Spoiler Alert: Design Wins

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Welcome to The Daily Sprint where each day is your opportunity to design exceptionally well.

Today we're talking about how you should be thinking about all the AI design tools flooding the product design space has designed, disappeared.

I've got good news on this front, but I don't want to spoil it for you, so keep listening as we get into it.

And state of the end, for ways you can go even deeper.

I'm Darrell Estabrook 30 years into UX Product Design.

Yes, times they are a changing, but the key to design hasn't changed since I started or for thousands of years before me.

So hang on tight.

Well welcome.

I'm glad you're here.

It's episode 14.

That's my favorite number times two.

If the Daily Sprint podcast helps you, please leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts.

It really helps get this show in front of new designers who probably have the same questions you do.

So have you heard of this thing called AI?

Well, AI has descended on design like a raptor, that missed breakfast, lunch, and dinner, forgot to pack a snack, and is looking to stock up for the winter.

Well, you can't go an hour without a new announcement or tool coming out.

It isn't even better than the last one.

There's so many of them.

They're, All claiming to magically deliver screen designs.

And in fact, they do have tested out a number of them.

And you might be tempted to believe your future will be in pushing buttons and being that human in the loop, just reviewing what AI's work has done.

Someone asked me last week where I thought design was going to be in 5 years.

So you know how you do the five-year plan for your professional development.

And 5 years in the rate things are changing.

I think we should just shorten it to 5 months and maybe we'll be able to figure out what's going to happen.

So I, there's no way to know in 5 years where we're going to be.

Is it going to continue?

It's going to get more advanced.

Is it going to blow up?

Who knows?

But we do know that things are moving very fast.

And if part of that indication is on LinkedIn, there are so many posts.

Maybe it's just my algorithm.

I don't know, what about yours?

You're seeing things like just successes and how I've used it and how it's totally revolutionizing my process.

And it really makes me wonder because over the past 30 years that we've been growing into product design, I've been a part of teams that have been fantastic in integrating design, into the software process, just making great strides into getting down to the details that we'll talk about in a little bit.

And I wonder if so many people have just been in the wrong design process for so many years.

And now AI is just coming in front of them and they can prompt and add skills and get these results that they would, it would take weeks to do when, yes, it takes time, but it doesn't have to take that time and all the things we're missing out when we just simply rely on what we're seeing.

So so many use cases, there are a number of things that AI can do.

And speed is just one of them, right?

It's we're really seeing that.

Obviously, everyone likes the speed, but the thinking through design decisions, I think, is even the, that's the greater value, if we can do that and not just benefit from the speed.

So I've noticed a few things in my own work in experimenting with many of these tools that AI is going to be very good at design ops or kind of that anything that can be automated.

If you're doing something that's repetitive, it probably should be automated.

It could be automated.

It definitely could be calculated.

Things like design system generation or even design system management.

I think there's a lot that could be done with how those things are created, deployed, even.

But it doesn't negate the thinking on the front side of that process.

That's critical.

And when it comes to AI, I don't see it being a good thinking partner, at least not yet.

It's really good at generating options, but it doesn't have the wisdom about its design decisions.

So I've had it explained to me why this design is good and it's accurate.

It talks about hierarchy, visual hierarchy and a lot of other, um, just attributes of, um, what we would normally talk in design reviews, like the technical aspect of it.

And absolutely.

But there's this art to it.

And that's that's a real thing because remember, we're people, we're made both rational and emotional.

So we need to reflect both of those in our designs.

I don't see it being a cohesive systems thinker either at this point.

There's so many things that go into overlapping requirements and things that worked really well in one workflow.

You don't need to have multiple screen branches.

There's a lot of ways to reuse features.

And so there's a complexity that's needed in order to hold all that in in real-time thinking as you make new design decisions.

And it's always going to agree that whatever you do is awesome.

Maybe it'll push back.

I've seen a little pushback.

But if you've ever been in a stakeholder review meeting, there's real pushback.

And sometimes a pushback is not entirely understood. Sometimes the designers, we don't understand what that is.

We definitely don't know how to communicate that back or maybe work through that process with a stakeholder.

That's what I'm going to focus on, and that's what I'm going to show you in a bit here.

So the appeal of all of these tools.

For business, it's speed.

I mean, if you can cut down a week's worth of work into a few minutes, there's dollar signs all around that of savings.

And for designers, making designs functional.

It's a huge appeal.

And I think there's value in that too.

Right now, we're talking prototyping.

There's a lot of, again, LinkedIn posts on publishing and shipping, code, and really pushing the limits on that.

But making things work to really see how something might behave is a really neat tool.

But there's still a lot that's rough.

A lot of that can have a downside to it.

And it really, some of that, you know, downside, AI becomes the authority.

Without the credentials, it's like when we say AI did it, we're giving it the acknowledgment that it just did it well, very well, perfectly well, maybe even, so much so that we trusted implicitly.

And yet, if you know the domain, it's not always accurate.

And what else is it leaving off the table that it hasn't explored or hasn't offered up?

There's so much that you lose in that speed.

And then designers can fall into this trap of just being the recommendation takers.

Or at least some segment of designers where it's just, well, AI did it.

AI said it.

It must be good.

But there's, that's part of where is this all going?

So it seems like design will simply disappear into a generating process.

That's, is that where it's going?

It seems like there's no need for designers if product owners and engineers can create these screens themselves.

It's like, well, if we can just, we can do it.

If designers can ship code, then engineers can create designs.

Well, yeah, to a point.

And this human in the loop, which is very interesting in this early stage of AI, because it's kind of said as a way to put some calm into this fervor, like, oh, it's okay.

You don't have to trust it.

There's a person that you can trust.

But in the end, there's a point which, if it's always going to be a recommendation that we're going to go with, at what point do you just flip it over and say, ah, we don't need the human in the loop anymore?

And that's for designers, just reviewing AI's work.

That's kind of a pump the brakes on it.

No, I don't think this is the future of design.

Designers bring thinking, nuance and creativity to the table, right?

It's the emotion and the ration.

The business stakeholders and engineers will always be able to demonstrate their ideas through prototypes.

But who will press them to ask why?

Right?

We're living in a world where could is no longer a constraint.

And those who can specify should, will be the ones that reign.

So you should become a designer who knows should from shouldn't.

But how can you, right?

Well, I've been living in a design process I discovered for more than a decade now.

And it's the core, there's at least 3 things that are core, there's so many parts about it, but what is the purpose we're focusing on?

And every design decision I make has to be explainable.

And how do I deliver on that purpose with people who don't know design or design process, right?

It's explaining those design decisions.

So let's kind of walk through these, you know, at a high level.

So what is the purpose we're focusing on?

Purpose is the intended outcome.

It's huge.

The purpose is always talked about.

We kind of understand it.

We call it the why, but do we revisit it often?

I mean, every design decision.

Are we referring back to it?

So how many times have I sat in meetings where purpose was not really there, kind of in a vague sort of way?

My 1st project involved, it was a product, but it involved in creating a logo as well.

And I just remember sitting with the stakeholder and the, I was young.

So I presented some ideas, maybe, probably not in the best format or best way, but.. More importantly.

I didn't know how to handle the conversation.

And so it ended up turning into a stakeholder saying, well, what if this goes there?

And then I would have to go put that thing there.

What if it's a bit yellower or bluer, and then I would have to adjust the colors, and you're really just pushing pixels at that point, I become the puppet of the tool, which, ironically, sounds like AI, when you have to prompt it. Like, what happens if this?

What happens if that?

Even in large clients where we had everyone in the room, including some executives, like director leaders and everyone's talking about nudging items, like, well, what if this happens?

What if that move that there?

It doesn't look right.

It doesn't seem right.

That is not designed.

And it's really not even purpose because we're pushing elements around.

If there's no purpose, then there is no design.

That's fundamental, which should make us really think about the importance of purpose and are we capturing it.

Are we holding on to it?

Do we know what it even means?

So yes, that is a thing that we can get really skilled at, and it will explode in our ability.

AI will never give you purpose.

It can give you suggestions, it can give you all sorts of ideas, maybe, maybe not, but you have to ensure that the reason that you're doing your intended outcome is actually defined and where you're heading, where you want to go.

The 2nd one I mentioned before was every design decision I make has to be explainable.

So if you can't explain why you put an element on the screen.

How can you expect stakeholders to accept it?

Engineers to understand it or users to even use it.

So I would, again, the younger days, I would create 3 designs because I thought you just had to.

I saw other people doing it.

I saw other designers and it was like, oh, the 3 designs.

One, two, and three, A, B, and C.

And it's great.

Wow, this is just really different than this one and this one's really different from that one.

And I didn't really explain it, couldn't really explain it.

And it's just what we did.

It got a bit difficult.

And so over the course of years.

I reversed it.

I just said, well, I'm just going to deliver one design then.

That'll make it easier.

We won't have these messy conversations.

And I would just do one.

And then we get into, well, how do we massage this element around and just move things around the screen so we can we can get to where we want to go.

That wasn't working either.

Then I did two.

It was kind of like an A and a B. That seemed to be better than the other approaches.

But it really wasn't, none of those really worked.

And that stems back to purpose.

When I started to understand that purpose was the key, that unlocked unlimited creativity.

It started to really flow, because there's so many ways that you could visualize an intended outcome, just many, many, many different ways.

And now you start to tease those out and weed them instead of focusing on whether the logo is big enough or not or whether it's on the left or the right.

You're really starting to be able to tie that together.

And then I could explain it.

As soon as I had the purpose defined, then there wasn't anything on the screen that either wasn't there on purpose or that I couldn't explain.

And when it can explain it, then we can have intelligent conversations with stakeholders.

AI doesn't have this holistic concept of design decisions.

Again, like I said, I asked it to explain some of its designs and it did it technically, but the question is, even if you had a full report, which you then would have to read, more reading, more non-designing, a human in the loop, do you agree with it?

Like, do you know how to agree with this assessment?

Because if you don't know the purpose and you don't know design, then you're just accepting what the output is.

So that's not that's not good.

You have to be able to discern a strong design decision from a weak design decision.

Otherwise, you're just pressing yes on the AI.

So the 3rd one, how do I deliver on that purpose with people who don't know design?

And, you know, everyone has a sense of what works, right?

There's kind of this, I'll know it when I see it, which is also kind of dangerous, but stakeholders are looking for outcomes.

And there are 3 levels of stakeholder, at least in this subset that we're talking about business stakeholders, engineers, and users.

Like they're, each of those 3 are distinctly different.

They have a uniqueness about them that you could really, you know, leverage any one of those and say, hey, they are looking for a certain kind of outcome for this particular feature.

And they have, because of that, they have a different kind of value that they're looking for.

So if not just that model, like if you don't understand like those those people, it's the actual people in the roles.

If you don't understand them personally, You won't be able to deliver the value they're seeking.

Because every configuration of team and organization is different.

They're going to have a different motivation, slightly different, different enough. That you can't just push a button and out pops value that's relevant.

So, if you don't understand them, AI won't understand them.

You'll be spending days and weeks reskilling the AI to the people you're supposed to be relating to. Instead of understanding them and translating that into design decisions.

So delivering on the purpose includes accounting for these 3 levels of value simultaneously.

When you make a design decision, at 1st you might make it for one of those stakeholders, but then you have to consider the other two.

And that's going to change your approach.

You're going to nuance it a little different. Holding all of that together across product features.

It's a huge mind that you have to hold it together.

Your context window in your head is leagues better than AIs, especially when I was trying the other day with it, and it said, oh, I've, it just shut down the conversation because I ran out of contact and then I had to regenerate it.

It was a whole thing.

And it was like, okay, so this is difficult.

Not helpful.

Just getting started.

I think I was like 30 minutes into it too.

So that's a day.

Yeah, you want to be able to walk these stakeholders through every design decision you make and have constructive and creative conversations.

And you can do that.

That is possible.

So AI is great for automating repetition, but not for feeling the value of a design decision.

That's not just intuition, like squishy feely.

It's it's a sense of, you know, what what is going to work?

What has it working?

You as a designer are more than a human in a loop.

You will always be, if you really value design, if you cherish design, then you're going to want to be more than a human in the loop.

And you don't need to give away your skills to AI.

Like, well, I mean, you could write a skill, that's that's a thing.

But like to trust the AI's decision, is to give away a skill.

It's a thing that you can do that you're not doing for the trade-off of speed, right?

And you need to see beyond the tool and connect with the people you're building software with and building software for.

Those relationships, that is key.

It is the core of what we're doing.

So think about this.

Design is about problem solving.

It always has been, and it always will be.

So how skilled are you at identifying this intended outcome.

That's the other end of the problem, right?

Got a problem, but what's the outcome?

Can you identify it?

Every kind every time, in every case?

Design is also about helping people.

It's about solving a problem that people have and smoothing that out.

How skilled are you at identifying the value needs of business stakeholders, engineers, and users?

Can you do it?

Do you know how?

And the last thing, design is about design decisions.

So how skilled are you at making every design decision deliver value, not just making a design decision?

Yes, this should be bigger, smaller, darker, lighter.

Left, right, right?

It's delivering value in that decision.

I can tie this back.

And how skilled are you at helping stakeholders refine their thinking through the process of design because they want outcomes, but they haven't seen it all yet.

And what they think is the direction to go until we visualize it, experiment with it, try it out.

We won't know.

And you have to help them navigate through it, not just show them a screen and expect them to pick one.

So all of this is like the scratching the surface, but there's so much more we can go into this.

And I've done that for you.

I've put this packaged together on designing academy called Design for Value.

So value, like we've talked about.

It's at the very fabric of product design, but do you know how to deliver it every day?

We talk the daily sprint.

It's a daily sprint.

Every day you're designing.

Are you able to do that?

So this is a masterclass.

Because it's serious is not a casual topic, but it addresses 2 parts of design, right?

How to identify those 3 levels of value in your product, and how to bake value into your product's design while talking to non-designers.

Pretty much everyone else.

You can kind of think of this as a 101 course, if you're a new designer, or like a 590 course, if you're a senior designer.

Like, I think every designer will get something out of this that they didn't know.

And that's the value in looking at something holistically like this.

So through this course, video content, I'll walk you through the process that I use for making everyday design choices that result in outcomes that stakeholders are expecting.

And that's why we're here.

So it's academy.designy.com

And you click on the design for value masterclass.

You can read all about it.

I've got a welcome video, you can view a sample of one of the lessons, and if you enroll, you can start immediately itself paste.

So you can take your time, you can watch what you need to watch and really think about it, come back.

One of the added bonuses of doing this is you can ask me questions at any point in the course.

And that's not an AI aspect of it.

It's me.

So you'll leave a comment, leave a comment.

There's a discussion area and I'll respond.

I think it's so important that we connect. As people, but that I can fill in the gaps because as much as I'd love to put it all out there and you understand it perfectly.

There's going to be some gaps.

So that's what I'm here for.

So academy.designey.com and click on that design for value masterclass and enroll.

I love to see you there.

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Remember, today is a great day to design with a why.

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