3 design principles in the AI age

We live in a world where technology is evolving at a breakneck speed. It can be daunting, especially for designers, when tools that seem to replace us come out every week. What does it mean to be a designer today? What is good design anymore? How does one still produce it? These questions haunt a growing number of us, in design and across engineering, research, and product.

Good design has many definitions, but I believe it is refined, thought through, and connects emotionally and practically with its intended user. It is a singular and simple output or solution created and synthesized from diverse and complex inputs. By this definition, and despite everything changing around us, three principles for creating good design have held true through every technological shift.

Principle #1: The power of iteration. Great work must undergo numerous iterations on its journey to excellence. A timeless product is crafted through an experimental process marked by trial and error, continuous iteration, and occasional bursts of creativity. We must do and re-do work to unlock the challenges that help us reach greater levels of depth. Many great artists and inventors celebrated their iterations. As James Dyson said, “I made 5,127 prototypes of my vacuum before I got it right. There were 5,126 failures. But I learned from each one.”

In this process, we must learn to celebrate rough drafts as fiercely as we embrace finished products because a design is never truly complete. AI makes iterations faster and cheaper, but it hasn’t removed the need for them. We still have drafts. We still have iterations. It is rare that AI’s first output works perfectly, and if it does, we should be wary that it may be too generic.

With every new draft, we start to move towards our destination. With faster iterations, we must also reflect on what matters and what does not.As Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote, “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” In my own experience, I often find it takes 100 iterations before something feels right—a pitch deck, a feature, a physical product. But these iterations shouldn’t happen in a bubble.

Principle #2: The power of feedback. The process of co-creation enhances the quality and depth of work. Gathering feedback from diverse individuals brings a wealth of unique ideas and suggestions to each design iteration. Feedback can come in many forms—the inspirations of past designers, the voices of end-users, watching people in real life struggle through products or existing experiences, and more. It can also come from fabricators, engineers, designers, marketing teams, or other key stakeholders in true interdisciplinary fashion.

Again, AI has not changed this need, though we now have another feedback mechanism we can leverage. AI draws on a vast amount of knowledge when giving feedback. This is incredible, but we must be careful not to make AI feedback the only feedback. It is merely one source. It is important to learn which feedback to prioritize and when to bring it in, and to seek out diverse perspectives that lead to deeper, more thoughtful product innovation.

A famous Gujarati saying is, “The wise person listens to all but makes their own decision.” We also need to look more deeply at our own lens. We are the sum of many experiences and stories. We are complex creatures. It is easy to assume AI understands this and to trust it blindly, but it doesn’t. We need to dig deeper and make sure our own voices come through.

Principle #3: The power of connecting dots. Something magical happens in design when you give it time, like marinating food overnight in a bowl of spices or letting a curry simmer. Chemical reactions begin to take place, neurons have conversations in the dark, the dots start to connect. When we take a step back from our work, we can zoom out. This can help us see a bigger picture and how the story connects. We start to see what is important and what is not. How does our work connect with where we started? Have we steered off course?

AI can help us make stronger connections and hold the journey of design more easily, but only if we let it. Remembering the narrative—the valuable “in-between” knowledge, steps, and design assets amassed during the design journey—has historically been a challenge. Capturing it creates a blueprint of how a design took shape. It highlights crucial decision-making points and provides a framework for future evolutions. This wealth of data and context helps us make our own process smarter. We can see which iterations mattered most, and where we can draw inspiration from our other work. But AI’s speed may be faster than what we can process. We must step away from our screens, go for walks, see friends and family, visit cafes, and then return to our work. Only then do we allow the time needed for processing to occur.

Every generation has had its technological revolution—from pencils to printing presses, and steam engines to electricity, and now computers to automation. Every generation has likely faced similar fears as the ground shifted beneath its feet. Will I adapt? Will I be replaced? Is what I know and worked so hard to learn still relevant? Somehow, despite all these transformations across time, certain human principles have endured and guided us.

In design, these principles still remain, through constant iterations, intentional feedback, and stepping away to see the bigger picture before zooming back into the details. Designers will survive this era and will help shape it. In fact, designers’ adaptability might just be one of the most important qualities of all.

Saad Rajan is CEO and cofounder of Naya Studio.