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Show Notes

Jesse and Peter explore how AI is revealing the true value proposition of design teams. They discuss why “whoever controls the prompt controls the product” and why design leaders must understand their organization’s expectations before embracing AI. The more things change, the more they stay the same—AI may be new, but the fundamentals of design leadership remain critical.

Jesse’s presentation “The Elements of UX in the Age of AI” is now available as a digital download. Get your copy today.

Peter has just launched his masterclass “UX/Design Leadership Demystified” in two formats—self-study and cohort course. Learn more here.

Transcript

Peter: Make sure to stick around to the end of the episode to hear a couple of new offerings from Peter and Jesse.

Jesse: I’m Jesse James Garrett,

Peter: and I’m Peter Merholz.

Jesse: And we’re finding our way,

Peter: Navigating the opportunities

Jesse: and challenges

Peter: of design and design leadership,

Jesse: On today’s show, reflecting on my talk: The Elements of UX in the Age of AI, Peter and I sit down one-on-one to talk about AI and its implications for design roles, design processes, and design leaders. We’ll talk about the new skills teams will need, the old skills that won’t be going away, and why. In an AI-enabled world, whoever controls the prompt, controls the product.

Peter: So, a few weeks ago now, you gave a talk on the Elements of User Experience in the Age of AI. And that’s where I want to start. As a UX guy, when I see commentary about the intersection of UX and AI, or rather, primarily, design and AI…

Jesse: mm-hmm.

Peter: …it typically focuses on the top two layers of the elements diagram, the surface layer and the skeleton layer. And really the surface layer. I don’t even know if we’re getting much from a workflow standpoint. I’m just seeing screen design…

Jesse: mm-hmm.

Peter: …being what’s being discussed. And I’m wondering, am I missing something? Where is the conversation happening about AI and how it’s affecting the lower levels of the diagram? The structural concerns, the scope concerns, the strategic concerns? ’cause that for me, given my background in strategic design, is where my focus is at.

And it also feels like, well, that’s the kind of thing AI can’t do. It requires my human brain. But I also don’t want to be that guy and be ignorant of the possibility that these tools are able to have a more kind of foundational…

Jesse: mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Peter: impact on the practice of developing user experiences.

AI’s Strengths: Analysis and Synthesis

Jesse: Yeah. Yeah. So the way that I tend to think about this technology is in terms of what I see as its two strengths, which are analysis and synthesis. Which is to say, finding patterns within a data set, and then extrapolating from those patterns something broader, right?

So the pattern finding is the analysis part, and analysis is the stuff that’s gonna kick in when you’re down at those lower levels on the elements of user experience, where you’re talking about strategy, where you’re talking about scope, where you’re talking about user needs, where you’re talking about business requirements, where you’re talking about business models, where you’re talking about functional requirements, content requirements, all of those kinds of things.

So this is where getting a whole bunch of data together and feeding it to the machine can help surface patterns that you might not otherwise see. And this analysis value proposition for the LLM is where I see it coming into play in these more kind of strategic and product strategy, scope oriented domains.

Then when you get toward the top layers of the elements, then you start to get into these areas where the synthesis matters more. Where it’s more about what can you create, what can you generate out of the insights that you’ve created, out of the, really, the constraints that you’ve identified on your design problem.

Because if we think about the double diamond, this is where divergent thinking comes in, where you are generating possibilities, creating ideas, and then convergent thinking comes in where you are refining those ideas based on criteria that you’ve developed. And so these are both areas where an LLM can potentially play a role in a user experience design process.

What we see though, is that in these analysis oriented areas, where you are turning user needs into insights, turning those insights into requirements where you are evaluating and refining possible strategic directions, these tend to be processes that are owned by people outside of design. They may be owned by people in a UX research role. They may be owned by people in a product leadership role. They may be owned by people who are in a business leadership role.

But often the direct purview of a design leader doesn’t actually extend all the way down the stack of the elements of user experience. And so what you see is a lot of the things that end up influencing user experience outcomes are actually owned by other roles in organizations.

So I think part of what you’re seeing is that what design leaders feel like they can authentically control is the stuff that’s closer to the top of the stack, whereas the activity that’s happening at the bottom of the stack is happening in other parts of the organization, or that design leaders are ceding their influence over those areas out of a sense that that’s somebody else’s job, and my product person is gonna handle the AI that generates requirements, and I’m not gonna try to handle that myself.

Peter: Weird that you say some of this, in part because I tend to think of the user needs part, the user research part is very much within the realm of design, typically.

Jesse: It depends on the organization. In some organizations, the people who actually own that stuff don’t report into a design leader.

Peter: That’s increasingly true, but not historically true, at least when it comes to UX research. There’s other forms of research.

Jesse: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Design leaders telling on themselves

Peter: As you’re saying this, I’m thinking about something I saw a day or two ago on LinkedIn where a design leader was saying that unless you know code or are some Jony Ive-level brand craft wizard…

Jesse: mm.

Peter: that AI is going to take everything in in the middle or AI is going to subsume the work you do.

Jesse: Mm-hmm.

Peter: And I responded, well, maybe, if all your leading is production, but that’s not design, right? And so one of the things that’s been clear to me is design leaders telling on themselves about how they have led design and how they have abandoned those lower levels of the diagram.

Jesse: Yes.

Peter: And I say abandoned. It was not taken from them. If they knew what they were doing, it was there for them to lead. In my role as a design leader, I led folks doing the research. I led folks figuring out organizational models. I led folks developing the insights coming outta research that drove, that informed, I should say, product requirements. There were other means of informing product requirements…

Jesse: mm-hmm.

Peter: …certain kinds of customer conversations or whatever.

But, maybe the conversation about AI and UX is really just a conversation about UX and design.

It’s casting a light on just all the different ways, the varieties of ways that this has been led, this has been practiced in organizations, because, my point of view, both having led teams and working with design leaders of teams, is most of the teams I’m involved with have some responsibility all the way up and down the stack.

You know, they maybe have more responsibility the higher up the diagram you get, sure. And the lower down the diagram, there’s a conversation to be had, but it’s a conversation. They’re not simply taking user needs from someone or the strategic objectives from someone. I guess, if as a designer and design leader, all you did was executing on the synthesis parts as you were calling them, the upper levels of the diagram, yes, it does appear that much of that work can be done by machines…

Jesse: mm-hmm.

Peter: …and that, for me seems like an opportunity for design.

But it’s, intriguing how many people see it as a threat.

Jesse: Right. Well, so, as you know, this talk came out of the work that I’ve been doing with design leaders for the last several years as a leadership coach. And in working with design leaders on their leadership challenge, it was this recurring theme that kept comi