The best way to use AI effectively as a designer is to delegate
Most designers are using AI incorrectly, and it may cause them to lose their jobs
AI is here to stay, even if it’s suffering from a number of setbacks right now. While there has yet to be a “killer transformative app,” even with $1 trillion invested in it, there are many benefits with no clear alternative.
However, I’ve noticed that many designers think about AI incorrectly. I’ve written about this in the past, but it’s been concerning that recently, there’s been some hysteria about Generative AI on LinkedIn, especially around Figma.
I’ve been working with a subset of AI, Natural Language Processing, for years, even helping use it to design software that translates handwriting into Electronic Medical Records. I’ve been augmenting my articles and working with AI ever since ChatGPT 3.5 came out, and let me tell you the right way to use AI.
Think of AI as a personal assistant that does the stuff you don’t like, so you can concentrate on what you like.
AI, Slow productivity, and Delegating
One of the things I gained from reading about Designers struggling with AI is an appreciation for good managers.
After all, a good Manager knows how to delegate. The truth is that sometimes tasks are delegated to people who have free time, and sometimes tasks are delegated to people who are good at doing certain things.
A good manager wouldn’t delegate ‘setting up meetings or e-mail chains with the VP’ to a Junior Designer: they’d probably handle that while leaving Design tasks to the Junior Designer.
This allows workers to spend more time doing fewer things, which is better. These are even the main points of Cal Newport’s book, Slow Productivity, which relies on three concepts to produce better work with less burnout:
Slow Down
Do Fewer Things
Focus on Quality
Until now, we were at the mercy of working for a good manager to achieve this. Not anymore: AI-based tools, like ChatGPT, have given every one of us a personal assistant, which means we can implement this process into our lives if we just learn how to delegate tasks.
So I was shocked when I learned that most designers (and product managers in disguise) want to delegate “creating designs” to AI so they can “focus on strategy” and other process-related fields.
I can’t help but feel like this is an entirely wrong approach: most of us got into the Design field because we care about DESIGN, not the other bells and whistles. Besides that, it’s also dangerous: if we train AI to do 80% of design work, guess who will get paid 80% less (or be unemployed)?
So, if that’s the case, and you genuinely want to focus on design work, how do you delegate other tasks? It first starts with writing out a process.