Will AI replace UI/UX designers?

The age-old question that everyone who’s starting in the design field has asked themselves.

Side note: I’ve tasked ChatGPT to write this article for me. Just kidding, maybe.

AI is everywhere these days. It’s been some time since the whole BOOM of AI, but new models are released daily, and some are actually quite scary. Let’s have a look at whether we should be worried, what to do about AI, and how I use it for work.

It is impossible to ignore it, it’s not going anywhere anytime soon, and it’s important to realise this. I won’t be going into the details of

Why is AI progressing so fast? Has it been here before?

No… let’s leave it for another day. Today, we’re here because many of you designers out there might fear AI or question your own decisions to pursue this career path.

I’ve heard all the questions when it comes to AI, like:

Should I start learning a new skill when AI is around?

It’s not worth it… It will take me years and the AI can do it in a week or so.

Let me just sit in a corner and watch it overtake me.

If you ask me, AI shouldn’t be doing design, animations, coding, or 3D for us. It should take the tedious tasks from our lives and let us enjoy the creative freedom we all love & explore.

Unfortunately, these days, people are lazy and use it the wrong way. This may result in many people being discouraged or even disgusted by AI stealing their work/job.

Will AI replace designers? Will it take over our jobs?

Well, the short answer is No. There’s a BUT involved. I do think AI will replace some of the jobs. It all depends on your attitude towards it.

Be open, be curious, be a sponge

Be a sponge? Adam, what the fu!k are you talking about? How is a sponge related to this? Clean dishes?

We’ll get there, be patient youngling

As mentioned before, there’s a BUT involved in the answer. If you’re lazy, yes, AI will replace you.

If you’re not following it and not keeping up with the trends that are on the market, you’ll likely lose track of what AI is capable of. Which will result in closing one of the doors that might help you win over it.

What I meant by being a sponge is sucking all the experience you see. Be in a loop with AI, and test it out! There are tons and tons of guides and posts about how to use AI.

Use your brain, filter all the BS, there’s a lot of it, and try to implement it in your workflow to be faster.

Here are a few examples of how you should think and tackle this whole AI-replacing-designers kind of thing.

If you’re afraid of AI, and you won’t do anything = AI wins.

If you’re open and learning new stuff, and the AI threatens you = You win; you’ve learned something! You are now flexible and can switch here and there if needed to adapt to the new world.

If AI doesn’t threaten you and you didn’t do anything = You lose, obviously, since you’re sitting there doing nothing.

If AI threatens to take your job and you do nothing, then… uh duh, you lose.

So all these statements that are about you not doing anything because AI is here and it’s here to take over us are just excuses. The design field is evolving day by day. It can be evolving in the right direction or taking steps back. It’s still moving, tho, so should you.

Keep up with trends and technologies, and AI will never replace you. Sure, you might change your business model or the way you work, but it’s all part of the game.

With that being said, I do believe AI will replace some designers. AI has had and still has an impact on the industry, and not in a good way. Business owners see it as an opportunity to cut costs.

Why should we pay you $20,000. Just use AI and give us what we need in a day

They do not understand that doing this is just a temporary fix, and it’s not as easy as they might think.

Creativity vs Tool

In the upcoming years, being a true business partner to your clients and being creative will be the key. I see the same design over and over on websites like Dribbble or X.

Most designers show the same type of design. It’s what we call useless but pretty . Usually, it goes like this: Centered text in the middle with two buttons below it and a screen of a product underneath it.

Add a few clouds or BS, and voilà, we have a recipe on how to get replaced by AI and be the same out of thousands.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’ve done it too, for clients, and it has its place. However, you shouldn’t get comfortable with these patterns.

Yes, use the foundation, but explore & be creative. Break a few rules here and there and see why it works or why it doesn’t.

It’s important to keep in mind that anything that’s template-based will be replaced by AI. It’s the easiest sort of thing the AI can learn because there are simply too many of these designs.

If not replacing designers, some of them will be the ones doing this “creative” work. Generating the same thing over and over again. The same template for a cheap price to test things out, or even to stay there for the client.

Which is sad…

We should strive to do the opposite. Put out more creative work that takes time and has some thought behind it. Nothing in it is random, and everything is carefully placed. A design that’s unique and tells a story, fixes the problems of the client & most importantly. Makes the client stand out.

It can be anything from breaking grids to a unique experience on the website. That AI will have a very hard time learning. Those things are more complex, and mainly, they are human. They strive to create emotion. Experience that you won’t forget.

How I use AI

Now that we’ve cleared up all the doubts about AI, let me tell you how I & my design studio three.design use it.

The main use, when it comes to AI, is using MidJourney to create image assets. This is a good skill to have, you can generate most of the stuff needed for a client project and further tweak it in another tool.

This is important for us. Mainly because of copyrights and lawsuits. It’s not a mindless generation and proceeding to slap it there and call it a day. We always take it, refine and layer things onto each other to create something different than the RAW AI output.

You also have to be careful with the wording and how you structure your prompt to avoid stealing from other artists. That’s a big NO for me! I also follow the 3D space and do a bit of 3D work myself, and I hate to see something being stolen from an artist.

The next one is ChatGPT. Not used as much as MidJourney in my case, but I find it useful to get another point of view on a matter. Bounce an idea or two off the bot here and there and test stuff quickly.

It’s all about quick iterations and exploring an idea fast. When it comes to pursuing that idea, there’s research to be done. Don’t trust the bot… AI is full of BS, too.

Lately, I’ve started to experiment with V0 from Vercel. It’s a neat little tool that transforms your design into a live code, which you then need to take into another tool.

These kinds of things are becoming very powerful. You can build local tools for your business that will help you make your workflow quicker, better & more seamless in a matter of days.

As of now, I’m thinking of building an internal contrast checker for myself. Since the one in Sketch is… well, let’s move on. This is not exactly something huge that will help the business, but it may speed up my workflow. So that’s always worth it.

AI also helps with the tedious stuff, like background removal or image editing. Scaling or removing stuff and keeping the style intact. It’s the small things like these that are tedious to do that we should be using AI for.

Not stealing… or creating stupid videos to replace artists.

Are we safe from AI?

Nowadays, there’s barely any creativity in what I see out there. People are lazy or scared to break rules and explore. Only a handful of designers do that, and they will be taking all those big bucks.

If you’re starting in the UI/UX field and you’re scared about AI. Don’t be. Keep working, keep grinding. It won’t be easy, and it may take years to get to the point you want to be at.

It won’t be quick, it will take time to master it all. For me, it was 7 years, and I’m still learning.

I can see the stupid ego boost on social media or the attention for likes from a fancy UI shot that is essentially useless. Don’t do it; focus on skills and not artificial likes.

If you follow my advice above, you should be okay. Keep working and learning. Being open to change and being flexible. You will know how to navigate that difficult world of AI and learn to adapt. Get out of your comfort zone and stop the excuses.

Just don’t be scared and explore!

Have a beautiful day

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