really good observation, and it's interesting what will happen when implementation gets cheaper - designers will get overwhelmed with too many things to review now, probably
Good point. But TBH I was already seeing it, even in the pre-AI landscape.
Bad designers are a huge bottleneck and terrible gatekeepers of information, delaying the work even before the development starts, during and after. I saw this a lot in high-performance teams that had bad designers, but AI is making it even more clear now.
Good designers, on the other hand, know how to define standards and components, and have been empowering teams for quite some time. But of course this means there's less micromanagement and less reliance on Figma for every single screen.
What AI has really changed IMO is that there's no need for designers to ask developers to ask for micro-changes that take longer to explain than to ask an AI to do.
...but even that was already possible and extremely fast by simply having a designer pair with a developer and ask for changes on the fly.
IMO communication skills, organization and collaboration is what makes or breaks it, regardless of AI or not.
Bad designers are a huge bottleneck and terrible gatekeepers of information, delaying the work even before the development starts, during and after. I saw this a lot in high-performance teams that had bad designers, but AI is making it even more clear now.
Good designers, on the other hand, know how to define standards and components, and have been empowering teams for quite some time. But of course this means there's less micromanagement and less reliance on Figma for every single screen.
What AI has really changed IMO is that there's no need for designers to ask developers to ask for micro-changes that take longer to explain than to ask an AI to do.
...but even that was already possible and extremely fast by simply having a designer pair with a developer and ask for changes on the fly.
IMO communication skills, organization and collaboration is what makes or breaks it, regardless of AI or not.