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Is Web Design over?
AI still can’t design. We lost anyway.
Design is over. We lost the battle with AI.
But not in the way you think.
I know this kind of title, this kind of article, will get many people riled up. They’ll accuse me of negativity baiting, like they’ve done many time in the past when I was highlighting some of the bad Figma stuff.
Today none of my Figma criticisms seem controversial anymore, and people are switching to other tools at a rate we haven’t seen in years.
Hear me out. I didn’t want to write this article. The only reason I did, is that I noticed something bad going on. If we don’t stop it, it will soon be too late.
What kind of AI design?
I’m talking primarily about web design here. There are tools out there — mostly for mobile apps — that can use an existing design system to sort-of put together some screens into a flow.
They’ve been around for a while, and they haven’t replaced designers. It’s the same with developers using AI tools to do some things faster, but we are nowhere close to them being actually replaced.
Can AI make good design? No. When AI tries to “make” a design it’s really bad.
So what happened?
People lowered their expectations of what design is. First designers themselves, then many clients.
It’s painful to watch.
Is it over, over? Or just in a bad spot?
There is a tiny path of hope, but only for the very few. I’ll tell you what it is at the end. First we need to get through the problem itself.
Once I show you what it is you should be able to start seeing it everywhere. Great! Point it out! Talk about it! Let people know this approach is not what we want.
