AI will make it easier to fake design, but won't help you understand why
In this rough job market, practicing in public can help you get a design job
Photo by Allan Mas: https://www.pexels.com/photo/asian-trainer-explaining-to-alpinist-how-to-use-safety-rope-5383545/
Things are looking weird for designers, especially in the job market. Between a weak economy, Design roles changing, the proliferation of AI, and Product Design overtaking UX Design, it’s a rough time to try and get into Design.
However, that doesn’t mean that it’s impossible to get a job as a Designer. All it means is that you need to go back to some of the fundamentals of Design. And one of the critical aspects you must understand, at this point, is that you have to understand the “Why” behind your actions.
The reason is that nowadays, it’s easier than ever to fake that you know Design.
In the age of AI, people aren’t sure what to trust
I mentioned this in my free book, The Resilient UX Professional, but it’s worth reiterating that we’re heading toward a low-trust job market. Nowadays, it’s easier than ever for people to fake having the right skills and experience for several reasons.
From Get-rich-quick gurus renting out expensive cars to sell you courses, to finance influencers pretending to be economists, it’s easier than ever to pretend to have the skills and knowledge on the internet.
Sadly, Design is not immune to this either. Throughout my career, I’ve met several people who used the right buzzwords and talked about a good game but had little to no idea how to Design anything.
In addition, with the Generative AI tools like MidjourneyAI and ChatGPT, it’s easier to say the right buzzwords (and even generate some rudimentary design sketches).
So, unfortunately, you need to learn how to convince employers that you know what you’re talking about in an ever-growing pool of candidates (and maybe some fakers). However, the way to do this hasn’t changed: you must express the “Why” of your design process, often by practicing in public.
I know some people who might react poorly to this, especially if people have stolen work from your design portfolio (or other bad experiences). However, today, it’s essential to put yourself out there for one key reason: to polish your understanding of “Why.”
To build trust, practice in public
What’s the downside to keeping your Design work a black box and having a private portfolio you only share with employers? There are two main downsides:
Employers will always Google your name, which means having a web presence is an automatic advantage
Being a black box means you often don’t get the feedback you need to grow
For the first reason, one thing to remember when applying to jobs is that you’re essentially a stranger (in most cases) asking the employer to trust you and pay you.
So one thing that everyone in the hiring process will do is Google your name. And let me tell you first-hand, if something positive pops up, that’s a huge advantage. I almost always pass the first interview of any job I apply to nowadays because of my robust web presence and thought leadership.
People have signed off on my skills, written glowing recommendations, and supported me in how I work. As a result, no recruiter will have an issue with me when applying to a job that I regularly practice in public.
However, you don’t need a long-established track record to leverage this advantage: a few articles written or a widget or two designed can often offer you these same advantages.
The reason is that you seem to know what you’re talking about (and are passionate about the subject). I’ve gotten things wrong in my articles before, but because I’ve learned from my experiences, people are willing to trust me more.
This touches on the second reason to practice in public: to get feedback about your work and grow as a designer.
Growing as a designer requires reflection
Why did you use a drop-down there instead of a radio button?
This is a simple design question, yet many designers may not answer it as concisely as your audience may need.
They might start talking about best practices, use cases for each, user testing and feedback, and spend about three paragraphs to answer what could have been simplified to a single sentence: “There were too many options to use radio buttons appropriately.”
This is what practicing in public offers you. By reflecting on what you designed and why you took your approach, you think through everything you did, your rationale, and more to try and get to the root of what needs to be addressed.
This is especially important to do nowadays because the Design interview process is likely to change. When more and more steps of the process may be vulnerable to fakers using AI, interviewers are likely going to focus more on the core of what matters in a Design:
Why are you designing something? or
Why was your Design a success (or failure)?
If you don’t have that from your previous experiences, getting that feedback from the community when you practice in public will help you understand exactly how you should respond when these questions arise.
Practicing in public means expressing your design thoughts
Honestly, the medium you practice in public doesn’t matter much. I write about my design work because I like writing. It’s easily searchable through Google, making me some extra money. However, there are many other ways to practice in public that you can consider:
Create Figma/Figjam community widgets, templates, or plug-ins that help others with problems you’ve tackled in your Design
Create Miro/other brainstorming templates to help with creating design artifacts
Create and share design ideas, thoughts, and more through tweets or LinkedIn posts
Create gifs of how works in progress change into final designs and posted to social media
Write articles, case studies, and more about what you’ve learned on sites like Medium, sub stack, and more
Start design blogs, podcasts, or YouTube video series
Seek mentorship or coaching with discussion around apparent points that you want to uncover and document the journey
Attend and participate in design meet-ups and conferences, hopefully presenting some work that you’ve done
Contribute to open-source projects related to UX design, hackathons, and more.
Volunteer design projects, such as helping nonprofits ( or local restaurants, as I talked about in my book) improve their websites or things
engage in online communities such as Behance or Dribbble, not only sharing your work but giving feedback to others
In any case, this sort of engagement through practicing in public can help transform your thinking into something that is not only more visible but can help your potential employers trust that you know what you’re doing and that you’re not using AI (or other tools) to generate nice-sounding answers for you.
This is how you can get a Design job in an ever-changing landscape.
Kai Wong is a Senior Product Designer, Data-Informed Design Author, and Data and Design newsletter author. His new free book, The Resilient UX Professional, provides real-world advice to get your first UX job and advance your UX career.