On “can we add AI?”
There is a moment in almost every product meeting this year. The roadmap is on the screen. Someone has just finished explaining a perfectly reasonable feature. And then, from the end of the table, usually from someone who has been quiet until now: “Can we add AI?”
On “taste,” now hiring
Some design job listings now ask, without irony, for an arbiter of taste. I read one aloud in class. A student asked what everyone in the room was thinking: “Can you actually learn that? Or do you just have it?” It is the question I am asked most often, in different costumes. “Is design talent?” “Am I visual enough?” “Some people just see it, right?” And it usually comes from the students who are most worried that they don’t. For years I gave a diplomatic answer. I am now prepared to give a less diplomatic one.
On feedback at the wrong altitude
Not all feedback is useful. Most designers learn this slowly, and usually the hard way. In the early stages of a project, feedback arrives in abundance. Everyone has an opinion. Everyone sees something they would change. “Make it more modern.” “It needs to feel more premium.” “I’m not sure about this.” None of these are wrong. None of them are actionable either.
The problem is not the intention. It is the altitude.
the student who already agrees with you
Every critique has one of these. You point out that the hierarchy is flat, that nothing on the page tells the eye where to land first, and before you finish the sentence they are nodding. Vigorously. "Yeah, no, totally, I knew that, I was actually going to fix that." They agreed with you before you had made an argument. This should feel like a win. It rarely does.
The first lesson I teach every year
Every year, on the first day of the professional digital design course, I do not open Figma. I do not discuss wireframes. I will not show any slides. In addition, I handed everyone a piece of paper and a pen.
Then, I asked them to draw, from memory, in as much detail as they could, the app or website they used most. The home screen of their phone. Instagram. Their bank app. Google Maps. Whatever lives at the center of their digital day.
On the apology before the work
There is a sentence that precedes almost every student presentation, in some form, regardless of the assignment, the year, or how much time they had. It goes roughly like this: "So, I know this isn't finished, I ran out of time, I wanted to do more with the typography, but..." Then they present. Often the work is fine. Sometimes it is better than fine. Occasionally it is the best thing in the room, delivered with the confidence of someone reading their own eulogy.