Table of Contents
The traditional design process—with its rigid sequence of user research, personas, journey mapping, and problem statements—may have served designers well in the past, but today's rapidly evolving technological landscape demands a fundamental shift in approach. As artificial intelligence transforms what's possible and teams are asked to do more with less, the old playbook no longer delivers the results that matter most.
Key Takeaways
- AI and new tools are making traditional design processes obsolete, as product managers can now prototype faster than designers can write problem statements
- The best design work often starts with solutions first, not problems, especially when working with emerging technologies like AI
- Great design emerges from caring deeply about craft and details, building strong intuition, and being willing to skip or modify process steps
- Teams are gravitating toward high-craft applications that feel valuable and can't be easily replicated by AI-generated solutions
- Designer value lies in wielding the right tools and creating great results, not in following a predetermined process
The Reality Check: Why the Design Process Is Failing
AI Is Changing Everything
Artificial intelligence has fundamentally altered the design landscape. New tools emerge daily, and the barriers to creating functional prototypes have dramatically lowered. Product managers can now build working prototypes faster than designers can craft the perfect problem statement. This shift means that "vibe coding" and rapid prototyping are becoming expectations across multiple functions, not just design.
Designers themselves are becoming more powerful too. The question is no longer "should designers code?" but rather recognizing that designers can code. Static mockups are giving way to interactive prototypes that designers can build and refine independently.
Doing More With Less
The widespread reality of headcount reductions has forced teams to operate more efficiently. Smaller teams often prove more effective due to reduced coordination overhead, but this efficiency comes with expanded role expectations. Designers must now span more responsibilities—from strategic PM-shaped thinking to hands-on implementation and prototyping.
In this constrained environment, following every step of a rigid design process becomes a luxury few teams can afford. The question becomes: what can we cut to make room for the expanded scope we're expected to handle?
The Rise of Taste, Craft, and Quality
As AI democratizes basic design capabilities, the differentiator becomes the ability to choose and curate what gets built. If anyone can generate a decent-looking interface with a prompt, designers must create work that significantly exceeds this baseline to remain valuable.
High-craft applications are becoming the anti-AI antidote. Tools like the camera app with tactile knobs and delightful interactions, Linear's snappy task management interface, and Notion Calendar's polished experience command premium pricing precisely because they feel irreplaceably well-crafted. These products didn't emerge from following a standard design process—they came from teams obsessing over quality and details.
How Great Design Really Gets Made
Starting Solution-First
Contrary to design school orthodoxy, some of the most impactful work begins with solutions, not problems. Claude Artifacts—the interactive code panel that became ubiquitous across AI applications—started as a researcher's prototype. A designer saw it, loved it, and iterated on the concept. The positive team reaction was immediate.
This fundamentally changed the way that people perceived AI—from just writing code to creating interactive applications people could actually use.
When working with rapidly evolving technology like AI, teams must constantly evaluate new capabilities and work backwards to find problems worth solving. As models improve—gaining larger context windows, better tool usage, and multi-step reasoning—new solutions become possible that weren't previously imaginable.
Caring Ruthlessly About Details
Great products emerge from sustained attention to craft. FigJam's post-launch evolution exemplifies this approach. Rather than immediately adding features after launch, the team spent years iterating on core mechanics: refining snapping and alignments, reducing visual noise in selection borders, perfecting color ranges, and tweaking countless interaction details.
This process looks nothing like the traditional double-diamond model. Instead, it resembles a long tail of continuous quality improvements—an endless cycle of learning and refinement that requires dedicated time and genuine care.
Building and Trusting Intuition
Intuition has become a dirty word in design circles, dismissed as unscientific or user-hostile. But intuition isn't guessing—it's the ability to make reasoned judgments quickly based on deep subject matter expertise. It's a shortcut that eliminates the need to research or test every decision because you understand the domain so thoroughly.
Building intuition requires constant engagement with user feedback across platforms, regular attendance at research sessions, dashboard monitoring, and drawing on cognitive biases and design principles. The goal is developing an internal model of users and the product that enables educated decision-making at all scales—from major product directions to button groupings.
Skipping Steps and Making New Ones
The most effective practitioners modify processes to fit their context. The Google Ventures Design Sprint, while valuable in concept, often requires adaptation. Running three-day versions focused heavily on prototyping can be more effective than the rigid five-day format, especially in fast-moving startup environments.
Similarly, Amazon's "working backwards" press release concept can be adapted. Instead of formal press releases, teams might imagine user tweets about new features or craft landing page headlines to explore feature packaging. The key is tailoring the process to extract the insights you need, not following someone else's formula.
Designing for Delight
Some of the most beloved features exist purely to make people smile. FigJam's stamps, emotes, and cursor chat emerged from prototyping in real code and testing in actual meetings. Despite usability issues in early versions, the team noticed something crucial: people were laughing and transforming their meeting dynamics.
These features didn't come from a problem statement—they came from a team of designers and engineers that cared very deeply.
This human-centered approach to delight can't be systematized into a process step. It requires teams that care about the emotional impact of their work beyond metrics and business objectives.
Trusting Ourselves in the New Era
Why Process Worship Fails
The traditional design process promised a reliable formula: follow these steps, create great products, solve business problems. This appeal led to entire degrees built around process mastery. But this approach created a problematic side effect—designers began worshipping the process artifacts themselves rather than focusing on end user experiences.
Portfolio after portfolio showcases elaborate journey maps and persona documents while relegating the actual designed experience to a single screen at the end. Users don't care about the process artifacts or whether the perfect user journey was mapped. They care about the experience they encounter.
Every Project Is Different
The fundamental flaw in standardized design processes is assuming that identical steps work across vastly different contexts. Every project involves different stakeholders, complexity levels, problem spaces, technical constraints, timelines, business needs, and team compositions. Applying the same sequence of activities across this diversity cannot consistently produce great work.
Unlike assembling IKEA furniture with known components and a predictable outcome, design projects begin without knowing what the end result should be. If you don't know whether you're building a bookshelf, chair, or lamp, how can you follow the same assembly instructions?
The Path Forward
Designer value doesn't lie in process execution—if it did, anyone could fill the role. Instead, value comes from the ability to chart both the destination and the path to get there, adapting approach based on context and constraints. This requires trusting professional judgment, experience, and intuition rather than relying on external validation through process adherence.
The current moment offers both challenge and opportunity. While losing the safety net of established process can feel scary, it's also liberating. Designers can now focus on what actually matters: wielding the right tools, creating meaningful results, and building products people genuinely value.
Conclusion
The design industry stands at an inflection point. The comfortable certainty of following established processes must give way to the more demanding work of thinking critically about each unique situation. AI tools, resource constraints, and elevated craft expectations have made the traditional design process not just outdated, but counterproductive.
The most impactful work emerges from solution-first thinking, relentless attention to detail, strong intuition, process flexibility, and genuine care for user delight. These approaches can't be systematized into a universal playbook because they require deep contextual understanding and professional judgment.
Rather than trusting an external process, designers must learn to trust themselves—their experience, skills, and ability to navigate uncertainty. This shift is simultaneously empowering and vulnerable, but it's essential for both surviving and thriving in the current landscape. The future belongs to designers who can create their own maps while building remarkable experiences, not those who follow someone else's directions.
