Design is not dead, but the old process will die: Part 1

I remember at my previous company, I kept telling the dev team when presenting my designs: “My Figma is not the bible.” In this sprint phase, there could be inconsistencies or logic gaps; I’m fully open to reviewing and fixing issues and would love for the team to ping me with feedback.

In the days that followed, the office no longer felt like a silent “dev factory”, it came alive with discussions. People stood up to ask each other questions, I carried my laptop back and forth across the office and didn’t feel tired. I thought to myself: “This is it! That feeling of losing track of time when everyone is discussing together.” Unlike before, they no longer treated Figma as something set in stone. Sure, some companies work that way, but not here. At that moment, when PO and Sales hadn’t yet aligned on business requirements, the flexibility to adapt quickly was essential.

I thought to myself: The devs and I, we’re all problem solvers, right?

• I solve problems with design.

• Devs solve problems with code.

The shared goal is the customer’s requirements. So both design and code need to be adjusted and balanced to reach that end goal.

I’ve carried that mindset throughout my career. Designer, UX Designer, Product Designer… these are just labels to wrap a job description into a phrase. What I actually do. I have to observe the organization, the team, priorities, roadmap, colleagues… and come up with the right strategy. That’s what a problem solver looks like.

We - designers, developers, BAs, POs, PMs…are needed because others have problems to solve. AI only makes old problems easier to solve; it doesn’t clear every problem off the planet. Because humans, somehow, will always push themselves into less safe territory and… create new, harder problems.

So if someone says “Design is dead,” I think they’re right (for themselves). If they believe design work is just a fixed checklist from A to Z, and AI has now done it all, then they’re out of a job. That fixed perspective is what makes them say design is dead.

But if “Design is dead” is meant as a universal truth for the world, there’s a lot more to debate. For me: Design is not dead. Greed and laziness will always drive humans to find faster, better, more convenient, more concise ways… to do everything. As long as humans have that nature, design won’t die.

Do you know what’s really “dead”?

It’s the default mindset that everything will stay put and wait for you. That mindset makes people believe that thing A dies when thing B appears - instead of thinking that thing A will evolve, stretch… and gradually become a different form that fits better.

And because we don’t think that way, we choose to give up.

I’ll write part 2 soon. I got the idea for it when I was jolted after successfully publishing the Ratewise app and looking back at my Figma: like a messy stew: not-a-single-screen was complete.

This shows that today, validating an idea without a pixel-perfect Figma file is entirely possible - BUT for the long haul, designers are still needed in the product development journey.

The images say it better:

More on part 2 soon. I’m off to fix bugs. 😅