In 1997, historians William Strauss and Neil Howe published The Fourth Turning, a theory that history moves in predictable cycles, broadly in step with the length of a human life. Every 80–90 years, societies experience similar patterns of crisis and renewal: from post-crisis and cultural awakening to the weakening of institutions, destruction, and the re-building of social order. Whether or not you buy into their theory, the underlying insight is generally true: historical patterns repeat. And if you study them, you can anticipate what's likely to come next.

Professional disruption follows patterns too. As I've been ruminating on how AI might transform UX design, I initially felt the same anxiety that many other designers are experiencing. But we've seen similar stories play out before in photography, web development, graphic design and consumer product design. Once you start to study those patterns, the path forward becomes clearer.

This feels familiar

When digital cameras became accessible in the 1990s, professional photographers faced an existential crisis. Suddenly, anyone could take technically proficient photos. There was no longer a need for expensive darkrooms, and bags full of fancy lenses. The barrier to entry collapsed overnight.

Yet photography as a profession is flourishing, and as prestigious as ever. The photographers who thrived weren't the ones with the most technical expertise in manual focus or exposure settings; They were the ones who understood composition, storytelling, art direction, and commercial strategy. There was a shift from technical execution to creative vision and client relationships. The craft didn't disappear – it just became a prerequisite rather than what sets you apart.

Web development has followed a similar arc, first in the early 2000s with tools like Dreamweaver, and again in the 2020s when no-code tools like Webflow emerged. Suddenly building websites didn't require deep HTML and CSS knowledge, you could simply draw the site you wanted and the software wrote the code for you. Similarly, graphic design is living through this transformation right now. The juggernaut that is Canva has democratised design like I could never have imagined when I was struggling to learn Photoshop 3 from a cracked copy on a CD in my university bedroom in the mid-90s. But as incredible as it is, Canva hasn't killed the profession of graphic design – it's killed commodity work, whilst at the same time elevating designers who understand brand strategy, visual systems thinking, and creative direction.

There's a pattern here: execution commodifies, and strategy and judgment become the differentiator.

The shift is already happening

Designer Dustin Larimer recently canceled his Figma subscription. Not because he hates it - because it was in the way. His new workflow is: whiteboard → Claude → production. "When you can build that fast," he writes, "design and building become the same act. Ideas don't wait in docs for permission. We build, and our thinking emerges as we prove out what is even possible."

He's right about the speed. AI will make design execution so fast that the traditional mockup-and-handoff processes feels like unnecessary friction. And he's not wrong about what this means for designers stuck in that paradigm; While it hurts a bit to write, the mockup, as he puts it, is becoming a dead artifact.

But there's something, perhaps implied, but missing from "whiteboard → Claude → production." There's no step for: Who decides what problems are worth solving? What user needs should drive the roadmap? How does this connect to business strategy? When "thinking emerges as we prove out what is even possible," you're navigating by building - exploring what can be made rather than determining what should be made.

This is enormously powerful for discovering the possible. Potentially risky for finding the valuable.

Dustin's workflow isn't an outlier - it's where the entire industry is headed. AI design tools are becoming remarkably good at execution: generating interfaces, maintaining design system consistency, conducting basic user research, identifying patterns in data. If your company has a mature design system, AI can already generate production-ready interfaces, iterate on designs, and maintain consistency across patterns.

But AI can't do the 'human' thinking. It can't make judgment calls about what should be built versus what could be built. It can't navigate organisational politics to get a strategic initiative funded. It can't synthesise messy, chaotic user research into a coherent product vision that aligns with business goals.

This is the commodification phase in motion. Execution speed has become so accessible that strategy looks like overhead. Product teams can build anything, so why slow down to think? The pendulum swings toward velocity, away from deliberation. Companies will ship faster than ever - and many will build beautiful solutions to the wrong problems.

We're at a fork in the design road. Those who remain focused primarily on execution – pixel-pushing, component creation, basic prototyping - will find themselves competing with AI tools that work faster, cheaper, and more consistently. But those who develop strategic skills will find themselves more valuable than ever.

I'm certain that many companies will – initially at least – mis-read this shift. Product teams will look at AI design tools and think they can bypass design altogether. And while I'm sure many will have some level of success, I believe most will learn painful lessons about quality, coherence, and strategic thinking – the same way recording studios learned that while digital production tools made recording cheaper, it wasn't a replacement for a producer who could draw the best performance out of an artist.

Perhaps AI actually creates an enormous opportunity for designers: When companies realise that AI-generated designs are looking and behaving homogeneously, strategic design differentiation becomes the competitive advantage; understanding the specificity of users and creating unique solutions becomes increasingly much more valuable.

The craft of digital design - the pleasure of opening a blank canvas and creating something pixel-perfect - is becoming a hobby rather than a commercial necessity. Some of us will keep drawing digitally for fun. But strategically, the question isn't whether this is the future. It's what becomes essential when everyone can execute at this speed.

The skills that will define us

So what will separate the designer that thrives in this new landscape from the one who gets left behind? Thinking back to those patterns we've already learnt from other industries, and what I'm seeing in my own working experiences, here are the skills that I think will become increasingly important:

1. Embracing the new normal

Just because AI will be disruptive, doesn't mean it should be avoided. History has taught us that adopting new technologies is the path to success: designers who can't effectively work with AI tools will be at the same disadvantage as designers who couldn't use Figma a few years ago, and those who resisted the move to Sketch before that.

This isn't just about learning to use a new tool though, it's about understanding the nuance of directing AI – knowing what to ask for and how to ask, how to refine outputs, and how to combine its capabilities with your creative thinking to achieve outcomes that it alone couldn't produce. It's about treating AI as a force multiplier for your strategic thinking, not a replacement for it.

2. Systems thinking at scale

AI can create screens and coherent user flows with ease. What it can't do is architect a coherent experience strategy across 50 product teams in a large organisation.

Systems thinking at this level means understanding how experiences connect across multiple touch-points, thinking at multiple levels, deciphering how design decisions will impact business models, and how to create architectural frameworks that can scale and evolve. It's like seeing the forest, not just the trees – and helping others to navigate it too.

This kind of strategic work requires moving beyond individual products and features to thinking more holistically about how design decisions cascade through an organisation and impact long-term strategic goals.

3. Research synthesis and insight generation

AI is already helping with user research and identifying patterns in data. But taking those inputs and translating messy, human behaviour into actionable strategic insights requires equally human judgment, empathy, and business acumen.

The designer who can say "here's what this research means for our product roadmap and business strategy" – not just "here's what users said" – will be invaluable. This is about connecting dots that AI might not see, understanding context and human nuance, and making recommendations that balance user needs with business constraints.

4. Design leadership and influence

As product teams increase the sophistication of their use of AI design tools, there's a real risk that design gets devalued or left behind. The antidote will be designers who can successfully articulate design's strategic value, influence C-level decisions, and build thriving design cultures.

This is about politics, storytelling, and business impact – not pixels. It's also the skill that often requires the most dramatic mindset shift for designers who've spent their careers focused on craft and execution.

Design leadership means learning to speak the language of executives, building influence without formal authority, and demonstrating how design decisions impact revenue, retention, and strategic goals. It's less about being in the room where designs are created and more about being in the room where strategic decisions are made.

5. Cross-functional orchestration

Sad though it may be, the designer of the future is less "craftsperson", more "conductor" – coordinating and curating relationships between AI tools, engineering capabilities, business constraints, and user needs to create coherent outcomes.

This means being comfortable operating at the intersection of multiple disciplines and being a creative generalist - understanding enough about technology to have meaningful conversations with engineers, enough about business to understand financial models and growth strategies, and enough about users to advocate for their needs without losing sight of commercial realities.

6. Ethical and experiential judgment

AI will suggest solutions based on existing patterns its been trained on, but it'll struggle to make judgment calls around the ethics of what should be built. Questions like "is this feature exploitative?", "does this serve real human needs?", or "what are the unintended consequences of this design decision?" will require human wisdom.

As AI makes execution faster and cheaper, these ethical considerations become more and more important. The barrier to shipping something will become much lower, which means the responsibility for thoughtful judgment will get much higher.

Knowing what skills to develop is one thing. Knowing when they'll matter most is another – and the timeline is already unfolding.

A prediction

The late-90s tech boom championed execution over everything – ship fast, add features, optimise relentlessly. 'Build it and they will come.' The result was bloated software, wasted months, and expensive pivots when products missed the mark. When the bubble burst, businesses discovered that efficiency without direction just gets you to the wrong place faster. Design Thinking emerged as a differentiator precisely because companies had learned painful lessons about building the wrong things efficiently. Apple demonstrated what many had missed: being design-led could deliver significant commercial advantage.

We're about to see that lesson learned again. The pendulum will swing hard toward AI-powered execution. And then, as it always does, it will swing back – but not to where it was before.

Understanding where things are heading is vital in helping to position yourself strategically. Based on the patterns, trajectories and industry shifts of the past, here's what seems likely for our future.

Near-term (2025–2027): The pendulum swings away

This is the overcorrection phase that I'm sensing right now. Companies will misread what AI makes possible and strip out the design roles that they'll later regret losing.

Junior and mid-level execution-focused roles are likely to compress dramatically. We're already seeing this in hiring freezes and role consolidations. The logic seems sound on paper: if AI can handle execution and companies have mature design systems, why pay for junior designers or multiple design disciplines?

Some companies will go further, convinced they can eliminate strategic design input altogether. Product managers with AI tools will try to own the entire experience, and many will learn expensive lessons about the difference between generating screens and creating coherent experiences.

Simultaneously, I'm hopeful that we'll also see a trend where senior strategic roles will actually expand at some companies that understand the value. The gap between "designer who does delivery" and "designer who shapes strategy" will probably widen.

We'll also see the emergence of hybrid "design technologist" roles for people who bridge AI tools and implementation – designers who can not only direct AI but also work directly with code and data, effectively leapfrogging the traditional design phase, shaping designs directly in code.

We designers shouldn't wait passively for the pendulum to swing back at this point. I'd recommend actively developing your strategic skills during this compression phase - to be positioned perfectly for what comes next.

Medium-term (2027–2030): The pendulum swings back

This is when those companies that overcorrected will begin to reckon with the consequences. As AI democratises execution, digital products will start looking increasingly similar because they're trained on the same patterns. The companies that stripped out strategic design will notice they've lost differentiation. There might be usability issues, or perhaps their products will work fine, but they'll be indistinguishable from competitors.

Companies will realise that strategic design differentiation – understanding your specific users deeply and creating novel solutions – becomes an important point of difference. This isn't speculation; we've seen this exact pattern in car design, where optimisation toward the same constraints (aerodynamics, safety regulations, manufacturing efficiency) has made most SUVs nearly identical. The manufacturers that stand out are the ones making strategic choices that go beyond optimisation through strong design language and experience focus.

This means the value of good design research, genuine user understanding, and creative problem-solving actually increases. I predict that the companies that invested in strategic design capabilities during the contraction will have an advantage over those that tried to replace designers with AI.

We'll also see new roles emerge around AI-assisted design operations – managing AI tool chains, maintaining quality standards for AI outputs, and building company-specific AI design capabilities.

The designers who built strategic skills during the contraction become scarce and valuable. And the companies that learned painful lessons will actively recruit them.

Longer-term (2030+): Equilibrium

The pendulum doesn't return to where it started – it finds a new resting point.

My optimistic prediction is that design strategy will finally merge with product strategy and business strategy. The lines between CPO and Chief Design Officer will blur. Strategic designers will sit at the executive table as a matter of course, not as an exception.

This won't look like the 2010s fight for "design-led organisations" or a "seat at the table". Companies won't need to be convinced that design matters because they'll have learned what happens without it. The difference this time is that strategic design will be a business capability, not a service function advocating for its own relevance.

This represents the full evolution from "design as craft" through "design as service function" to "design as strategic business capability". My hope is that the designers who develop these strategic skills now – during the contraction – will be positioned for these leadership roles.

What this means for your career

The pendulum is swinging. But rather than feeling anxious about it, consider this: strategic design work is more interesting than execution. Understanding customer needs at a deep level, shaping the direction of a product, influencing business strategy – it's the work that many designers aspire to be doing, but often can't because they're either too busy executing, or simply aren't permitted. This disruption might just force the evolution the profession needed.

If you're early in your career, be strategic about skill development from the start. Don't only focus on mastering tools – focus on understanding business, developing strategic thinking, and learning how design creates measurable impact (and how to prove it).

If you're mid-career and built your expertise around execution, this is your pivotal moment. As my boss often says, “what got you here won't be what gets you where you need to go”. Here's how to bridge that gap:

• Listen in on strategy meetings. Hear how decisions get made and problems get framed at the business level.
• Volunteer for cross-functional projects. Work directly with product managers, engineers, and stakeholders. Learn their languages, constraints, and what motivates them.
• Measure and communicate impact. Stop presenting designs, start presenting outcomes. What changed because of your work? How did it affect key metrics?
• Learn beyond design. Business strategy, organisational psychology, even your company's financial reports. Understand the commercial context you're designing within.
• Find a mentor who's made this transition. Ask specifically about developing business acumen and strategic influence – how to design beyond the craft.

If you're a senior designer or design leader, this is your moment to step up. Organisations need people who can navigate the AI transition, articulate why strategic design matters, and build cultures where design drives business value. The compression phase creates opportunity for those who can lead through it.

Closing thought

Every creative field that's been through technological disruption has emerged with the same lesson: the people who thrived weren't the ones who held on to the old ways, and they weren't the ones who simply adopted the new tools. They were the ones who used the disruption as a catalyst to move into more strategic, more interesting, more impactful work.

That same path is open to UX designers right now. The question isn't whether AI will change design – it already is. It's how you’ll respond and what kind of designer you want to be on the other side.