Jesse James Garrett

Designers have been caught between speed and quality since long before toolmakers started telling us we didn’t have to choose. But with AI-driven automation making its way into design processes, that tension is surfacing in unexpected ways.

“People feel like they’re a lot more efficient when they’re using AI in their design process, but they don’t always feel like they’re doing better work,” said Figma’s Head of Insights Andrew Hogan, who has been tracking the impact of AI in design team workflows. Andrew joined us to talk about his findings on the latest episode of Finding Our Way, the design leadership podcast I host alongside Peter Merholz.

But instead of fodder for disillusionment, Andrew sees new opportunities for design to rethink where it can deliver value. “If things are not working, that is often a place to prompt a reexamination of, ‘Well, what are we doing?’ That’s an amazing spot for design to step in and show leadership,” he says.

Andrew’s findings show that only 30% of designers have integrated AI into their regular workflow versus 60% of developers. It may well be that AI design tools just aren’t that mature yet—or, as Andrew points out, it may be that the hard work of understanding problems and creating meaningful solutions can’t be easily automated away.

Andrew emphasizes the human element that designers bring, even to AI-enabled processes. Part of that is keeping your own creative judgment sharp. “Sometimes you do have to try and work and think really hard and fire all your neurons and synapses,” he says.

But creative discernment isn’t the only place where the design process still requires a human touch. As Andrew puts it, “Getting a team to understand a user’s perspective and actually getting a real user perspective—those things still seem really important and incredibly difficult. AI just doesn’t do that.”

Leaders can drive genuinely useful AI transformation by creating cultures of ongoing experimentation. But that brings its own challenges. “Leaders have to figure out how to navigate that because not everybody feels like they have the time and space to work and practice and try to use tools that are different,” Andrew says.

“And then also you have to figure out which parts of the process you should keep, which parts of the process you should change,“ he says. ”You’ve got to provide a lot of air cover for teams right now.”

Check out our full conversation on the Finding Our Way website. Thanks to Andrew and Peter for the conversation!