'If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.' - Carl Sagan
We're getting better at rendering intent.
Published Oct 10, 2025 · Around 2 minutes to read
UX patterns we’ve been using over the past decade are starting to crack. If you can buy things in ChatGPT, why do we need design and build a digital storefront?
This argument is reductive, but it signals a fundamental shift in design. AI interfaces will be way better at rendering intent than traditional UX design. But designers need to understand how AI works.
You cannot be a good designer if you’re not technically proficient. App designers know the possibilities and limitations of smartphones. Web designers know CSS and responsive design. Designers must know the materials they work with. Our material is software. And our challenge now is figuring out the level of technical competence needed to design these new experiences.
It can get very technical. Which can be scary.
The good news is that you don’t need to be super technical. You just need to learn LLMs, RAG, ML, embeddings, transformers, fine-tuning, evals, inference, agent architectures, prompting, graphs, tokenization.
I’m kidding.
The real answer is to play with what’s out there. Cursor, Windsurf, Lovable, Bolt etc. make coding super approachable. You can literally build your ideas. And gaining a slightly deeper technical understanding of AI opens up even more possibilities.
You don’t need to understand how an internal combustion engine works to drive a car. But if you’re designing the car, understanding the engine can help you shape a smoother ride.
It all boils down to the user experience: what is the human trying to do? Can we design software that’s even more useful than it is now? I firmly believe that answer is yes.
And I am so excited for the future of design.
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