12 / Designers will inherit the world

Welcome to Issue 12!

Spend five minutes on design Twitter or in the design subreddits and you’ll feel it instantly: anxiety. Everyone can sense the ground shifting beneath their feet but no one is entirely sure where it will settle. Layoffs have become a constant drumbeat. AI looms in every conversation. For many, it feels like the profession itself is being rewritten in real time.

I understand that anxiety, and, at the same time, I believe this is the most exciting moment in history to be a designer. The reason is simple: designers already hold the hardest part of product development in their hands.

To oversimplify things, building a digital product always comes down to two distinct phases. The first is discovering what matters--connecting with users, recognizing the problems they face, and imagining solutions that are both ambitious and realistic. The second is executing those solutions--writing code, managing timelines, and aligning a team to bring an idea into the world. Both are essential, but one is far harder to master.

The leap from problem to solution is the true creative act, and that leap is the designer’s superpower.

Engineering and product management remain invaluable, of course, but they are grounded in execution. Engineering is a discipline where formulas and right answers often exist, even in highly complex systems. Product management thrives on process, coordination, and tradeoffs. Design, by contrast, lives in subjectivity. It is shaped by repetition, taste, and intuition--all of which take years of practice to sharpen.

I’ve often thought of it like this: design is closer to writing, while engineering is closer to math. Both demand creativity and craft, but design requires you to make a hundred subjective choices that add up to something people can feel. Engineering requires rigor and precision, but its rules are clearer. That is why design is simultaneously harder to pin down and more vital to the human experience of a product.

Now, this is where AI enters the story. The conversation today is dominated by how AI coding tools will disrupt engineering. And to a large extent, that’s true. These tools are making coding more accessible and more efficient. I still believe that professional engineers will always be needed, but the playing field is shifting.

For designers, that shift is pure opportunity. Because if the most difficult part of the process--moving from problem to validated solution--is already in your wheelhouse, then tools that accelerate execution only extend your reach. Imagine the difference it makes when you don’t have to wait for an engineer to prototype your vision, or when an idea sketched in Figma can be transformed into a working product in days instead of months.

Designers are uniquely positioned for this moment. We are trained to start with people, to wrestle with ambiguity, to navigate subjectivity, and to turn loose ideas into concrete solutions. With even a baseline level of coding proficiency, coupled with the leverage of AI, we can carry our ideas further than any other role in the product org.

And that changes the balance of power.

The future doesn’t belong to the person who can ship the most features. It belongs to the person who can imagine what’s worth shipping and then make it real.

That’s why I believe designers will inherit the world.

Let’s get Technically Lit,

Nick

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