Design reimagined, from aesthetics to AI
How AI and the shift from growth to profitability is impacting product design
In the quiet lull of the 2023 holidays, a UX easter egg on Threads became a viral sensation: long pressing the share icon opens the native OS share sheet.
As a design enthusiast, I love when a thoughtful feature gets the attention it deserves. But in this case, it struck me as unusual because I couldn’t remember the last time it happened.
I realized that the last couple of years have marked a critical juncture in the evolution of product design. The focus on aesthetics and innovation has taken a backseat to efficiency and functionality driven by economic realities and advancements in AI.
The Golden Era of Design Innovation
In the bull market years of 2010–2020 innovative design was not just a luxury but a necessity for market dominance.
Companies like Robinhood, Superhuman, and Snap once spearheaded a design-centric approach, treating product design as a key competitive edge. As users of these products, we looked forward to the variable dopamine rush from the “juice” that certain features squeezed. Remember the first time you experienced Superhuman’s keyboard shortcuts? Snap’s swipe-based navigation and camera-first orientation. Or Robinhood’s haptics and animations that made investing seem like a game.
In B2B land, product-led growth became a movement that leaned heavily on product and design as the path to scaling. Design centricity propelled Slack, Notion, and Figma over incumbents with inferior, less user-friendly products.
By contrast, two of the most consequential products to emerge in the last 12 months had seemingly minimal design investment. ChatGPT is essentially a command line interface with a cleaner UI (that said, the voice-based UX on their mobile app is 🎯). Midjourney doesn’t even have an application (it leverages Discord), and reached >$100M ARR with under 20 employees.
Things are much different now, so what has changed?
First, existing platforms have reached a saturation point. Mobile is over 15 years old, and swipe-based feeds and vertical video aren’t far behind. The low-hanging innovation fruit has been picked over.
As users, once-innovative products have started to feel stale and utilitarian. I’ve noticed that my muscle memory from tapping IG stories, or scrolling to choose a date or time, or swiping TikTok, is starting to feel…boring.
Yes, we’re on the cusp of experiencing a new platform shift with AI, but most of the innovation is happening at the platform layer, not with applications (more on that below).
Second, the macroeconomic environment is forcing companies to prioritize profitability over growth. Many product teams have slimmed down and are being asked to do more with less. This can translate to truly minimum viable features and less time for non-essentials, like design innovation and polish.
This trend doesn’t mean that design is no longer important. Rather, efficient product design is more critical than ever. Product teams need to have strong instincts for 80/20 tradeoffs and focus on the few things that make most of the difference. Leaders that intuitively know where and how to cut corners are poised to do well in this environment.
What’s next?
As we stand on the precipice of this new era, it’s clear that the design world has undergone seismic shifts from its once celebrated, almost mystical status, to a more utilitarian and efficiency-driven approach.
The saturation of mobile technology and the evolution into the AI era have not diminished the importance of design; rather, they have reshaped it into a lean, more purposeful force. Design isn’t disappearing — it’s evolving, becoming more intrinsic and integrated into our solutions rather than just a layer of aesthetic appeal.
It’s hard to predict how long the current cycle of belt-tightening will last. But what does seem inevitable is that AI is the new platform, and it’ll require more innovation at the application layer. Which means design will once again be a differentiator.
Here’s how Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures describes it:
With the AI stack well developed and supported, we are moving into the application era of AI, much like the browser brought us the application era of the web and the iPhone brought us the application era of the mobile device.
- https://avc.xyz/what-will-happen-in-2024
For product design teams, this evolution means a return to the drawing board — not to redraw what has been, but to reimagine what could be. As AI becomes the new platform, there is an unprecedented opportunity to redefine user experience. Just as the iPhone brought forth an age of touch and gesture, AI might bring forward an age of intuition and anticipation in design.
We’re not just designing products anymore; we’re designing interactions, emotions, and even the way users think and operate. The teams that understand this shift and adapt to the new rhythm of innovation and efficiency are the ones who will lead the charge into the future.
The viral post on Threads is a small reminder of our deep-seated love for design and innovation…a sign that, no matter how utilitarian our products become, we will always have a penchant for those delightful surprises that make technology feel like magic.
AI is now pushing design to re-imagine how we think about user behavior. Great product design will continue to play a pivotal role in shaping our digital experiences, pushing us ever forward to the bleeding edge of what’s possible with software.
