Transcription
Welcome back to Capital D, and the theme of this week is the future of design jobs. Welcome, Ben. Welcome, Ken. Welcome back. Thanks. Happy to be here. Hello. So, what's top of mind for both of you on this topic?
Yeah, I mean, I guess what I've been thinking a lot about, and I think has been talked about quite a bit, is that what is the future of design jobs? It really depends upon what you mean by a design job. Um, and so if we think about it as your job is to use Figma, Figma to produce screens, there will be fewer and fewer of those jobs going forward. Doesn't mean there aren't any, and there certainly are them right now. We do have those jobs right now. And if you think you're going to get a job in design as a junior person and you don't know how to do or use those tools, that's going to be a problem. But over the longer term, the real value of design, as it always has been, the real value is in creating those curated end-to-end experiences that provide value for the customers that ladder to business value. And so that is where there will continue to be work and continue to be valuable jobs that are doing that work.
I fully agree. Um, I remember having a conversation with a former colleague of mine from my SAP days. Um, and she ran the um success factor. So all the HR tooling, and we ended up talking about jobs and AI, and um, you know, one of the great points that that she made was, well, we need to stop pretending that jobs will not be impacted by AI. Of course, they will be, like with every technology advancements that also challenge our organizations. Of course, jobs will either go away or drastically change, but I think that is different from the value that a discipline brings, like design does. And then Karen just I think really nicely articulated. Um, and um, so I think what we what we can and should talk about is how do we think jobs are going to change? What do we think skills are that that that are maybe going to be required? Um, and you know, given that even at the World Economic Forum, user experience design was actually called out as one of the top skills to be needed in in the age of AI, I think um there's a there's actually um a fairly optimistic view, so long as you don't hold on to a job profile that that you know existed before this technology um started to change a lot of things. So, um, maybe we can go through either the kind of the stack or the the the the levels all the way from junior um designers of the future all the way to design executives.
Awesome. In the future, I think that would be a really interesting conversation to have. I think that's a great idea. And by the way, what this reminds me a little bit of is remember when we all moved to, you know, the iOS had a design system, and then we were using that design system, and some people felt that took away their jobs because now we were using another system, and then we created design systems with our own companies that leverage the iOS system or Android or whatnot. It's just another evolution of that where all of a sudden we're going to be looking at patterns in a much bigger way, and we still have to make really thoughtful choices based on that customer's goals and outcomes.
Yeah. Which part of the ladder shall we start? The bottom or the top?
Um, I I mean, I think starting maybe from the from the and I don't want to say the bottom, but starting from the the IC roles um is probably a good idea because I think it will hopefully help us then figure out what does the design leadership um you know, companywide leadership need to to look like to lead um people in future organizations.
I think for me, one of the the key um themes on that level is how does the how does the the job of a of a designer change um in the in the age of AI has been around the kind of collapsing of the um tool stack, which I think is really interesting um and I I've I think even shared this with in conversation with with um you Gordon um we I think it's going to look like some something like an industrial designer 2.0. Uh, although that's probably a really terrible way to describe it. Um, where if we look at um the emergence of the Bauhaus um for example, you know, designers were trained not just in composition or color psychology. They were also trained in u materials and how to work with materials and then all the way into like the systemic impact of the work that they're we're doing. And I think what's really interesting is that um I think because of the tools starting to merge, we need to um basically raise and educate a new generation of designers that can first and foremost take an idea and give shape to that idea with entirely new tools all the way from, you know, uh maybe very quick sketches that might be text prompts or even voice prompts all the way to then um trusting the tools to translate that into working code or you know, working 3D models that can be 3D printed. So, I think um we'll probably see a profile that's a lot more rounded in that sense um more aligned with that original um profile of a of a designer coming out of the the original Bauhaus. And I think that's really interesting. And from what I see with my students, for example, that's how a lot of young students already start using tools. um they're building products, and they don't define themselves necessarily as designers designing in Figma, but maybe designing with prompts and then making something that they can deploy within a few minutes. So that's I think a really interesting development.
I would just add the caveat to that that in the near term these junior designers are still going to be using Figma because the reality is we have a lot of designers are hired by companies that are established, and those companies have systems and processes, and moving to what Bern or sorry what what Ben just talked about. Oh my god, what's wrong with me? But moving to what Ben just talked about. You can edit that, Gordon. Moving to what Ben just talked about. um it's going to take some time, or you were going to see it first in the startups, right? That's where we're going to see the VC-backed startups.
Yeah. And I think the nice thing is though that um that leaves room to actually upskill and reskill and experiment with you know the the tools stack is changing so quickly that I think it gives time to actually develop the skills in the larger organizations. So instead of, you know, freaking out and spending all your energy on freaking out, um it's much better to just spend the time on just experimenting and playing around with these tools knowing that that's probably where we're going to head. So I'm seeing a kind of more generalist skill set emerging, you know, Ben, and I think you're thinking through the layers. Um, what about the next level? You know, we heard at our last round table in New York with executives, they were actually seeing junior talent outpacing some senior talent because of the new tools they're coming in with. So, there's an interesting crunch in the middle. What are your thoughts on that part?
Well, I think that one of the bits we didn't mention for the junior designers, which is particularly important for the senior designers, will probably be also be flowing down to the more junior is really that customer centricity and that deep connection to those customers and that our ability to really articulate what's the problem, what's the outcome we're solving for, and how does that ladder to the business outcome. So, if our junior designers are not doing that, our senior designers have to be very very well versed in that because again, that's where the value is.
Yeah, I agree. And I think there's probably a bifurcation where depending on your organization, you you know, you might have um design managers um well, senior to senior designers to design managers that are very process focused in the work that they do. I think a lot of that will probably disappear. Uh, and probably with that all of these roles. But on the flip side, I think um there's absolutely going to be a need for really experienced design designers and design managers. So it could be an IC track or or a managerial track that ensures that the environment exists that um you know that designers, product makers can do a really great job and and really bring their best creative work forward. Um, and I think there are u probably organizations like Pixar to look at where um you know, it's like almost like a player-coach model more than than it's like the process management of things because I think a lot of that can actually and will probably be automated very quickly, whereas creating a creative environment um to do great work um requires you know humans to be involved and create that that that inspiring um you know, place to work.
Well, and just to be explicit, I also think for those senior designers, we're really going to be going back much more into service design, for example, and really looking that end-to-end experience and the various layers of technology and databases and policies and whatnot. Um, because that right now is where it's going to have to be redesigned, and that can't be done with just prompts, right? That's about understanding the system, aligning the players in that organization. So more and more that's going to have to be the skill set that these individuals bring in along with the harder skills because again we're not getting rid of Figma next year.
Yeah. Yeah. And I think you know when I look back at when we read it all the design research UX engineering um profiles at Microsoft you know as you go up in seniority um the soft skills the um interdisciplinary uh or the work to the ability to work across disciplines the as Karen mentioned the the human-centeredness and really weaving that into the entire product you know making process that needs to be developed in especially those senior to then principal level roles and and that will be probably more of a requirement than less u so I think that you know that that doesn't go away and becomes probably more important yeah so more people skills more strategic outlook more systems orientation more complex work right because it's not going to be about making a screen and a screen and a screen and a screen or that's going to be what we can do 10x faster than before right I think you had a keyword earlier, Karen was end to end. So I'm actually curious for you know what you've seen with service design like what's the state of that in in today versus where it needs to go.
I mean, I feel like service center is getting a resurgence. I feel like it's getting more and more valuable every day.
Yeah. I think especially as the tools start to merge, you need to almost, you know, I think the mindset across an entire organization, not just in design, across the entire organization has to change because now, you know, you always had to technically deliver an end-to-end experience, but because everything was often so siloed off um it wasn't never truly seamless and it was certainly not thought through often end to end. And I think Karen is absolutely right that um this I this discipline of service design of thinking holistically through a human experience and how to deliver it and how to deliver it efficiently um will become really important and the tool stack will probably enable us to do it better than we used to be able to do it so long as the organization start to build around that right is if we keep silos in place then that's probably or if we keep silos in place, that's when we really need these people skills so we can actually drive that alignment across these silos.
Yeah. Right. And AI is not going to break down silos for us. So, well, that's the other thing too is, you know, there's a lot of talk about, you know, agent-to-agent design and all that. I think that's great. I think that's fabulous. You I think that's going to make some things a lot more efficient, but that is also not going to be the reality of how things get done inside of a company in terms of the company.
Yeah. Creating better products or experiences.
Yeah. And there might even be because it's such a big drastic shift tech technology you know driven but it requires entire organizations to shift that might be they might even be an internally like facing um requirement for you know to to redesign services internally and organization structures and and cross-discipline collaboration and all of that um to really drive that change management. But I think the tension that people are experiencing today comes from a few things. One is that, you know, the future is AI. So you work in your prompt engineering. Oh, but guess what? If you're just a prompt engineer, you're never going to get a job as a UX designer, right? You're going to still have to be able to use Figma and create some files in that way. And then on the other hand, you the job market right now is really tough. But the fact that the job market is tough right now is not because AI has displaced those designers' jobs. The job market is tough right now because our economy is very unpredictable, and there are so many changes that are happening um that are somewhat chaotic which causes us to be less likely to invest in addition to interest rates and whatnot right so I think it's really easy to feel like oh well the jobs aren't here because of AI well no that's not true that will be true in the future there will be certain types of fewer jobs because of AI but right now that's not the reason the market's tough at least my point of view yeah and and on top of that there was a massive overinvestment And certainly in the tech industry um you know over many many years um which you know we're now realizing um you know might have not been the best idea and the best choice you know and and you know has led to fun to
Yeah. Exactly. and and let you do a lot of bloat. Um, and you know, especially I think in that middle layer of any organization across disciplines yeah there is a lot of just bloat that probably is not not really necessary to to execute efficiently.
Yeah, I was reflecting back in the days like we were so desperate to hire designers that we were taking anybody that finished you know the Google UX class.
Yeah. That was it. That's all you need to do.
Yeah. And now we're seeing like the bar has risen dramatically, you know, for the types of jobs that we need. So what's that next level that we're going to talk about here?
Well, you think like a director level you want to talk about?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's going to be again it's going to be aligning teams against the problem that needs to be solved and how we're going to get that outcome the ladders to the business and it's going to be about how do you help your the people that are reporting into you to be very productive and very efficient and effective using the latest tools and also having the right conversations that need to be had in order to make things happen.
Yeah. And I think depending on the size of the organization, it may be that on that level, we'll start to to see um more or less of a need, right? I because it depending on how big the the organization is. Um that may be the layer that is the least efficient um and and that could be in terms of just producing the right outcomes or in terms of cost um right or making that connection to the business. Um I don't think that's a design-only problem. I think it's that middle management layer that um has not I I think has not yet really proven its ROI broadly but be because organizations were very complex and you know we didn't have tools that could help us automate certain things it was sort of accepted um although everyone kind of knew that that middle management layer wasn't really great at producing you know a lot of business value so it could go either way I think Karen is absolutely spot on. I think that in in the best case that layer really empowers um it creates the conditions for um design teams to and the designers to deliver really great business outcome. In the worst case, I think it's it's bloat and it needs to needs to go away.
I was also listening though to an interesting conversation between Andrew Dunar and Joe Fletcher. I don't know if you know those two. They're pretty smart guys. But they were talking a little bit about how, hey, with generative AI, we can, you know, create these screens really quickly or these flows really quickly, but the problem is they're all going to be kind of the same. So, how are we going to start to differentiate ourselves, right? And like, where are we going to really use that creativity to make calls about that experience so it's not the same old stuff that everybody else has?
Yeah. And so, will those directors need to do that in some cases?
Yeah, in some cases. In some cases the decision can be like hey you know what everybody else has got is great let's just go and run faster but cheaper yeah it will be that way in some cases yeah I mean that this goes all the way to the chief design officer level right there is going to be um a need to really build organizations that deliver true creative outcomes right because as Karen was Um, from everything we know so far, the AI systems are really good at reproducing stuff that has already been there. Um, as proven by the latest Studio Ghibli, GPT, everything stuff, but the true creativity, um, the doing things that are different that add character, right, that that really differentiate a product experience and create what res something that resonates with people. um that needs to come out of a creative organization and that creative organization needs to be led by you know creative leaders um and um and that that can happen on that level and can have you know that certainly requires also um strategic design leadership to actually happen at scale.
Yeah, I also saw an interesting thread and I I wish I could remember who wrote this so I could attribute to them correctly so apologies in advance but essentially the talk was about how hey instead of asking AI to look at the research studies that you've done and to say hey what are the three findings give me those three general findings across a large body instead have it go very deep on each customer's experience and really pull out what are the three most interesting things about this particular person. So, how can we start to leverage the tools differently to go deep? And what it reminded me of as I was um consulting on a particular um early-stage company and they were looking at how can we use AI to really help people who are leaders make better decisions. But was interesting to me is the output that was created was so general that I didn't I I can't imagine a senior leader wouldn't already know all of those attributes and all of those elements and all those frameworks. And so I think that's also the risk we're going to have to make sure we're not falling in. We can ask AI to do all of this work for us. But is it really doing deep interesting work that helps us to get to different lenses or is it simply are we using it in such a way that it's simply you know bringing up here's the overall trend here's the overall pattern here's the overall scene for this context which we all probably knew already which is a really great point and maybe even a segue to this kind of you know next level or even the top level up for create for strategic um design leadership and creative leadership. Um the the the point of critical thinking, right? And in establishing what what really comes with design critique um broadly in an organization, right? Who are we doing this for? What problem are we solving? Only because we can build it should it be built, right? What's the what's the purpose that it's going to solve? How does it connect to the business outcomes we're striving for? And then and then creating the conditions within the organization to produce truly um great outcomes that resonate with people that produce the business outcomes we are after right that are they have some or originality to them that that I think is is even more so important now in this design uh you know AI age and even at a more granular level for those design directors or whomever those senior designers how is every single thing this customer is going to see building their confidence confidence, right? Every single choice should be really deliberate.
If the ultimate outcome is success and confidence—and I'm making that up—and it's easy to skip past that, right? But that's the rigor we bring to it, which sometimes we adhere to and sometimes we don't. I, I'm curious as to what you both think.
So, you know, we're hearing about the power of that critical thinking. Um, but there's also this power of—I think what we're hearing a lot from other chief design officers is the, uh, foresight, uh, that the imagination that goes beyond the current constructs of the company. Because I think every company's kind of going through an existential, profound moment, and so the ability to, uh, transform and prompt the business model: how are you going to guide it to the next level? How are you going to protect it against the next level of threat? So what are your views on, you know, this dimension of contributing to business model discussions?
Yeah. Well, I think those notions of trends—what are the technology trends that are coming into play? You know, what are the consumer trends that are coming into play? You know, how is the world shifting? That's huge. And often the strategy team will bring in some of those shifts, but often not the same shifts that the design team tends to focus on.
Yeah. And I think we're, we're also ultimately trained in, um, taking lots of different data points and then bringing them together into, you know, not just a kind of abstract theoretical synthesis, but we're trained in prototyping, sketching, creating, and a creative process is amazing to, um, take something that's very abstract and give shape to it, right? Um, and I, I think that can be a huge contribution to, um, any strategic effort to say, okay, well, we have all the data points, we have a general outline of where, what we are after, and we can add to that some creative output, something to look at, something to touch, something to feel, something to put in the hands of even customers and get a sense for: does this actually resonate? Does this attempt, you know, does this attempt to solve a problem actually go in the right direction or does it not? Right. And then all the way to, um, asking those critical questions that we already touched on earlier and and try and assess the risk or potential risk on top of the, you know, potential, um, you know, business outcome that we might be after.
But what I'll say too is, you know, I've interviewed a lot of people as I've been hiring different design leaders throughout my career, and often one of the questions I'll ask them is I'll say, well, what is it that you're looking at when you're seeking to make those decisions? And the number who do not talk about thinking about future trends is enormous. And then when I really push it—well, you know, what are you doing? What, what future trends did you look at?—sometimes they have answers and sometimes they don't. But again, that's upon us to make sure that we are doing the very, very best that we can, um, on behalf of the organization to add value, and in many cases it might not look like, you know, Ken, depending upon your definition of design, the classic designer who is, you know, pushing pixels, but that's not what actually the classic designer is, and we all know that, um, but not everybody else does, especially outside of our field.
Yeah, let's throw a prompt, uh, here. So, you know, throughout the decades, uh, we know iconic companies that have, uh, failed to pivot and they go redundant, right? So, there's like the Blockbuster to Netflix moment or the Nokia and Apple, and the list goes on. What are your thoughts on, you know, kind of realms of contribution on the chief design officer being someone who is partnering with teams like strategy but to really bring that understanding of like what are those, you know, car—I think you mentioned judo moves—that we might need to start making, uh, proactively and and start tinkering with what those disruptions are? And I can only imagine the change involved in even being able to, you know, drive the conviction for change.
I guess yeah. I mean, my concern on this is in all those examples—I don't know if it's true in all of them—but in many of them, the ideas for that disruptor were already in that bigger, older company. Right? The problem is that it didn't get traction or it didn't get the funding needed because of concerns about cannibalizing the business. And I don't know that design leaders are going to solve that problem, right? And like CEOs are having trouble solving that problem. Like that is just—that notion that inertia is the most powerful force in the universe, which I wholeheartedly believe. I mean, maybe we can expect design leaders to take care of it, but I, I just don't think so.
No, I think that's a much bigger kind of systemic problem within any organization. Um, and I think the best, the best shot any organization has is to maybe take some learnings from the creative process, um, and embed that into the culture of the company. Which means really that, you know, need to continuously foster an environment that, um, enables good ideas to actually come up and not be killed because you, you know, you want to hold on to what already exists, which is, by the way, also a very human pattern, as, as you know, I think Karen was pointing out. I don't think that there's any one leader or discipline is going to solve that, and that's a, that's a cultural problem. You know, books have been written about, about this many, many times over, and yet many companies still run into the same issue.
Well, and you know, I think that really what I, I see this as—and Gordon, maybe this is what you're sort of moving towards or what I'm going to pull us towards—it's that our job as designers, regardless of whether how junior or how senior you are, it is our job to figure out: how can we be more customer-centric in the problem-solving? And how do we add value to this business? Or how do we add value to this team? Or how do we add value to this initiative? How do we make sure that we're pushing it forward and making it better for our customers and for the business? And as long as that's our mindset and that's what we're doing and we're not focusing our value on using particular tools, we're going to be in better shape.
And to maybe jump on that point, and maybe that is part of what a strategic design leader can bring to these big strategic, um, conversations is the customer and user centricity, right? Because there is, there is really, um, a lot of value—probably the most value—in staying close to the customer you already have and then the customer you might want to potentially have. And and more broadly speaking, um, you know, it's also getting a pulse of the cultural dimension of which the company is operating in. Um, and so if you don't get hung up on, um, you know, your technical specifications of a product or, you know, purely your financial forecast and you always keep an, a very close eye and ear on your customer, your current customer, your future customer, and then also the overall cultural zeitgeist that you're operating in, it's probably the best chance you have as a company to not get caught in the innovator's dilemma, which is basically, you know, every one of these companies has been stuck in one or multiple times in their, in their, in their life cycle so far.
To kind of summarize what to the kind of VP-level leaders listening, what is that kind of summary of guidance? For this next summary of guidance is: make sure you are adding value, you and your team are adding value, and you're doing that by being very customer-centric and bilatering that to the business and by looking at that end-to-end experience. And if, if I think focusing more on service design is going to be very beneficial to your broader team and to the company, particularly as over time we are able to use Gen AI to start to create many more of the screens, if you will, and our job will be much more one of curation in order to create that exceptional experience that truly gives value.
Yeah. And maybe to add one additional perspective to everything that Karen already said is, you know, you're adding business, uh, you're adding value to the business maybe from two lenses. One is: how do you expand what the business is doing? How can you, you know, build on, on that and and grow that? And the other one is: how can you help mitigate risk? And and that there too you want to be close to the customer and try and and figure out: is there any risk there? Or try to think through, um, you know, second, third-order effects of potential strategic initiatives, u from a risk perspective specifically on, on, on the, on the customer and and user side. Um, and that's how you add value on that end of the equation. Um, but I fully agree in in making sure that you stay close to the customer, um, provide an exceptional experience and connect every single action essentially, um, to, to the business value.
Well, with that, I think at some point we should definitely talk to a service design expert and learn more about that practice in depth. That would be a wonderful next, uh, conversation. Uh, any last thoughts as we wrap out our discussion on the future of jobs?
I, I would just go back to what Ben started with, which is, you know, start playing with these tools now. And we have time, but start playing with them.
Yeah. In a year or two, we won't have time.
Mhm. I, I think that that's probably the big, the biggest encouragement that we can give, um, really especially the more senior leaders, um, because typically you're much more removed from the, the, the tool stack, but, um, because everything is kind of getting more meshed together. I think that's really exciting. The other thing is more provocation for us, I think, is to think about, okay, how does all of this reshape organizations as a whole rather than just design focusing on itself. Think through, okay, what implications might this have for other disciplines and our collaboration across disciplines. Um, but that's probably not something we're gonna answer today.
Yeah, it even makes me think like the the ratios are going to change, you know, the entire size of what companies need, and I think there's a lot of even fodder about like 10-person companies that can be billion-dollar, you know, right startups, especially startups, but I would say like your, you know, Meta is not going to move down to be 100 people next year, it's just not, and neither is Adobe, just not. Yeah. So it's going to be quite an interesting like extreme in the way that the companies are shaped and structured in this era. So, um, with that we will wrap up this episode. So thank you everyone for listening.
Thanks so much, Ben and Karen.
Thanks everyone.
Thank you.