A friend recently told me he’s worried AI will make his design skills irrelevant, that clients will soon use AI-powered tools instead of hiring him.
I told him, “Focus on doing what AI can’t.”
Because, while AI can create designs, it still lacks the one thing that defines great design: understanding.
Design isn’t just about how something looks. It’s about how it works. At this moment, AI is reactive; it depends on us for observations, ideas, and insight.
Humans, on the other hand, live in the real world. We perceive through smell, hearing, sight, and touch. We experience frustration, joy, and empathy; the raw materials of good design.
That’s something AI doesn’t have: context and experience.
The best designers, innovators, and creators use empathy as their competitive advantage. In innovation work, we call this ethnography: the ability to deeply understand people by observing them in their real environment.
If you want to design a workflow that helps someone do their work 10x better, don’t just send them a list of questions. Spend a few hours shadowing them. Watch what they do, how they think, what frustrates them.
That’s how you get real insight, not from prompts, but from presence.
Then, share those observations with AI. Let AI help you analyze, ideate, and generate possibilities.
This is the true synergy: human empathy + machine intelligence.
AI can augment our creativity. But empathy, that’s still all ours.
Bottom line: AI is powerful, but it doesn’t live in the real world. It can process data, but it can’t feel. Your ability to observe, understand, and empathize will always be the ultimate competitive advantage, whether in design, innovation, or life.
