📰 3 THINGS TO CHECK OUT
Why Designers are Struggling, Why No One is Behind, and What the Design Process Actually Looks Like
- In a podcast conversation with Lenny Rachitsky, OpenAI Head of Design Ian Silber reflects on why designers are feeling unusually anxious and overwhelmed right now. Engineers have seen dramatic productivity gains from AI, while design remains inherently iterative and messy.
- Still, Silber’s message is reassuring: nobody has fully figured out the new design process yet, even inside OpenAI. The designers Silber sees thriving are the ones leaning into this new opportunity and experimenting constantly — bringing AI into the earliest stages of thinking and prototyping, trying workflows without expecting them to be permanent, and pushing their thinking further.
- “I strongly believe this is the best time to be a designer. If you literally started today, you're going to have a leg up on most people."
Figma Changed How I Think About Product, Not Just Design
- Product manager Vivek Krishnan S came to Figma as a designer, but found that making ideas visible changed how he approached product work altogether. Visibility, he says, closes the gap between what's in someone's head and what everyone else understands.
- Now, tools like Figma Make are accelerating that feedback loop. Designers can move from a half-formed idea to something critiqueable in minutes. But faster generation puts even more weight on human judgment.
- "The first time I typed a prompt and watched a working UI appear on the canvas in seconds, my instinct wasn't amazement. It was something more useful. I immediately started questioning it. Is this the right flow? Does this match how users actually think? The output gave me something to react to, and reacting is faster than creating from scratch."
- Usability expert Jakob Nielsen points out that today's AI assistants are yes-bots. Instead of using AI for real reviews and feedback, most designers are using it as a cheerleader.
- Nielsen recommends an approach he calls “adversarial casting”: ask AI to review your work as a skeptical user, overlooked stakeholder, compliance reviewer, change-resistant power user, or even a cost-cutting executive. Ask for objections rather than fixes, then use your own judgment to decide what deserves action.
- Still, Nielsen says, think of AI as the sparring partner that makes your thinking stronger; real users are still the ones who tell you whether the design actually works.
💜 PORTFOLIO SPOTLIGHT
With several years of experience in architectural interior design, Chan Nam Zhen (Brian Chan) brings an eye for structure, experience, and business strategy to his new career in UX. His projects include Phizz, a hybrid physiotherapy platform shaped by research with patients, caregivers, and practitioners, and RumA, a smart home concept that offers contextual intelligence and proactive automation. Across his work, Brian pairs emerging technology with a consistent focus on trust, clarity, and real human needs, while keeping business value part of the process.
💡 INTERESTING STUFF...
- How to Make Your Design System Agent-Ready
- The Ghost Site Resurrector
- The Nature of Free Will in the Age of AI
- AI Can't Replace Happy Accidents
The distance between 'I have an idea' and 'I can build something to test it' is getting smaller. And I think that opens up a really exciting space for designers to experiment. — Özge Altıntaş, UX designer, Vibe Coding Camp student
🧪 FROM THE LAB
Learn More About Designing AI Products and the AI Product Design Certification
The next cohort of Designing AI Products launches September 4. In this 4-week course, you'll learn the design vocabulary, craft, and frameworks that make great AI products.
The course is also a perfect entry point into the AI Product Design Certification. Join us for a live info session on Tuesday, August 25 at 2pm ET, where we'll cover the full program and included courses, instructors, the capstone, and more, and answer questions in a live Q&A. Register to attend in person or get the recording.
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