It’s time we stop letting big tech, industry, and cynics control the cultural canvas.
When I think about the future of design, I can’t help but feel sorrow. It’s as if I’m sitting at the bedside of a dying loved one, dreading the moment they’ll no longer be with us.
Design isn’t a person, per se, but for many of us it is — or was — a meaningful part of our lives. And the notion that design, as we know it, may wither feels almost certain.
My main prediction has been that AI will become so ubiquitous and efficient it will absorb nearly every experience that once required traditional design as a mediator.
This isn’t a doom-and-gloom prediction — it’s a rational conclusion drawn from the current trajectory of the industry and what highly respected professionals have also expressed.
I am becoming more convinced that this [the shift toward users interacting with their agents rather than websites] will mark the end of user interface design as we know it.
Unfortunately, this does not bode well for those just entering the design field. Especially for designers with hopes of creating and building in the same way many of us were once fortunate to be part of.
However, despite all the negative commentary and predictions surrounding AI, I often witness a naïve optimism among students and junior designers — a kind of defense mechanism that shields them from the harsher realities of the field.
And maybe that’s exactly why new designers are so vital right now. Their hope is born of ignorance — and I don’t mean that negatively. I mean ignorance in the way that fosters curiosity and openness to possibility. And that’s precisely what the industry needs.
Maybe people like me are too cynical, too rational, too caught up in how the world works today to see a different path. But if there’s one truth about humans it’s that we’re anything but rational creatures.
In fact, a disregard for conventional wisdom — especially in young minds — can open a doorway to new ideas.
They say children are more creative than adults because they are not tethered by rules and restraints. Even in Nietzsche’s metamorphosis, the final stage of transformation is to a child—representing the ability to experience the world with fresh eyes — unchained by the cultural “thou shalt” directives we’re fed.
So perhaps there is hope for design, and by extension, designers.
Perhaps I’m too jaded, too overconfident in believing that if someone like me cannot see the path, then no path exists.
Maybe instead of thinking it is the end of design, we have faith that those who still dream will pave the way for something new — design that transcends anything we can imagine now.
It’s time we — I — stop pretending to predict and instead encourage those who will shape a future we want to live in, in ways we have yet to imagine.
It begins with humility — with accepting our limitations. And continues with freeing design from the confines of the digital or physical canvas, giving future generations something greater — a cultural canvas, a medium free from the technical restrictions of their forebears.
Because neither big tech, industry, nor professionals like myself should define the boundaries of creativity and the future of humanity.
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The future of design rests on childlike ignorance was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.