What does automation mean for designers?

It’s hard to work on a product team that hasn’t automated some part of their workflow in the name of productivity. If machines can take care of the repeatable tasks and heavy lifting, designers can focus on doing more meaningful work. But how does this affect the way we use the work being created by machines?

​Josh Clark, founder of design studio Big Medium, provoked the audience with this very question during his talk, ‘A.I. is your New Design Material’. Some of the most impressive advancements in recent technology are things like facial recognition, predictive text, and image search, all powered by machine learning. But it’s important to remember – all of these technologies are still built on code. The upside is less room for error. No real emotions, expectations, or feelings get in the way of the job it was designed to do.

Yet, as humans, we assume that when facial recognition fails, the whole process is inherently flawed. But was it really?

The point of introducing machine learning into our products was never to have them do all the work. Instead, algorithms and logic-based solutions ought only provide humans with better insight so as to empower us to arrive at better solutions, faster.

This fundamental understanding our users that really helps us make better products. This might be a simple example, but if a computer can figure out how to walk on it’s own, maybe it’s time to start investigating why and how these solutions were formed.

How do we design for the unknown future?

​Jared Spool, Co-Founder of UIE asks, “What was the most important thing you learned yesterday, and how will it impact what you do in the future?”

As designers and researchers, we essentially always need to think about how we design products for the future, even as we’re meeting the demands of present day design. A tall order, especially when things move as fast as they have been over the last decade.

To start, Jared advocates for looking back at the ways in which our design processes have already changed.