We’ve all heard it: some version of “the design process is dead” or “we don’t need designers now that AI can generate designs.” These statements couldn’t be further from the truth.

Human-Centered Design Matters Now More Than Ever

The core principles and phases of human-centered design — such as grounding decisions in evidence, iterating on ideas, and moving from problem space to solution space to implementation — have endured for over half a century. They will continue to endure because they are the foundation of effective decision-making.

This means that your organization’s future success still depends on having a strong human-centered design process. In a world where AI makes creating experiences faster than ever before, the organizations that stand out will be the ones that deeply understand their customers and deliver differentiated experiences that are true game changers, both for customers and for the organization.

AI Will Transform, Not Dismantle, Design Workflows

AI can serve as a force multiplier in the design workflow by accelerating time-intensive tasks, surfacing insights that are difficult to uncover manually, and enabling cross-functional teams to explore and align on concepts quickly and with greater confidence. As a result, some traditional ways of working — like designers spending most of their time on execution-heavy tasks such as producing static wireframes and detailed specifications — are fading. Using AI to your advantage starts with understanding and adapting to major shifts underway, including:

  • Design phases are compressing. AI enables designers and researchers to work faster by accelerating discrete tasks such as synthesizing research interviews, visualizing ideas, and turning static concepts into functional prototypes. The result is not fewer phases but faster and more frequent iteration within each one, with work oscillating between ideating, building, and evaluating at a pace that was previously impossible.
  • Design effort is shifting. By leaning on AI heavily in the later phases of design, designers and researchers can “shift left” and spend more time on problem framing and opportunity identification. This shift allows design’s impact to expand upward, influencing not only interaction and journey decisions but also experience strategy and even company strategy — work that was previously crowded out by delivery pressure.
  • Traditional handoffs are giving way to persistent collaboration. AI-enabled tools allow designers, researchers, developers, and product managers to work concurrently rather than sequentially, moving more fluidly across responsibilities. Instead of work being passed from one function to the next, teams increasingly co-create shared artifacts such as prototypes and research plans.

Design teams can’t stand still. They must adapt — and fast — to these changes and the others we outline in our new report, Build Your AI-Enabled Research And Design Workflow. We expand on these shifts and break down nine AI use cases that deliver the greatest benefits for design and research teams.

Hear More At Our CX Forums This June

To learn more, read our report, Build Your AI-Enabled Research And Design Workflow. Then join me for my session “Build Better Experiences With An AI-Enabled Workflow” at our upcoming CX Forums.

At Forrester’s CX Forum East (June 16–17 in New York), I’ll present this new research and speak with Caleb Schmidt, SVP and head of experience design at U.S. Bank, about how his team is designing with AI.

At Forrester’s CX Forum West (June 29–30 in San Francisco), I’ll do the same with Heidi Munc, VP of user experience at Nationwide.

Can’t make it or want to talk sooner? If you’re a Forrester client, set up a conversation with us here. You can also connect with us (Gina Bhawalkar and Senem Guler Biyikli) on LinkedIn.