Designing for AI

Chapter 2. Discover: Identifying the Right Problems

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Scroll through LinkedIn today and you will notice a pattern: Nearly every company feels compelled to add AI to its product, whether or not it makes sense. Job titles have multiplied just as quickly: AI strategist, AI designer, AI product manager, AI program manager. This rush has made AI less a material to design with and more of a buzzword to attach to a résumé or a feature. In many ways it resembles past trends, but is magnified by the scale of investment and the cultural weight behind it.

It is important to be clear: AI is not just another passing fad. It has undeniably changed the game. It has given us access to a set of tools and capabilities that would have been unimaginable only a few years ago. Problems that once required massive effort, or could not be solved at all, can now be approached in entirely new ways. But that does not mean AI should automatically be treated as the solution to every design problem.

Designers, at their core, are problem solvers. If instead of AI, the dominant trend of this ...