of what I did:

• Research: I started asking agents to conduct research on internal artifacts and databases. I stored and sorted the sources the AI retrieved and built a NotebookLM, which I then prompted for ideas and hypotheses.
• Design: I used Figma to create first-draft designs and invited other functions to “vibe design” together. I refined everyone’s designs and created shipping-ready versions with the help of a few handy Figma design tools.
• Test: I started “vibe coding” my own designs and shipping the tests. I asked my engineer for help whenever I got stuck, but largely, I was able to oversee almost the entire front-end side of things. Naturally, there were no engineering hand-offs.

Here are the changes I noticed in this new process:

Multi tasking

• Barrier to entry is now low for entry level design and coding. The professional know-how required to operate tools like Figma and VS Code has been delegated to agents. A lot of what I do has shifted from creating to understanding and reviewing the agents’ output.
• Proof of concept requires less effort.
  On the concepting front, POCs can now be made with very little effort by many different roles. With the help of an expert, an agent’s first draft can even be turned into production-level code or design.
• Non-designers gain visualization superpowers.
  On the design front, my teammates gained the traditional design superpower: visualizing and bringing ideas to life. Now, people can design with words and rally people around a concept.
• Designers can handle some engineering tasks.
  On the engineering front, entry-level tasks can be easily done by a designer like me. A few weeks into the program, despite never having done a formal coding interview or professional engineering training, I landed and shipped code to billions of users almost every week — all while retaining a Product Designer title.

Better communication

• Communication becomes more intuitive and contextual. It’s much easier to talk to a person about their area of expertise now. When you can talk code to engineers and design system to designers, you are more likely to be on the same page in a lot of scenarios. For example:

When I did traditional handed off to engineers, I often asked things like,

“why is this implementation more expensive than the other? ”

Now I’m both designing and coding the product, I learned to search component libraries, read infrastructure, and started asking things like

“I tried this method and it ended up being very costly, can you brainstorm with me what else we can do?”

• The later question is much more productive to our team and perhaps more appreciated by teammates.
• Empathy is more built in. To add to the previous point, you gain a much better understanding of things once you’ve tried them yourself. Going through committing changes, code reviews, experiment setups, and landing changes myself, I learned how long things take and how many ways things can go wrong. Similarly, when another function tries to explore design, learn the design system, customize changes, and push pixels, they learn more about all the work we do.
• Feedback can be baked in early. This part is particularly obvious when everyone starts designing in Figma. When teammates join you early in the design exploration, everyone gives ideas and feedback immediately. By the time I get my hands on the design, I more or less already have an idea of what others are thinking, which also gives me the opportunity to give feedback early in the process.

Pick what you want to work on

• More parellel and diverse work. By far the most exciting part of this is thinking about how we can be liberated from just doing one thing at our job. When everyone can design, designers no longer design in silos. To some degree, I start to get some liberty in choosing between researching, deciding who codes what with my engineers, or continuing with my classic high-fidelity design. This makes for a faster, more flexible, and more diverse work environment. Things started to feel more fresh.

Designers need design time to keep sane

Now, things that hasn’t changed about design.

• A good design process: Design feedback, crits, and reviews are still the golden recipe for good design. Having other designers brainstorm and give feedback continues to inspire me and help me become a better designer. In fact, when things move quicker, I find myself craving feedback from other designers even more.
• Craft and taste: Complex, innovative design still originates from someone who has been doing design for a long time and possesses deep expertise. However, it wouldn’t surprise me if AI tools started coming after this area soon.
• Pitching, reviewing, aligning: We still present designs to other people, get alignment from partner teams, and approvals from leadership. When AI can help us with the hard skills, I can only imagine soft skills becoming even more important in the future.

shape the future we want to be in

What more should designers do?

• Help others design: This can be anything from setting up a working Figma template for XFN (cross-functional partners) to sharing resources on what makes a good design. I think inviting others into our field of work is the best way to embrace this parallel collaborative work model.
• Setup design collaboration models: Engineers have code reviews where they won’t merge anything until a few experts have seen it. Designers need something similar. Now that more people can design, we also need more checkpoints — like design office hours and reviews — to help polish designs before they land in our products.
• Try more things: Benefits come with going wide and trying things at least a few times. Horizontally: coding front-end, pulling data, setting up experiments, writing PRDs. Vertically: creating product movies, visual assets, and real code prototypes. Having an idea leads you to find the tools and resources to make it happen. Plus, you don’t know what you like to create until you try it.

I’m a fan of this new work model. Many companies might still be at the early stages of this, but I think it has the potential to change the way we work for the better.

But at the same time, it’s hard not to think about how this new model might take time to adapt, change org structures, or even eliminate some roles.

Either way, what’s happening won’t be stopped. We are at the center of a transition that hasn’t quite happened before. At the core of it, I still think all these new changes makes it even better time to be a designer.