How should designers think about AI's impact on their work?

Quick Answer: AI is a new creative medium, not a replacement for designers. Design was never about the UI—it was the medium for solving human problems. The irreplaceable human advantage is lived experience and empathy. When AI generated 20 aged care interfaces, all missed human dignity—trembling hands struggling with tablets.

Key Characteristics:

Fear signals opportunity for transformation
Design's true purpose: solving human problems, not producing artifacts
Lived experience and empathy cannot be replicated by AI
Three foundations: human-centered approach, ethical framework, continuous learning

Real Example:

A designer used AI to explore 20 directions for an aged care interface. Every concept was technically perfect, but all were wrong. The AI could not see what the designer saw: a father's hands, trembling as he tried to use the tablet. That moment crystallised the irreplaceable human edge: lived experience, empathy, and understanding what dignity means to someone losing independence.

Opinion

AI’s impact on Design

Navigate AI design transformation with expert guidance.

Riley Coleman

June 04, 2025·3 min read

Riley Coleman

How are you adapting to change?

Uncomfortable Truth

Following on from Monday’s email, this is another experimental newsletter article format, i am thinking of adding to existing weekly newsletter.

This Wednesday newsletter will be a story based on real experiences of impacts of AI on design either from my own ways of working or clients I am working with.

As I said this is an experiment – so i would love feedback at the end if you want to see more of them.

So let’s get into the first one.

G’day Reader

Barcelona in March. Design leadership summit. Someone mentions AI.

The room shifts.

That particular quality of silence—part fear, part shame, part defiance.

I know that unnerving silence. I felt it myself when a junior designer used AI to solve in minutes what used to take me hours.

My first thought wasn’t “how wonderful.” It was “bloody hell”. And I really struggled to name the feeling. It was some confusing mix of nostalgia for “back in my day”, a twinge of jealousy perhaps that they didn’t have to do the hard yards.

Really what it comes down to is fear? Fear of change, uncertainty and losing relevance.

Fear is not the problem. It’s the compass pointing to what matters.

Because on the other side of it lies freedom. To think instead of produce. To discern instead of generate. To care instead of just delivering.

Last week, I sat with a designer who showed me how they used AI to explore 20 directions for an aged care interface they’d been working on.

Most concepts technically perfect. All wrong. But beautifully wrong, each failure teaching me what dignity actually means to someone losing independence.

The AI couldn’t see what I saw: a dads’s hands, trembling as he tried to use the tablet.

That’s our edge. We’ve lived. We’ve felt. We remember.

Design was never about the UI, it was just the medium.

Design was about solving real human problems creativity.

AI isn’t the solution, its just a new medium to solve human problems creatively.

Riley

Riley Coleman | Founder

AI Flywheel

P.S. If that fear feels familiar or you want to learn to design for the new medium of AI. I’m gathering eight design leaders at end of this month to transform their practices.

Reply “Transform” if you’d like to explore this together with peers, I’ll forward you details

Written by

Riley Coleman

Founder, AI Flywheel

Riley helps design leaders build trustworthy AI experiences. They have trained 304+ designers and led 7 cohorts of the Trustworthy AI programme.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Is AI going to replace designers?

No. Design was never about the UI; it was the medium for solving human problems creatively. AI is simply a new medium. The irreplaceable human advantage is lived experience, empathy, and contextual understanding.

How should designers manage the fear of AI making them irrelevant?

Fear is not the problem; it is the compass pointing to what matters. On the other side of fear lies freedom: to think instead of produce, to discern instead of generate, to care instead of just delivering.

What can AI-generated designs teach us about human value in design?

When AI generated 20 aged care interface concepts, all were technically correct but missed human dignity entirely. This demonstrates that AI excels at patterns and production, but cannot understand the human context that makes design meaningful.