Artificial intelligence — the engine for better design(ers)
Oh Lord!
Ground transportation in the late 19th century wasn’t much different compared to today: Europe already had a functioning rail network, people rode bicycles und the streets were filled with horse-drawn carriages. And anyone who thinks of a creaking, wobbly wooden cart here, has a false image in mind: The horse-drawn carriages of the late 19th century were high-tech vehicles with all the comforts imaginable at the time.
So when the automobile was invented, the horse-drawn carriage industry must not really have gotten nervous. The first automobiles were probably ridiculed as uncompetitive: too loud, too poorly sprung, too expensive to buy. However, at some point with the industrial mass production of the car, even the last horse dealer and carriage maker must have realized: Something big was coming and the times were changing.
Ready for reaction?
Around the turn of the 20th century, the development of the automobile created a whirlwind of technical innovation and economic structural change. And the carriage industry had three options to react to it:
1. Hold on
Of course, it was a natural reaction to hold on to the horse-drawn carriage: For millennia, it had been a (now highly developed) means of transportation that offered quite a few advantages over the automobile. The first motor carriage of 1886 wasn’t even faster than a conventional carriage, and it didn’t have a roof either.
2. Giving up
Those who were visionary enough as carriage industrialists to recognize progress might simply have ceased their previous operations. No eight-in-hand carriage was a match for such a powerful opponent. But giving up did not automatically mean losing: Carriage companies were able to specialize and continue to exist on a smaller scale, salvaging not only their business but also their dignity into the new era.
3. Embrace
Those who recognized the signs of the automotive age had another option: make the best of it. For example, there were carriage builders who, with their expertise in vehicle construction and their manufacturing capabilities, became part of the newly emerging automotive industry. Sure, the horse-drawn carriage business was as dead as a racehorse with a broken ankle. But if the new competition is 80% carriage and 20% engine, the chances of a working business model in the future are not bad.
Wait a minute. What does all this have to do with design?
Legitimate questions. But if you’ve been designing for the Web since the late 1990s, you might know the answer. The Internet was the automobile for video stores, libraries, retail stores, daily newspapers and bank branches. And right now, speeding toward us in the fast lane in oncoming traffic, is perhaps the fastest, most comfortable, and yet cheapest sports car of all time: artificial intelligence. In the 1970s, it only existed in science fiction movies, but today it is exactly as we imagined it back then. Only better and accessible to everyone. It doesn’t bring us coffee in bed, but it does our work as designers and copywriters. Fast, convenient and inexpensive. And what do we do? We marvel and watch. And have three options:
1. Hold on
Also a very natural reaction in this day and age: If I try hard enough, I can be better than the machine. Because any AI is only as smart as we let it become. And after all, humans developed the robot, not the other way around. So I carry on as usual, believing that as a human designer I can understand the needs of other humans and translate them into interfaces better than a few lines of code can.
2. Giving up
Okay, the skills and speed of AI-based tools like ChatGPT or Midjourney can be intimidating. And in the medium term, many designers will be replaced by software — giving up would indeed be an option here. Giving up and perhaps specializing in a direction not (yet) served by the machines.
3. Embrace
Granted, many designers are not necessarily known as optimists. But many of us will embrace the new situation and grow with it. If we see artificial intelligence not as a competitor, but as a tool — no — as a colleague. It makes little sense to go into competition with something that is so much faster and knows so much more. But when we work together, unimagined possibilities are open to us.
Forget the numbers
UX design today is (perceived to be) 99% analysis of numbers and 1% creativity. And that’s a good thing. From a user perspective, it’s a blessing that we no longer build cluttered animated Flash websites with micro-typography. That we test designs before we publish them. And that we’re always improving our work based on continuous observation. And it’s this numbers-based part of our work that will benefit from artificial intelligence. Soon we will have tools we never dreamed of. Machines will let us know how our design can be used even better by us and those around us. 99% of our work can thus probably soon be done entirely by software. But we must also recognize that we as humans have a decisive advantage over the machines: Creativity. Creativity is what got us to put an internal combustion engine on a horse-drawn carriage. It got us to send messages over a worldwide data network and migrate books and movies and bank accounts onto that data network. And creativity has also led us to make machines intelligent.
All will be well
The automobile displaced the carriage and horse industries within a few years. Was that bad for the world? From an ecological point of view, certainly. From an economic point of view, no. The prosperity of entire economies like Germany is largely based on the production of cars. But it is based even more on their use: It starts with the fact that people and goods can be transported by road to wherever they are needed. And ends with being able to enjoy mobile emergency services like ambulances and the fire department when you need them. So as designers, let’s embrace artificial intelligence. If we use it as the most sophisticated tools we’ve ever had, it presents itself and many opportunities for 99% of our work. The last percent will continue to not be done by machines for now: Creative new ideas to make people’s lives better. Tested and approved by artificial intelligence.
