Design in the AI era (I): Confronting commoditization

Like most of the design community, I’m closely following the debate around AI and design. Everybody is talking about the current state and future of the profession, so it’s difficult to contribute something completely new. My intention with this series of articles is to bring together some of the most relevant ideas and add my own perspective.

The state of design today

A lot is happening right now. The mass adoption of AI is moving much faster than previous technological disruptions, transforming many disciplines almost from one day to the next. Whether we decide to join the movement or not, this transformation is inevitably generating some strong feelings within the design community. On the one hand, it creates anxiety. It is becoming difficult to keep up with the rapid technological shift happening across the industry. Designers have never been reluctant to adopt new tools and working methods, but we are not used to doing it at the current pace. On the other hand, it creates uncertainty about how the design industry is evolving, the value of design and the role designers will play in the future.

Many people are talking about the commoditization of design. Basically, this means that the barrier to offering design services is becoming increasingly lower, resulting in more supply, more competition and a progressive reduction in prices and, supposedly, in the value of design itself. From my point of view, I can only partially agree with this idea. I don’t think there is much more room for commoditization in this field, at least not compared with 15 years ago.

“Yes, but now you can create a website in three hours.”

Ten years ago, you could already create a website in three hours using a WordPress template and tweaking its styles until you came up with something that looked new. In graphic design, you could already hire a designer on Fiverr to create a logo for $10. Or you could pay $24 for a Canva subscription and find a template for almost anything you needed.

As Isaac León recently said on LinkedIn, building a website now feels like creating a flyer. There are no longer many secrets hidden behind the craft. Design was already commoditized a long time ago, or at least a certain kind of design: the one created for low-value purposes was already a commodity.

A similar pattern occurred around 20 years ago in the professional photography market. Photography used to be a highly technical discipline throughout its entire process. From taking the photographs to developing them, you needed very specific knowledge, expensive equipment and dedicated facilities.

Then something unexpected happened. Compact digital cameras appeared, followed by DSLRs and, eventually, smartphones. The technical barrier to taking and processing good photographs was dramatically reduced. Suddenly, almost everyone could take photos without spending thousands of dollars on equipment or long hours developing film in a darkroom. The barrier to entering the field became lower, competition increased and prices went down. As a consequence, the professional photography industry shrank considerably.

However, professional photography still exists, and some photographers continue to make a decent living from it. The important questions are: How did they survive? And, most importantly, what can designers learn from them?

Escaping the commodity trap

Commoditization is normal in capitalism. Most products and professional services are already commoditized to some degree. Luckily for us, economics has been dealing with this issue for a long time and already offers some strategies for competing in commoditized markets.

First, we need to assume that the professional design market, and probably part of the technology industry, will continue to shrink over the next few years. Or, at least, salaries and new hiring will grow more slowly than they did during the previous decade.

The second step is to understand where designers can still create distinctive value. Inside product teams, developers are getting better at design. AI is also helping them produce interfaces, prototypes and complete experiences with much less support. So what can designers contribute that developers and AI tools cannot easily provide? And in the broader market, how can an individual designer or design business differentiate itself when the execution of design is becoming faster, cheaper and more accessible?

Those are the questions we need to confront. The future of design will probably not depend on defending the parts of our work that are becoming commodities. It will depend on identifying the parts that are not.