Core design abilities that AI can’t replace (at least for now)
AI vs. Core Design Abilities
Last month, a top tech CEO announced that everyone’s expected to use AI daily, integrate it into prototyping, keep learning, and share findings with others. AI use will even be part of performance and peer reviews.
We will see more designers share their experiences of using AI, whether it's creating UI with ChatGPT or skipping Figma to prototype in code.
This wave of change is inevitable. AI will soon touch nearly every aspect of our work.
Doubling down on learning AI seems like a promising way to future-proof our careers.
But as I’ve been learning, I’ve realized our edge isn’t just about working alongside intelligent machines. It’s still rooted in our core design abilities.
Nearly a decade ago, a leading design school moved away from teaching design as a process: empathize, define, ideate, and so on. They started focusing on core design abilities instead.
And that shift matters now more than ever.
While AI can 10x our speed and output, these design abilities are still what shape the work and make it meaningful.
So I revisited their original post and unpacked each ability, exploring where our skills as designers matter most, and where AI can assist but not replace us (at least for now).
This is the ability to recognize and stew in the discomfort of not knowing, and then come up with tactics to emerge out of it when needed.
🤖 AI can help by quickly generating ideas, organizing information, or simulating different directions.
👨🏻 But dealing with ambiguity, sitting with unclear problems and deciding when to explore or narrow down, is still up to us. We’re the ones who decide what matters and when to move.
This ability includes the skills of empathizing with different people, testing new ideas with them and observing and noticing in different places and contexts.
🤖 AI can summarize interviews, analyze feedback, or simulate conversations, etc.
🧑🏽 But it doesn’t replace real human connection. Understanding people, asking thoughtful questions, observing behavior, and noticing subtle cues. These are skills we build through experience.
This is the ability to make sense of information and find insight and opportunity within.
🤖 AI can group themes, highlight patterns, and surface connections in data. That saves time and helps us work at a bigger scale.
👨🏽 But turning those patterns into useful insights, deciding what’s relevant, what to prioritize, and how to act on it, still requires our judgment and critical thinking.
This ability is about being able to quickly generate ideas, whether written, drawn, or built.
🤖 AI can help speed up idea generation: producing drafts, mockups, or code variations in seconds.
🧑🏼 But deciding which ideas are worth pursuing, setting meaningful constraints, and learning from what doesn’t work still requires our intention and direction.
This ability contains skills around understanding stakeholders as well as zooming and expanding on product features.
🤖 AI can support this by summarizing complex information or generating detailed executions. It can help you zoom in or out quickly.
👩🏻 But understanding the bigger picture, how a feature fits into a user’s life or aligns with business goals, relies on our ability to think critically and connect the dots between strategy and detail.
This ability is about thoughtful construction and showing work at the most appropriate level of resolution for the audience and feedback desired.
🤖 AI can generate polished outputs, suggest layouts, refine wording, and even produce fully styled components at speed.
👨🏿 But it’s up to us to make sure the work is thoughtful and intentional guided by taste, attention to detail, and a clear understanding of context. It’s our job to decide what level of fidelity is right for the moment, and when to show rough versus refined work.
This is the ability to form, capture, and communicate stories, ideas, concepts, reflections, and learnings to the appropriate audiences.
🤖 AI can help organize thoughts, create slides, or suggest phrasing.
👩🏽 But effective communication is more than formatting. It’s about knowing your audience, shaping a clear message, and choosing what to say (and what to leave out). We still need to decide what’s worth saying.
This meta ability is about recognizing a project as a design problem and then deciding on the people, tools, techniques, and processes to use to tackle it.
🤖 AI can recommend tools, generate templates, or suggest workflows.
👨🏼 But defining the problem, choosing the right approach, and adapting our process to context and constraints, that’s on us.
Research suggests that AI can boost productivity by up to 40%. While that data isn’t specific to designers, we can see it ourselves, whether it’s generating real copy instead of Lorem Ipsum, creating live prototypes faster and testing more ideas in less time. AI clearly speeds up the work.
Still, it’s those with stronger expertise and sharper skills who are best positioned to use AI effectively.
In fact, a design expert without AI can still outperform someone using AI without a design background.
I know the wave of change can be overwhelming. We're in the same boat. I feel nervous but hopeful. So instead of drowning in the wave, let's surf it. Learn AI, but don't forget the core skills that make a designer a designer.
Before you go, if you want to take some time to reflect on where you are with your core design skills, you can use the questions here.
Until next one,
Thomas
Thanks for reading Design Buddy. If you enjoyed it, tap the ❤️ or share it with a friend, teammate, or fellow designer.