The question of the value proposition of design and designers—of what the practice and its practitioners bring to the table and why it matters—has been a dominant undercurrent in the conversations I’ve had with design leaders in my AI transformation work over the last year.
So it was very interesting to hear these themes reflected from the academic perspective in our conversation on Finding Our Way with our old friend Dan Saffer, formerly of Adaptive Path and now professor at Carnegie Mellon University, training the next generation of designers.
Dan’s work with his students has focused him on a particular vision of education’s role in design work. “How I like to think about it is that there’s really only two things right now that are really worth teaching,” Dan said. “One is the fundamentals, and one is the stuff that’s kind of on the cutting edge.”
At that cutting edge, Dan and his students are finding new ways to apply those fundamentals. “There are certain things that never change because human beings never change,” Dan said.
He also sees opportunity in human designers bringing a perspective to the process that AIs can’t. “The thing that AI does really badly is, are you solving the right problem? Are you going about it the right way? Are you framing the problem correctly?” he said.
But he also sees AI leading to tighter cross-functional collaboration. “There is really this merging and blending of the teams, where a lot of the time that designers used to spend in their silo making mocks and prototypes is now spent alongside the PM and the engineer working to refine a prototype or multiple prototypes together,” Dan said.
There are a ton more insights in the conversation, please check it out at the Finding Our Way design leadership podcast website!
Jesse James Garrett 