Post-its, Design Thinking and other anxieties
The redemption that AI brings
Post-its, Design Thinking and other anxieties
The redemption that AI brings
If you’ve felt vaguely nauseous looking at yet another color-coded "design thinking" deck lately, you’re not alone. Somewhere along the way, the soul of design got sold for a pack of sticky notes and a few post-workshop amazon vouchers.
If you’ve felt vaguely nauseous looking at yet another color-coded "design thinking" deck lately, you’re not alone. Somewhere along the way, the soul of design got sold for a pack of sticky notes and a few post-workshop amazon vouchers.
The world told designers to "think more logically" — to wireframe their creativity, to survey their intuition, to validate every wild idea until it was sufficiently neutered.
And it worked.
We now have more ‘correct’ design than ever before.
We also have more soulless design than ever before.
The world told designers to "think more logically" — to wireframe their creativity, to survey their intuition, to validate every wild idea until it was sufficiently neutered.
And it worked.
We now have more ‘correct’ design than ever before.
We also have more soulless design than ever before.
There’s a quiet tragedy happening in commercial design today: It looks good. It performs well. It passes all the usability tests. And it says absolutely nothing.
Design has been tilted so far toward engineering that we’ve forgotten it once stood proudly between art and science. Now? It’s all form, no feeling. All polish, no provocation. And the worst part? The industry applauds this. Clients high-five you for designing IKEA instruction manuals disguised as brands. The uncomfortable truth is: Good Design is not democratic. It is not created by consensus. It is not a series of safe bets polished to death.
Good design requires vision. It requires taste. It requires trusting the designer to be the guide — not a facilitator, not a waiter taking orders politely, but a real, sovereign, opinionated guide.
Especially in places like India, where design literacy among clients is still blooming, the role of the designer cannot just be service-provider.
It must be educator.
Interpreter.
Visionary.
You’re not here to nod sweetly at a bad idea and Photoshop it into something tolerable.
You’re here to lead — to see what others can’t yet see — and bring it into being.
When designers surrender their intuition for process, they don’t just lose projects.
They lose relevance.
In a world rushing headlong toward machine-made mediocrity, our humanity is the only true competitive edge left.
There’s a quiet tragedy happening in commercial design today: It looks good. It performs well. It passes all the usability tests. And it says absolutely nothing.
Design has been tilted so far toward engineering that we’ve forgotten it once stood proudly between art and science. Now? It’s all form, no feeling. All polish, no provocation. And the worst part? The industry applauds this. Clients high-five you for designing IKEA instruction manuals disguised as brands. The uncomfortable truth is: Good Design is not democratic. It is not created by consensus. It is not a series of safe bets polished to death.
Good design requires vision. It requires taste. It requires trusting the designer to be the guide — not a facilitator, not a waiter taking orders politely, but a real, sovereign, opinionated guide.
Especially in places like India, where design literacy among clients is still blooming, the role of the designer cannot just be service-provider.
It must be educator.
Interpreter.
Visionary.
You’re not here to nod sweetly at a bad idea and Photoshop it into something tolerable.
You’re here to lead — to see what others can’t yet see — and bring it into being.
When designers surrender their intuition for process, they don’t just lose projects.
They lose relevance.
In a world rushing headlong toward machine-made mediocrity, our humanity is the only true competitive edge left.