Danny Meijer

Our industry is in the middle of the biggest shift I've seen in seventeen years. I don't think we've grasped how deep it goes.

Almost every agency I know, mine included, is busy adopting AI tooling. Faster research, generated wireframes and UI, automated QA & WCAG checks. It's real and it works. But adopting tools is not the same as changing how you work.

Our whole way of working was designed before any of this existed. Linear, phased, and held together by artefacts we produce mainly so that disciplines can understand each other: reports, personas, journey maps, specs. That shape was never ideal. It's just the shape all that translating forced on us.

What excites me is that we now have the best opportunity ever to increase the quality of design work and focus the craft. Because what happens when the translating stops being necessary. When designers, developers, strategists and content people all draw from the same living understanding of the people they serve, nobody has to hand work down a line. Everyone works in parallel around a centre that keeps getting smarter, instead of a document that dies after go-live. That isn't a productivity gain. It's a shift that puts AI in a correct place and the designers back in the drivers seat 

There's a catch, and I'd be dishonest to skip it. Production got faster, so expectations moved. Clients assume everything happens twice as fast now, which means the time we saved went into the schedule instead of into thinking.

And there's a question I hear nobody ask: what if AI becomes expensive? Today's prices aren't a market price, they're investors buying adoption. So if your whole practice rests on a subscription, what's left of it when the subscription gets real? I think that's a useful test rather than a doom scenario. Whatever survives it is your actual skill.

Which is why I'm optimistic. We have a chance to build ways of working that put the craft at the centre instead of the paperwork around it. It takes the courage to redraw the process rather than decorate it. The studios that do will make the best work of their lives.