AI designers aren’t real designers.
Before you disagree, hear me out.
Over the last several months, I’ve been exploring AI design tools, prototyping workflows, and everything happening around the rapid evolution of product design. Tools like Figma Make and Claude are genuinely impressive. They can generate interfaces, explore concepts, and accelerate the early stages of product development in ways that would have seemed impossible only a few years ago.
But something has been bothering me.
I keep seeing people generate a few polished screens with AI, put them into a portfolio, and present them as product design work. The technology is impressive, but the design process behind those screens is often missing.
A generated interface is not the same thing as a designed product.
The difference is understanding why something exists, what problem it solves, who it serves, how it impacts the business, and whether the experience actually works for the people using it.
That distinction matters more than ever.
Because AI did not replace design. It exposed who understood design in the first place.
AI Didn’t Lower the Bar for Design. It Lowered the Barrier to Creating Interfaces.
The current conversation around AI in design often focuses on speed. A designer can now create a prototype in minutes instead of hours. A founder can test an idea without immediately hiring a full product team. A product manager can explore concepts faster than ever before.
That is a significant advantage.
However, producing an interface has never been the difficult part of product design.
The difficult part is making the right decisions.
Experienced designers understand that every screen represents hundreds of decisions that users never see. Why is this information prioritized? Why does this flow contain five steps instead of three? Why is this action presented as the primary call-to-action? What happens when something fails? How does this experience work for someone using assistive technology?
Those decisions come from understanding users, business objectives, technical constraints, and the broader product ecosystem.
AI can help accelerate those decisions, but it cannot replace the thinking required to make them.
Design Systems Were Never About Tools
One of the biggest misconceptions about modern product design is that design systems are a feature of tools like Figma.
They are not.
A design system is a way of thinking about consistency, scalability, and decision-making.
Throughout my career, I have built products and design systems before many of today’s popular tools existed. The software changed, but the fundamentals remained the same.
VenueWize: Building a System Before Design Systems Were Popular
When I worked on VenueWize, the design system was not a polished Figma library with hundreds of components.
It was a structured collection of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files.
The product relied on organized patterns, reusable code, and consistent UI decisions. Third-party libraries were used where appropriate, but the overall experience required understanding how each component worked together.
At the time, creating a scalable interface meant thinking beyond individual screens. It meant understanding structure, hierarchy, and maintainability.
Those principles are exactly what modern design systems are built around today.
The terminology changed. The discipline did not.
SKIO Music: Evolving From Visual Design Into Product Design
My work at SKIO Music represented years of evolving a product from early concepts into a more mature platform.
At the beginning, Illustrator was one of the primary tools used for interface design. Later, the work transitioned into Sketch as the industry moved toward more collaborative design workflows.
The tools changed, but the challenge remained the same: creating a product experience that was consistent, scalable, and understandable.
Over years of design iterations, prototypes, and product decisions, the system became more sophisticated. Components became reusable. Patterns became documented. Interactions became intentional.
The value was never the software.
The value was creating a repeatable approach to solving product problems.
Invoice Simple: Designing Products That Deliver Business Results
At Invoice Simple, the focus shifted toward creating experiences where trust and usability were critical.
The product supported businesses managing invoices and payments, which meant every interaction had real consequences. Users needed to understand financial information, complete tasks efficiently, and feel confident that the system was reliable.
The design system and prototypes were created in Sketch, but the important work happened beyond the screens.
Understanding user behavior, simplifying complex workflows, designing for edge cases, and balancing business requirements with user needs were the real challenges.
A successful product is not measured by how impressive a mockup looks.
It is measured by whether it solves a problem.
AI Makes Experienced Designers More Valuable
The future of design is not designers versus AI.
The future is experienced designers using AI effectively.
A designer with years of product experience approaches AI differently because they already understand the fundamentals. They can evaluate whether a generated solution makes sense. They can identify usability problems. They can recognize when something looks polished but fails from a product perspective.
AI is an accelerator.
It allows experienced designers to explore more ideas, iterate faster, and spend more time on higher-value decisions.
But acceleration only helps when there is already a strong direction.
A person who does not understand product design will simply create more incorrect solutions faster.
The Problem With Modern Design Hiring
One of the biggest challenges facing the industry is that many hiring processes still evaluate designers based on tools instead of capability.
I regularly see job descriptions asking candidates how many years of Figma experience they have.
The problem is that senior designers were designing products long before Figma became the dominant tool.
Many of us built interfaces using Illustrator, Photoshop, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Sketch, and other tools that existed before today’s workflows.
Someone with ten years of product design experience should not be evaluated based on whether they used one specific application during that entire period.
The tool is not the skill.
A strong product designer understands users, business problems, technology constraints, and how to create solutions that drive measurable outcomes.
The software is simply where those decisions are expressed.
Hiring Managers Need to Evaluate Thinking, Not Screens
A portfolio should not simply demonstrate that someone can create attractive interfaces.
It should demonstrate how they think.
A strong hiring process should explore why decisions were made, what challenges existed, what compromises were required, how users responded, and what measurable impact resulted from the work.
A designer should be able to explain their decisions clearly because those decisions are the actual product design work.
The final screen is simply the artifact.
Design Has Never Been About Software
The history of design has always been a history of evolving tools.
Print designers worked with grids, typography systems, and templates. Web designers created structured HTML and CSS architectures. Designers moved from Illustrator to Sketch, from Sketch to Figma, and now into AI-assisted workflows.
Every generation introduces new technology.
The fundamentals remain.
Understanding people.
Solving problems.
Creating systems.
Balancing user needs with business objectives.
Making complex things simple.
Those skills have survived every technological shift because they are the foundation of the profession.
AI Did Not Teach Me Design. Design Taught Me How to Use AI.
I use AI tools every day.
Claude helps accelerate thinking and exploration. Figma Make helps quickly test concepts and create prototypes. These tools are powerful additions to the modern product designer’s workflow.
But they are not replacements for experience.
The designers who succeed in an AI-driven world will not be the people who create the most prompts.
They will be the people who understand products deeply enough to know when the AI is wrong.
Because designing a product has never been about producing screens.
It has always been about understanding problems, making decisions, and creating experiences that work.
AI changed the speed of design.
It did not change what design is.
