I spent last week at the Designer Boss The Future of Design summit, listening to designers talk about AI and what it might mean for our industry.
And actually, everyone was pretty calm about it.
Some of the seasoned speakers have been through huge changes in the design industry, many times before. New technology comes along. The tools change. The way we work changes. And designers adapt.
For others, this is the first really big shift they've experienced.
Either way, it was a refreshing contrast to some of the fear, frenzy and hype around AI that fills my social feeds.
Because yes, things are changing.
But I don't think the answer is to panic.
I'm much more interested in asking: what can we actually do with this stuff?
I already use AI every day in my design business. I use it to organise information, speed up repetitive tasks, help with content and build useful tools.
But I don't use it to design for me.
For me, AI is most useful when it gives me more time and headspace for the things I actually want to be doing.
Thinking. Creating. Solving problems.
AI can assist with the process.
The thinking is still mine.
Here's what that looks like in real life.
How I use AI to manage client projects
I use Claude Projects for ongoing client work.
It gives me one place to keep the context around a project and track where we're up to.
It's particularly useful when I'm working on things like copy and marketing.
Because one of my problems with generic AI-generated copy is exactly that.
It's generic.
You can ask AI to write an About page or five social posts, but if it doesn't properly understand the business, its audience, personality, positioning and brand, you can end up with something that sounds like everyone else.
When I set up a project with the right brand context, AI has something useful to work from.
I'm still directing it.
I'm still questioning what it produces.
I'm still editing.
And ultimately, I'm still responsible for whether the result is any good.
The AI is assisting the process. It isn't replacing the thinking behind it.
How I use AI to find information faster
I use the AI functionality in Superhuman to search my emails and pull threads together.
It's not the kind of AI use that's going to get millions of views on Instagram.
But it's incredibly useful.
We've all had those moments where we know someone emailed us something months ago, but we can't remember who sent it, when they sent it or what the subject line was.
Ten or fifteen minutes later, you're still searching.
If AI can take care of that bit for me, brilliant.
That's time I can put somewhere else.
How I use AI to help create content
There's a slightly meta example happening right now.
I've been using ChatGPT to help me batch my content.
The distinction here is important too.
I'm not asking AI to decide what I believe and then publishing whatever it spits out.
I'm bringing the ideas.
My experiences.
My opinions.
My examples.
AI helps me organise those thoughts, identify useful threads and turn one substantial idea into content that can work across my blog, newsletter and social platforms.
That saves me time without handing over my voice or my thinking.
And that, for me, is where AI becomes genuinely useful.
Using AI to build tools that solve real problems
This is where I've started getting excited.
I've been experimenting with creating custom AI tools that solve very specific problems.
Some are for businesses.
Some are considerably closer to home.
At the moment I'm exploring an app inspired by the chaos of managing kids' schedules.
School.
Sport.
Social activities.
Events.
Things that suddenly appear in calendars.
Messages coming from different places.
And, in our house at least, a husband who doesn't necessarily check all those calendars.
So what if he didn't have to?
What if he could simply talk to something and ask:
“What's happening with the kids this week?”
And it could tell him.
That's the idea I'm playing with.
My husband gets to be the test subject, but I'm interested in whether it could become a product that helps other parents deal with the constant influx of information that comes with family life.
I'm interested in finding small, annoying, real-life problems and asking whether AI could make them easier.
How I'm using AI to build tools for businesses
I've also built a much more substantial custom application for a client.
It brings their SOPs and business operations together into a system designed around the way their business actually works.
I'm going to share more about that separately because it deserves its own post.
But this kind of project has made me think differently about where design is heading.
Because I'm not just thinking:
What should this look like?
I'm thinking:
What problem are we actually trying to solve?
And then:
What could I build to solve it?
That's a much more interesting question.
Is AI going to replace designers?
This came up in different ways throughout the Future of Design summit.
And I don't think our value as designers can simply be our ability to produce the thing anymore.
Someone can use AI to make a logo.
They can generate graphics.
They can create copy.
And increasingly, they can use AI to help build websites too.
Some of it will be great.
Some of it will be absolute rubbish.
But simply being able to make something isn't the same as knowing what needs to be made.
I think the opportunity for designers is to become even better creative thinkers, strategic partners and problem solvers.
And, really, that's the part of brand design I've always been interested in anyway.
Understanding the business.
Seeing what isn't working.
Asking questions.
Making connections.
Working out what the business actually needs before choosing how we're going to solve it.
Design is one of the tools available to me.
AI is becoming another.
What does AI mean for web design?
This is one of the areas I'm particularly curious about.
Can I use AI to build websites differently?
Probably.
Will that make my experience as a web and brand designer irrelevant?
I think it could do the opposite.
Because if creating the actual website becomes faster, the important questions don't disappear.
What does the website need to achieve?
Who is it for?
What should someone do when they arrive?
What makes this business different?
What content belongs there?
How does the brand show up?
How do all the pieces connect?
AI might change how we build.
It doesn't remove the need to know what we're building and why.
AI isn't replacing my creativity
Right now, that's probably the simplest way I can describe my approach.
I'm not using AI because I want it to do the creative work for me.
I'm using it to reduce some of the admin, searching, organising and repetitive work around the edges.
I'm using it to experiment.
I'm using it to build things I couldn't necessarily have built in the same way before.
And I'm learning where I don't want to use it too.
Because the more of the tedious stuff I can remove, the more time I have for the part of my work I value most.
Thinking creatively about a problem and working out how to solve it.
AI can make things.
The real value is knowing what's worth making.
(This post contains a Superhuman referral link.)