Human after all
AI, no-code tools, workflows, “SaaS is dead,” … you’ve heard it all before.
We’re all trying to figure out what to use, what to learn, and how to keep up. Today, I’m taking a pause from that. Instead, I want to talk about being human.
My last post, The Shape of Design to Come, sparked some thoughtful conversations around the skills we can’t afford to lose amid the expansion of AI. That post looked ahead into the future.
This time, I’m staying closer to the ground, with more practical lessons on how to ride the wave of technological change now. Because in the middle of the hype, one truth still stands: you either ride the wave, or the wave rides you.
And the first lesson is this: our biggest challenge isn’t the tools — it’s how we think about them.
Mindshift Is the Real Shift
If I had to name one of the biggest shifts we’re going through, it’s not just technical: it’s psychological.
There’s the anxiety around AI on one hand, and the“meh, it’s just a tool” on the other. Then there’s the quiet resistance to even trying it. I’m not judging any of these reactions — I understand them. But I also believe we can’t afford to stay there.
As natural as these reactions are, they often signal something deeper: a struggle to adapt. A fear of becoming irrelevant. A reflex to protect what we know, rather than evolve with what’s coming.
That’s where the mindset shift comes in — that’s the shift we really need. And that’s hard. But it’s also the most important.
So, how to make that shift happen?
Start with curiosity.
Let fear take the backseat, and let curiosity take the wheel. Treat new tools like something to explore, not to master overnight. Give yourself room to try, fail, and learn, and do the same for others. Share experiments. Ask questions.
The sooner you start leaning into curiosity, the sooner it feels less like a threat and more like an edge.
From Mindset to Skillset: Our Enduring Advantage
The mindset shift I’m talking about is also about rediscovering the human strengths that still give us the edge. The ones no AI can replicate.
So what exactly are those?
- Judgment: Choosing what matters, curating with intent, and making decisions that reflect context — not just data.
- Empathy: Reading nuance, asking better questions, and building for real human needs — not just what’s measurable.
- Connection: Understanding team dynamics, reading the room, sensing when to step in (or step back), and building the kind of trust no tool can automate.
- Communication: Sharing judgment, mentoring with care, and helping others grow without gatekeeping.
- Experience: Having been there. Building, breaking, learning — and remembering what matters.
- Creativity: Seeing beyond the obvious, drawing from unexpected sources, and shaping outcomes with taste, not just templates.
- Curiosity: Asking better questions, exploring unfamiliar angles, and staying open to what we don’t yet know.
These aren’t new skills, but they're more essential than ever if we want to stay relevant as designers or collaborators.
We have to lean deeper into the things machines can’t replicate. Yet.
Let’s break them down and see why they matter more than ever.
1. Judgment: Curation Over Creation
Anyone can generate twenty options. Hundreds, when AI is involved. But knowing which two to keep? That’s where expertise comes in.
We often call it “judgment,” but it’s really a mix of taste, clarity, and intuition — the ability to recognize what matters and what doesn’t. And no, this isn’t a Judge Dredd situation (although making decisions with that helmet might be fun).
Judgment isn’t about being right every time. It’s about having a sense of what’s good, what’s surprising, and what fits the moment. We’ve learned that with AI making it easy to generate endless options, the real challenge is knowing what to keep and why.
Curation, not just creation, is where judgment shines.
That’s why design critiques, live reviews, and collaborative sessions matter so much. Even (or especially) if you love async workflows. These aren’t legacy rituals. They’re where we sharpen our taste, expose our blind spots, and build shared clarity.
Because in a world where everything can be generated, judgment needs to be cultivated. Together.
2. Empathy: Designing for Emotions
Sure, AI can write copy and structure flows. But it doesn’t cringe when something feels off, nor does it notice joy in the details. That’s our job.
Empathy shows up in the pacing of a form, the tone of a tooltip, or the little moment that makes someone feel seen. But empathy isn’t just tone or micro-interactions. It’s knowing when something feels awkward, confusing, or unnecessary.
That kind of awareness doesn’t come from intuition alone. It comes from watching real people struggle. It comes from research. From listening. From testing.
At a recent talk I gave to a group of students, someone asked me, “Can we test purely through AI?”. It’s a good question.
My answer was simple: until we’re designing for AI as the user, we’re designing for humans. And humans need to be asked. Observed. Understood.
I recently ran a quick experiment with OpenAI’s o3 model. I showed it two versions of a contact form just to see what kind of feedback it would give, almost like a mini usability test.
The result wasn’t mind‑blowing or revolutionary. However, it did generate small, specific points about visual clarity, layout, and field labeling that I might have overlooked if I had been too deep in the work.
In other words, not a replacement for real user insight, but the kind of second opinion you crave when you’re designing solo, early in your career, or just stuck on what feels “off”.
The key is treating it not as a test, but as a sparring partner — and knowing when it’s time to stop prompting and talk to a real person.
3. Connection: Culture Isn’t Codable
Tools can coordinate, generate, and nudge. But they don’t sense tension in a room. They don’t pick up on team energy, trust, or quiet drops in trust.
No matter how smart AI gets, it doesn’t feel culture. And it doesn’t build relationships.
Say you’re in a team meeting, presenting a new concept. Halfway through, a teammate who’s usually super engaged goes quiet. You notice them shift in their seat, eyes go to the side. They don’t comment.
AI wouldn’t flag that small moment as any sort of feedback. But you might sense that something feels off.
So instead of speeding through the rest of the slides, you pause to invite feedback. You might even sync with that teammate later to get their honest insights, or just to show that you noticed their discomfort.
That’s connection. Subtle, human, and incredibly powerful.
It’s about social awareness, emotional timing, and the little signals that build (or break) trust inside teams. Knowing when to speak, when to pause, when to push, and when to hold back. Connection is what makes collaboration safe, not just efficient.
Now more than ever, we need people who can read the room — and shape how we move through change, together.
4. Mentoring & Communication: Helping Others Grow
It’s not just the way we work together that’s changing, but also what we value. Soft skills (aka human skills) shape how teams function, how decisions get made, and how people grow.
Personally, I stopped thinking in terms of “hard” vs “soft” skills a while ago. It just doesn’t reflect reality. Especially now, with AI accelerating everything, skills like the ability to communicate with clarity and coach others are no longer nice to have. They’re absolutely essential.
This isn’t just a design thing. Across every role, so-called “soft skills” like communication and mentoring are now core skills. Those skills don’t just support collaboration — they become leadership, especially as you grow in experience.
The moment you take on a more senior role, expectations shift. Others start to look to you not just for answers, but for judgment, direction, and context. They watch how you make decisions under pressure. How you weigh trade-offs, ask questions, and frame ideas. In those moments, it’s not your speed or output that matters the most.
That’s why we’ve started factoring communication and mentoring more heavily into our team's seniority calculations. It's not just what someone delivers but how they lift others. How they guide, frame, and transfer judgment.
This matters even more now that juniors are entering the field in a radically different landscape. Thanks to AI & no-code tools, it’s never been easier to look productive: to generate content, copy, and even create entire flows. But taste doesn’t come from prompts. Experience doesn’t auto-fill.
What senior people bring isn’t just deliverables, but perspective. The patterns they’ve seen, the instincts they’ve earned.
And with that comes a different kind of responsibility: to share their thinking, not just their outcomes.
5. Experience: Pattern Recognition Starts Here
Speaking of experience, here’s another thing AI can’t fake: having been there. It’s not just about time, but about what you’ve lived through. What you’ve built, broken, and learned along the way.
Those moments shape how you see.
Design, at its core, is pattern recognition. And experience is what gives those patterns meaning. You remember what confused users, what delighted them. What looked great in theory but collapsed in practice.
When you’ve tested, launched, iterated, and reworked enough times, you start to build a mental library. That memory becomes fuel for better judgment. Not because you always know the answer, but because you’ve seen what happens when the wrong one ships.
So bring that history into the room. Name the patterns. Surface past mistakes and patterns. Share the signals you’ve learned to trust. The more context we offer, the more resilient our decisions become, especially when things move fast.
And if you’re early in your journey? That’s exactly where experience begins.
Don’t wait for permission. Ship something, even if it’s small. Watch people interact with your work. Ask questions and listen closely. Reflect. Every project, no matter how big, builds the foundation for that future intuition we call experience.
6. Creativity Beyond the Obvious
Here’s a silly example: try asking any AI tool to draw an analog clock. Nine times out of ten, the hands will show 10:09. Why? Because that’s how most watches are photographed (ask ChatGPT about it, it will give you a great explanation).
That’s the thing. AI imitates. It blends what’s been done. But it doesn’t challenge defaults or break patterns. We do that. Who will invent the next Studio Ghibli if not Ghibli themselves? That spark of originality doesn’t come from remixing the past, but from reimagining it.
Creativity isn’t just novelty — it’s about relevance, reframing, and risk. And it still belongs to us.
So when inspiration runs low, I urge you to look beyond the screen. Find it in nature’s color palettes. In architecture’s balance. In the unexpected symmetry of a street corner.
Lately, I find myself drawing more and more from the aesthetics of great movies. Not just the stories or feelings, but the framing, lighting, texture, and visual rhythm of scenes. How a single shot can hold tension. How color palettes guide mood. How silence becomes part of the design.
Sometimes, all it takes is a book cover, an exhibition floor plan, or a beautifully awkward object to get unstuck. Even a product label or the curve of a lamp can reroute your creative instincts.
Or if you’re deep in UX work: think of how a (good) museum guides visitors through space. How elevators prioritize interaction. How physical menus organize complex choices. There’s structure and storytelling in all of it.
Some of our best ideas don’t come from inside design, but from everywhere else. That’s nothing new for creatives in general, but it feels worth reminding ourselves in UX, too.
7. Curiosity: Question First, Always
Earlier, I said the real shift we’re facing isn’t just technical, but psychological. That the only way we can adapt our mindset is through curiosity.
And curiosity, I believe, might be the most underrated human strength we have yet.
It’s both the starting point and the engine behind everything else. It’s what makes you pause a flow that feels off, what drives you to try a new tool, or push a layout just a bit further.
AI can give you answers, but only if you’re asking the right questions. It doesn’t wonder. It doesn’t care. It doesn’t sit with nuance or lean into the discomfort of not knowing yet.
When tools evolve overnight and roles blur faster than job titles can keep up, curiosity becomes more than a trait: it becomes a survival skill. It’s how we uncover new opportunities, connect the dots others miss, and stay relevant not just in what we know, but in how we grow.
And perhaps most importantly: curiosity builds empathy.
Because staying curious about the people you work with — your teammates, your users, your future self — is how we keep the work human, even as everything around it changes.
Embrace Your Human Edge
Amid all the noise of new tools and a constantly changing landscape, it’s easy to feel like you’re falling behind. Like you’re supposed to learn everything, master everything, automate everything.
But as I hope I’ve shown, the point isn’t to compete with machines. It’s to lean harder into what they can’t replicate.
When we all have access to the same tools, what stands out is how you use them. What you choose to build. What you choose to keep. And the human instincts you bring to the process.
So yes, ride the wave, but do it on your own terms. Lead with your sharpest edge: what makes you human.
