One of the most common type of AI post in UX is a booster pretending to be a skeptic: "AI promised it would be simple but to use it well you actually need very good design taste, like I have" Managers don't give a shit about your "good taste" because *they don't know their AI outputs are bad.*
Designers make exactly the same mistake as the XKCD geologists: they think about their stakeholders as more junior designers. And when they were junior designers, they could tell that their work was bad and the work of pros was good. But managers aren't designers *at all.* They can't tell it's bad.
![[Ponytail and Cueball are talking. Ponytail has her hand raised, palm up, towards Cueball.] Ponytail: Silicate chemistry is second nature to us geochemists, so it's easy to forget that the average person probably only knows the formulas for olivine and one or two feldspars. Cueball: And quartz, of course. Ponytail: Of course. [Caption below the panel] Even when they're trying to compensate for it, experts in anything wildly overestimate the average person's familiarity with their field.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:o7xt7svg2xtjbb4e2xqahqqc/bafkreidklc225jfpficb3hyochv2phrr6kct6b7gv2vlmmgofru6ygau7i@jpeg)
I feel designers can because we ask questions that embarrass developers pretty quickly. Like “why is the surname field not accepting accents and hyphens and stuck at 25 char?” Is it because Smith and Jones easily fit so it’s up to spec according to you?
Designers should know this! The days of "can you make the logo bigger" and "can you make it pop?" are not so far behind us. Stakeholders overrule design taste with their whims all the time. Now they have a robot designer that never says "no" and churns out shit instantly. What they always wanted.
When you roll up and tell them "aha! actually this is BAD" they genuinely don't believe you. To them it looks fine. Acceptable. Good enough. For this argument to stick, you first have to either make stakeholders care about design in general, or about your opinion personally.
We tried to make orgs care about Design for over a decade. Design Thinking was the original AI — hyped up to solve all problems for ever and 10x your returns. Where is Design Thinking now? Dead. In the end, no one cared. Whatever influence design had gained proved to be fleeting.
The only option left is to earn personal trust with stakeholders. Establish a reputation of someone with good judgment and effective track record, rather than a gatekeeper, and they'll be coming *to you* to ask if their shitty AI-gen dashboard is good (it won't be, don't worry).
I've written on this topic before in my weekly newsletter (it's good, you should subscribe to it)
Again: if you think I am just making up a guy to be mad at, think again (via www.linkedin.com/posts/kara-m...)
They misspelled "Hi"
Not even an "I'm sorry for wasting your time."
Really enjoyed this article - possibly because it rings so (sadly) true from my time down in the product/marketing/UX mines.
One thing I've come to believe — something I'd rather not believe — is that great design doesn't matter that much when it comes to the things that most orgs care about. Functional design? Absolutely. Good design? Probably. But the floor for "acceptably functional" is lower than I wish it was.
The bar for "acceptable" has been set at "we shipped" — and the people who bear the most responsibility are the design leaders who saw giving in to this garbage framing as their pathway to senior titles and large fiefdoms. But when the only goal is "it exists" then taste is no longer a value-add.
Unless of course clients start complaining about lousy products
One of the biggest reasons that companies not only fail to establish effective feedback loops but *actively resist doing so* is because managers don't want to know that the products are lousy.
2. AMC is only NOW considering decreasing ad times after YEARS of complaints because it's affected ticket sales. I mean I know I prefer other independent theatre
And then they wonder why sales flag..
One reply I've heard too often is, "But can you PROVE this isn't good enough??"
This is a struggle I've always had with learning code-- the people that teach it just kind of assume I know a bunch of stuff that I absolutely do not know
The eternal struggle of trying to teach almost anyone anything. Lot of it boiling down to a mismatch in communication; words not meaning the same things to each person.
Knowing exactly what that is is a precious resource to people who would teach code. Unfortunately, there's a very narrow window to capture that knowledge before you too know it too well to adequately explain what it is that you didn't know. Some of it can be captured/remembered, but not everything.
Yes most of us suck at teaching 🤣
Someone pointed out to me a little while back that most beginner programming tutorials expect people to know what a text editor and a console is. Like the most basic programming task is to open a text editor and type a string that gets printed to the console. Beyond geochemist level at that point.
Even just now I forgot that installing the programming language is one of the steps lol
Please credit @xkcd.com when sharing images. Just a hunch, that was exactly the point Randall was making..... (y'all should follow him / read the books. What if is amazing..)
You only have to use it very, very carefully, right? Not like all those other dummies (namely everyone except oh-so-careful me).
Everyone who uses AI less than the author of a thinkpiece is a clueless luddite and will be left behind by the rapid pace of innovation in today's uncertain business landscape. But everyone who uses AI more than the author is a dangerous lunatic creating far too much risk with unproven technology.
George Carlin maniac vs idiot, AI version!