Hey Reader,

I had a few mentoring calls this week that all circled back to the same question: if AI can already prototype and even ship parts of a product, what's actually left for a designer to do? Turns out even OpenAI's head of design doesn't have a clean answer — and I found that oddly reassuring.
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​In today's email:

• AI is expanding the design role, not shrinking it: A candid interview with OpenAI's Head of Design on why AI hasn't 10x'd design output the way it has for engineering, plus a breakdown of what a "design engineer" role actually looks like if you're thinking about picking up code.
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• Platforms stepping back to simplify: A look at YouTube's quiet, multi-year effort to strip out two decades of clutter, and what it says about restraint at scale.
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• Tools for narrow, specific problems: Three tools worth bookmarking — for vertical writing interfaces, UI sound design, and AI-native interface components.

One week left to join Future of Design (free) My session at The Future of Design Summit is next Wednesday (Aug 26th). If the jump from “the person who makes it look pretty” to someone trusted with the decision itself is something you've been stuck on, that's exactly what I'm covering. Free, virtual, and still open to register. 🎟️ Grab your free ticket

Design gems of the week

• ​OpenAI's Head of Design on the future of product design: Ian Silber joins Lenny's Podcast and shares an honest take on why AI hasn't 10x'd design output the way it has for engineering — and why he still thinks it's the best time in history to be a designer.
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• ​Should you pursue a career in design engineering?: A breakdown of what "design engineer" actually does at Adobe: prototyping, design systems, craft. Good read if you're wondering whether learning to code could open a different path in your design career.
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• ​Vertically Works: A component library for vertical, right-to-left reading interfaces in Korean, Japanese, and Chinese.
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• ​Beautiful UI: A free set of crafted primitives for AI-native interfaces: thinking states, approval cards, streaming text, and more. Handy reference if you're designing with agents right now.
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• ​Youtube is on a major decluttering mission (Fast Company): A look at how Youtube is cleaning up two decades of clutter. A reminder that it isn't just about removing things, but deciding what the interface should prioritize.
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• ​Beeps: A library of UI sounds that lets you can fine-tune by timing and pitch.
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Open design roles worth a look

• ​Staff Product Designer, Mobile @ Linktree, Los Angeles, CA, San Francisco, CA · Hybrid
• ​Lead Product Designer, Starter Growth @ Change.org, USA, Canada, Mexico · Remote
• ​Senior Product Designer @ Render, USA • Remote
• ​Head of Design and Research @ Upside, DC; Austin; Chicago; NYC • Hybrid

Should you talk about your AI use when interviewing?

In one of my recent mentoring sessions, a designer I was chatting with had been through it all — laid off, job hunting, ghosted applications.

Her portfolio presentation was open on the screen between us. In it were two case studies, and she'd been polishing that deck for weeks trying to make it perfect enough to finally hit submit on some applications.

Buried in her recent work was a case study she almost didn't mention: an AI-driven intake flow she'd designed and helped build. She brought it up almost apologetically, like it was the less impressive project.

But that's not how I saw it — to me, it was a moment of differentiation and a proactive narrative on how she's working with AI — and she was considering leaving it out.

Unless you've been under a rock, I bet you've heard this argument already: AI has made producing design artefacts cheap.

What it hasn't made cheap is judgment. Deciding which direction is actually right, for this product, this user, this moment.

​UX Magazine called it well: the distance between an idea and a visible interface is shrinking, but the distance between an idea and a good idea hasn't moved an inch. In fact, maybe it's only widened.

Ian Silber, OpenAI's head of product design, put a sharper point on it in a conversation with Lenny's Newsletter this month: this is arguably the best time in history to be a designer, precisely because AI still can't replace user understanding, invention, or point of view.

As designers, we're kind of weird about using AI in the design process.

A lot of us aren't sure how to talk about it, let alone even use it, and that's probably because the new design process is yet to be defined. We're holding back on how we use it for fear of getting it wrong.

There seems to be a quiet fear that "I used AI for this" reads as "I didn't really do the work."

Most designers are still focused on showing polished final screens over the part where a tool helped them get there faster. But hiring managers aren't asking "did a human draw every pixel."

They're asking "can this person direct a process, make good calls fast, and know a strong direction when they see one?"

Hiding your usage of AI doesn't make you look more capable — it just means you're leaving out evidence that answers the question they're actually asking.

What to do instead

A few things I've been telling designers I work with lately, including the one from that call:

Make it a feature. Rather than mentioning AI in passing, build a section around it. Walk through your decision-making: how you prompted the tool, what you rejected, and where — and why — you overrode it.

Lead with positioning, not polish. How might you provide a clear answer to "what do you uniquely bring, and to what kind of team?" Narrow beats broad right now.

Say the quiet part out loud, early. Address AI directly in your portfolio or in the first few minutes of an interview, on your terms, before it becomes a question you're reacting to. Own the framing instead of waiting to be asked.

Design's core question is already shifting from "how do I capture attention" to "how do I understand intention" — as more of what we build starts working with AI agents instead of just for human eyes on a screen.

I know which candidate I'd bet on: not the one with the cleanest slides, the one who can tell you exactly why she made the calls she made, even if she used AI.

If you're job hunting right now and want a second pair of eyes on how you're telling this story — portfolio, interview answers, or both — that's exactly what Interview Prep Pal is built for.

And if you want to go deeper with direct coaching, the September cohort is about to start but for the right person, we may open up one last spot...

Have a topic you'd like me to write about? Reply to this email and let me know! I read every reply.