The last 13 months have been a reminder to me of a truth easy to forget when one is the benefactor of the world’s current circumstances. The world is always changing and if one does not change with it, they will almost certainly be left behind.
Being a benefactor of circumstance encourages stasis. If the current circumstances in your world are attractive, you have very little reason to seek change. If anything, the opposite is more likely. You would prefer the world stay as it is, because your comfortable present would be more likely to be your predictable, and still comfortable, future. This comfort makes it easy to deny change. But, as change marches forward with time, the change that threatens your comfortable present becomes increasingly difficult to ignore.
The best way I’ve found to combat change and the anxiety associated with it is to understand and embrace it. I hope to use this entry as a place to explore an existential threat affecting the future of product design as a profession, and to help prepare myself for the incoming change.
Indicators of Change
Change can be expressed in many ways. On the spectrum of change, you may find ephemeral change on one end and lasting change on the other. Ephemeral change is represented well by trends - trends come and go. Consider
The Harlem Shake and
The Dougie as two cultural examples of trends, and in the context of product design, consider a new font family, an eye-catching color palette, or a trendy style of interface design (like skeuomorphism or neubrutalism) as examples of ephemeral change. Lasting change, in product, is represented well by anything that has a material impact on how products are created. Figma’s collaboration-friendly, browser-first approach to design software forced incumbents like Sketch to reconsider how users interact with their software, and the omnipresence and inherent adaptability of contemporary AI will undoubtedly influence the production of digital products at every level, least of which free of intervention being design.
An excellent place to observe the trends and changes in product design is on Twitter. Though the platform is marred by its promotion of thoughtless content and is often regarded as void of any meaningful discourse, design Twitter is
the zeitgeist for modern product design practices, eclipsing platforms like Dribbble and Behance in relevance and in reach. The work people share on #buildinpublic and #indiehacker is, in my opinion, the bleeding edge of what’s vogue and to come. It is the best place to observe incoming change and recently, I have made an observation with meaningful implications.
Subscription Design Agencies
The proliferation of subscription design agencies is painfully apparent. If the profession of product design were the stock market of 2020, subscription design agencies would be its GME and design Twitter would be r/WallStreetBets. Subscription design agencies are hot and new ones launch every single day. So often in fact that designers are designing website templates tailored specifically for other designers wanting to create their own subscription design agency.
Having a subscription design agency is ostensibly the most effective way to leverage one’s product design “skill”. It is not uncommon for proprietors of these agencies to tout six-figure MRRs on Twitter and, in the process, amass legions of hopeful followers that aim to do the same. Though I am skeptical of the revenue agency owners publicize, let’s assume, for the sake of this article, their numbers are accurate.
Let’s consider ABC Agency and let’s use the numbers $100k and $5k to work with, where $100k is the monthly revenue of ABC Agency and $5k is the gross monthly value of each new subscriber. For these numbers to work, that requires ABC Agency to manage the product design needs (and administrative needs) of 20 clients simultaneously. And since ABC Agency is to be representative of the average subscription design agency on Twitter, they promise world-class design delivered faster and cheaper than a client hiring a full-time designer.
Just a few years ago, believably selling this value proposition would have been an impossibility. However, today this is a practical approach to monetizing design, made possible primarily due to the homogeneity of apps and the proliferation of standardized design patterns. To illustrate how, consider the array of tools anyone with internet access has available to them. Designers can download a website template, a design system, or a mobile UI kit for whatever niche their client does business in and merely adapt the assets. The thought and heavy lifting has already been accomplished by someone else. In this scenario, the solopreneur at ABC Agency is just a well paid middle man.
A Shift in Paradigm
Design, particularly within the realm of user interface (UI) design, has become commoditized. This is characterized by the reduction in bespoke design elements and the increase in standardization of design patterns that are agnostic of the apps they exist on (think hamburger menu and bottom navigation). Today, when users download apps they’ve never used before, they’re entering an experience with well-developed expectations of how the app should look and feel. In an effort to reduce the cognitive hurdles that come with trying something new, product teams are encouraged to deliver products that converge with the apps their to-be users are already using. Why design something different - even if it’s better - if that difference comes at the cost of user adoption?
There are two ways to look at this.
Negatively
Pessimistically, the standardization of design patterns and the widespread availability of sophisticated UI kits suggest that the days of product design being a dedicated profession are numbered. Designers will be displaced if they don’t upskill and close the gap between design and engineering, and/or design will evolve to be but a tool for others on the product team to adopt, manage, and implement. Designers are soon to be extinct.
Bleak.
Optimistically
Luckily for almost all professionals, the world is in a constant state of change. Change often addresses existing problems while creating new problems that still need attention. The commoditization of visual design that leads to the visual homogeneity of app UIs has effectively addressed the lowest level thinking in design. This enables designers to focus on more complex problems that can be solved by design - like improving user acquisition, satisfying business goals, and increasing user retention. Intuitive user experience is no longer a competitive advantage, it is now table stakes and product teams will be forced to produce products that are simply more effective at solving user problems.
Conclusion
There isn’t a single person who knows what the future of product design will look like. The monotony of standardized UIs may encourage users to seek out more dynamic digital experiences, ushering in a renaissance for bespoke product design that emphasizes user delight over goal achievement. No-code and simplified developer tools already blur the lines between designer and engineer considerably, reinforcing the former notion. Inversely, dwindling user attention and increased expectations of ease-of-use could imply just the opposite.
What I do know is the world is changing and product design as it is currently practiced is surely to be affected. What puts my mind at ease is knowing there are certain professional qualities that will never go out of style - problem solving, curiosity, empathy, and adaptability, to name a few. If one nurtures these qualities, there will always be a place for them.
