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Click-baity title aside, what I find most interesting about this piece is that it mainly just describes a good, accelerated product development cycle, run by generalists and (if AI works as advertised) smaller teams with more output. If you’ve ever built your own thing or worked in a startup environment, you’ve done this. You’ve worn the PM hat until one could be hired. You’ve helped with Product Design until more headcount could be justified. You’ve already worked like this.
Imagine you’re assembling a team for an escape room challenge. Would you rather have six managers debating strategies or two sharp thinkers who rapidly test every combination to unlock the door?
Harsh to specifically throw managers under the bus here—I’ve been in plenty of meetings where sharp, non-management thinkers devolve into meaningless technical debate over minutia. But, setting that aside, would you ever want 6 people ineffectively debating strategy today with no AI tooling? You’d always pick the 2 people actively trying to solve the problem.
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For all the excitement about these advancements, they also raise uncomfortable questions. The most obvious is: do we need fewer designers now? To that, I would say yes, we need fewer designers (and engineers, and everyone else in product development) for the same amount of output. Do we need fewer designers overall though? That remains to be seen. The growth of the economy since the beginning of time has been based on productivity increases leading to greater total output of our population. So if you think we have already maxxed out our total output of products and services in the world, I would expect a nosedive in the amount of designers and engineers needed. But if you think we are only scratching the surface of product development, you should expect a future where millions of designers and engineers continue to do great things but much more prolifically.
Smarter people than myself thought the advent of computers would bring about the 15-work week. Instead, we work the same hours or longer, but with more output. Could that be the outcome of AI? I worry there is an upper limit to the number of companies and services the global economy actually needs, and that if we haven’t found it yet, AI will quickly get us there, leaving behind our current model where accelerating productivity always leaves to increased GDP.
However, it’s hard to see around the corner. What don’t we see coming that will expand the base of the economy?
When I got into this industry, you needed to buy books and take expensive classes in order to learn how to use tools like Adobe Illustrator. There is nothing about designing for AI that requires you to spend significant money to learn. It’s all about the time you are willing to invest.
I remember buying books on Ruby to try to learn programming. I would’ve killed for something like Claude or ChatGPT.
Mike’s entire piece is worth your time—and I struggled not to quote more of it—so just go read it. Even if you’re not a product designer, the same themes will likely apply to your job or industry. Mike’s take is balanced and does acknowledge some of the potential downsides and chaos this transition will create (is already creative?), particularly in the tech industry.