I have a hunch about what design will look like in 5 years. I believe we all know it's going to look significantly different. This is evident from the work being done by the teams building the future of design tools. But to understand the scale of the difference between where we are today and where we're going to be, we should examine design from various perspectives. Although I could discuss hardware engineering and physical design since that's where I began my career, I think that's a different topic for another article. For now, let's focus on digital design.

We can start with the surface you're looking at right now—a website that has been created by a team with specific goals in mind for the benefit of its users. In the near future, we will be able to go from designing in a tool, in low fidelity, directly to a polished, responsive, interactive website with just a few clicks. The transition from a polished design to a polished website is already possible with tools like Anima, which integrate with Figma and can generate websites based on a design. Anima preserves the design exactly as it is, and you can even create a responsive website if you configure your properties correctly. However, the key difference is that you still need a skilled designer to conceptualize and express your intentions in a tool like Figma or Adobe XD before this becomes an option.

Some members of the internal Figma team ([Sawyer Hood](https://x.com/tldraw/status/1726702203279384774?s=20) and [Jordan Singer](https://x.com/jsngr/status/1725614452123250792?s=20)) have made incredible progress this month by developing a way to generate responsive designs coded in Tailwind from basic wireframes and prompts using GPT-4Vision. I find this amazing because, at its limit, it resembles designers collaborating with an AI "partner" that rapidly creates and refines designs based on human feedback. To implement the new design, the designer simply needs to feed back, verify the changes are as intended, and click a button. Consider what it would mean to train the tool with your specific design system or an app with a style that you aspire to. The tool can also explore screens with different brand identities, helping designers (or anyone) discover preferences while in the exploratory phase. These tools will make designing and launching websites and apps incredibly accessible. The goal is to streamline design and shipping cycles. As more users adopt these tools, design cycles will shorten rapidly in the industry. Frontend work will be (mostly) automated, freeing designers from relying on frontend development. These tools will increase the presence of product thinking in designers' workflows and design work in product thinkers' workflows.

We have all heard or considered the potential drawbacks of relying on such tools—innovative, new products might become scarce, similar to the standardization of architecture (do you know the name of the architect who created the plan of your office, apartment, or home?) unless deliberate efforts are made, since training relies on existing content. On the other hand, as more people develop purpose-built, opinionated software, niche products will flood into our lives. Brand will continue to be king in a lot of software circles, I doubt that will change.

Is it good that design is heading this direction? I don't think that's really for me to say. The momentum is here, so I'm already thinking about how I'll adapt. There are obviously some caveats here—things like backend work, animation & interaction design, and software-hardware integration aren't covered by these recent changes. But could they be? I think we'll find out.  As for the present, I'm staying up on the news and development of these tools, and as soon as the barrier to entry is low enough, I'll be integrating them into my workflow to see how to develop this new skillset. The times are changing.

Tightening the Loop

Building something new takes time. I've been working in an org where we've been doing a ton of building from first principles for about the last two and a half years. We're starting to get the product we've thought and theorized about so much out into the hands of the people who we've been building for this whole time and it's an incredibly gratifying, cathartic, and scary feeling.

Building always takes time, especially at the intersection of hardware and software. Sweating the details is table stakes, and you're going to make mistakes. That's ok, you'll build your way out of them. The difference now is that it isn't internal stakeholders giving feedback on my designs, it's the people I want to help with my work. That makes things incredibly real, and has really lit a fire to move quickly and build even more on the experiences that we've been sweating for so long.

Our press launch is today, and the nervous energy has been palpable in the office, in every meeting for the past two months. A lot of people have been holding their breath for a long time. It's worth reminding ourselves of what we believe to be true about the product we've been working on, and how much that matters.

Something New

I watched a fantastic talk by Amelia Wattenberger the other day. Since then, I’ve been thinking about how the concept of varying the level of zoom on a problem or topic to accomplish different aims, often referred to as a ladder of abstraction, can be applied to just about any problem in today’s world. I’ve been thinking about health and wellness, specifically. This concept allows us to focus on different aspects of a problem or task at different levels of detail, depending on our immediate needs and goals. The same is true of the users of tools, services, and products. The ladder is a designer’s tool to help someone tackle a larger problem that they might not be an expert in but are still interested in addressing.

Consider the example of writing a book. At the highest level, we have the entire narrative. This is where we can influence the tone, plot, and overarching actions of the story. It's akin to viewing the curve of a plot, where we can shape the trajectory of the narrative.

As we zoom in, each chapter comes into focus, allowing us to delve into specific events and character developments. Zooming in further, we see the individual paragraphs where we can manipulate the pace of the story, introduce new ideas, or build tension.

At the sentence level, we can polish the language, refine the voice of the characters, and ensure the flow of the text. Finally, at the word level, we can select precise vocabulary to evoke specific emotions or imagery.

The same concept can be applied to someone’s health. A user's goals at different levels might look like this:

1. I want to be healthy (highest level)

2. I want to improve or maintain specific aspects of my health

3. I want to control a specific element of my health

4. I want to improve a specific health metric (e.g., vitamin B12 levels)

5. I want to manage a specific physiological response (e.g., cytokinal response)

These *goals* can be mapped to *system actions*:

1. Automate overall health maintenance (e.g., prescription refills)

2. Address specific health goals or chronic issues (e.g., weight loss)

3. Address a specific health issue (e.g., back pain)

4. Track specific health metrics (e.g., LDL cholesterol)

5. Influence specific physiological pathways (e.g., cytokine activation)

In essence, the ladder of abstraction allows us to tailor our approach to a problem, depending on our immediate needs and goals. This concept enables us to navigate complex systems effectively. It’s our job as designers to help our users navigate the systems we build for them in a similar fashion—tailoring your interfaces and content to correctly help someone know what actions to take next, every time.\
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For more on the topic, check out Amelia's talk at AI Engineer Summit 2023 [here](https://youtu.be/PAy_GHUAICw).

Andy Wilbourn

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