A collection of thoughts on design agency in the AI era

430 apps in my phone

The other day, I hit the storage limit on my phone and realized I had 430 apps installed. Like many designers, I'm always looking for inspiration and I like to try new apps and games to see how others are solving similar problems.

There are so many interesting new patterns out there, both in production and in online UI collections. Yet I feel like giant apps pave the way for where design heads.

At the same time AI is changing how we approach UI design and it got me thinking about agency in the AI era.

Every UI era solves a problem

Each era of design had a distinct visual philosophy, often with a purpose of making each new technology easier to understand.

The early desktop metaphors made computers easy to learn and use. Then, skeuomorphic design made digital actions more familiar and played a big role on helping users with touch screens. Later, flat design removed cognitive load and helped apps to be more scalable.

What if the new shift will be about technology designing itself?

With the new generation of technology introducing conversational & agentic UI, it feels like the user inputs are becoming more minimal and fluid than ever before.

AI prompting is changing how people interact with technology. It's a deliberately simple entry point: all you have to do is send a message. It keeps the design minimal, and instead, surprises users by the "magic" behind the output, not the UI.

But technology is also getting more complex, and I love finding designs where the complexity is hidden in well executed simplicity, or when I see a highly polished, yet minimal screen with great visual hierarchy.

These experiences are challenging to get right, and I wonder if the use of AI to generate designs combined with the pressure from businesses to ship faster might give us less time to care.

Homogenization and standardization

In a tech world that seems to be optimized for speed, scale and data, familiarity may be the fastest way for new products to enter a market. This makes products easier to use, but what if too much imitation prevents meaningful exploration?

Repeating patterns is not new, however, with AI being capable of generating UI designs in a matter of seconds, our judgement skills need to come ahead.

I've seen people prompting AI with "make it look like Nike" and maybe there's nothing wrong with that, or... is there?

AI might produce visually competent UI, but without critiquing the generated output it might encourage us to stop questioning when to push the design further. When it's too easy to generate "safe" options, do we really need to spend time exploring?

When I worked at Apple someone told me, sometimes you need to say no to a lot of good ideas, in order to find the best solution.

Craft, taste and intentionality as key differentiators

I asked Claude the other day "Do you know what good taste is and can you create something with good taste?"

Its answer: "Good taste is one of those things that feels obvious until you try to define it" and "honestly — I'd know partly, and fake the rest..."

For me, good design is about craft, taste and intentionality.

I would define craft as the skillset developed by the practice of making the same thing over and over. Taste as the ability to judge what's great, which I think develops through exposure to different levels of quality. And intentionality as the reason behind the choice often achieved with exploration and understanding.

Anyone can prompt AI to generate an interface, what used to take hours to make, now takes only seconds. Suddenly an idea can feel shippable in a matter of hours. But it might also enable shipping something that has not been fully explored.

Good design takes time, and even in a world where we are starting to co-create with AI, it's important to pause and critique the generated outcomes. Designing is more than prompting an idea, it's about exploring and deep thinking.

"What we make stands testament to who we are. What we make describes our values." - Jony Ive

That's a quote from A conversation with Jony Ive with Patrick Collison, the CEO of Stripe, where they talk about the importance of designing products with purpose and intentionality.

Who shapes good design?

Where you grow up shapes what you find beautiful and intuitive, but where you work might shape the lives of others. So all the more reason we must always critique what we are designing.

While taste might not be universal, it seems like only a handful of companies are influencing on what 'good' design is, they own the interfaces used by millions of users.

"Just copy what xyz company is doing" it's a line I've heard many times in my career and many designer friends have shared the same challenge at one point in their careers.

I think this is why learning to critique is important. Just because something works for xyz, doesn't mean it will work for abc. Or what about spending time trying to find something better instead?

Designers might still have a level of ownership as we go up the ladder, but the decisions we make are influenced by the agenda of the companies we work for. When you treat design as a decoration, whether you are a designer being told to repeat something, or a non-designer asking AI to create something that looks like "x company", you're accepting that design is only execution, not thinking. It's cheaper to ship with proven patterns than to take the time to explore a better solution.

Where is design going?

The future of design may be defined by AI or by minimal interfaces that adapt, speak or appear magical. In that world, the designer's contribution becomes harder to see, but it also might become more important than ever.

If AI can produce great interfaces, designers can still be responsible about intention. That responsibility only takes place with the authority to explore alternatives. Otherwise we let the systems around us decide what good design is.