Will AI Tools Help Professional Designers? Or Render Them Obsolete?

Photo by Alex Perez on Unsplash

Designers are the rockstars of the digital industry.

Clients from all walks of life look to create the most attractive and user-friendly materials and products, to promote and elevate their brand.

As more software and creative platforms appear --all seeking to make good design accessible--will the invention of artificial intelligence (AI) tools help professional designers, or render them obsolete?

Design for Everybody

The beauty of AI tools in this space, is that robots (for the most part) do the grunt work for you. From company logos to website copy and marketing collateral, entrepreneurs and startups can now produce quality results without the considerable investment of hiring professional designers.

While Adobe Photoshop has become a household name for anyone who wants to edit images, it can take years of practice or vocational training to be adept at utilizing its full range of tools.

Even for design professionals, removing the background from images is a time-consuming task that involves a very steady hand and unlimited amounts of patience.

AI design tools such as Slazzer have simplified this tedious process by allowing users to upload an image to their background remover and download it with the background removed or replaced with another image. The tool has recently launched a Photoshop extension, allowing designers to save time when creating cutouts.

According to Andy Caso, co-founder of Slazzer, “Now with Slazzer’s AI integrated within their platform, users can get accurate cutouts in seconds without any manual intervention.”

Background removal is just one of the few applications of AI tools that have significantly lowered the barrier of entry to beautiful design.

AI-run websites can generate logo choices based on basic information and preferred color palettes, allowing young businesses to brand themselves effortlessly and enter the industry with a strong image.

Tech giant Google has spearheaded a variety of experiments to explore the different ways to implement AI in creative work. Their experiments include AutoDraw, which changes doodles into proper drawings, and FontJoy, which creates pleasing font combinations. These tools help amateur designers to produce designs that look a million bucks, without having to spend it.

Onward and Upward

The ability for AI to streamline and simplify design is not only beneficial to entrepreneurs or amateur designers.

These robust tools such as background removal and color palette pairing can save hours for seasoned professional designers and allow them to spend their valuable time on the conceptual parts of the process.

AI platforms such as Microsoft’s Sketch2Code that change hand-drawn sketches into UI designs and code can help designers to figure out whether a prototype will work without having to involve programmers and invest unnecessary hours of development time during the conceptual stage.

Ultimately, AI tools can help career designers better implement their creativity. While these tools can assist design newbies in achieving accessible design, they can further raise the quality and workflow efficiency of professional designers. Batch production and design automation reduce manual labor, save stress, and improve project turnaround times.

And while some designers may be worried about AI taking over their jobs, it will be a long time before robots can replace the human touch.

Design jobs are defined by innovation and social intelligence. They involve client empathy, problem framing, and thoughtful persuasion. AI is smart but cannot think and feel like humans, just yet.

That said, there is no doubt that lowering the barrier for learning and mastering design will change the industry, particularly when it comes to its professional price points. However, competitive top designers will come up with novel concepts that cement them to their esteemed status.

AI for User Experience

User interface and user experience (UI/UX) design is an extremely promising yet under-explored application of AI. Where clunky feedback forms used to be the only avenue for website users to provide information about their user experience, AI can now analyze hundreds of data points to determine how users react to design elements.

AI can also be used to analyze A/B testing and find out which version of a design performs the best. With this information, AI can nudge designers in the right direction and help them to tweak their UI/UX designs to receive the most ideal response from users.

The ultra-predictive algorithm of Netflix is one example of how AI has been used to create a personalized UX. Instead of telling you which genres and movies your users like to watch, imagine if AI could tell you what colors to make your website or how many images to use? As AI technology advances, the applications of AI in design are potentially boundless.

By allowing everyone to design, artificial intelligence tools are constructing a more expressive landscape for every business, designer, and random Internet user. Let the computers take over the tiresome and monotonous aspects of design work. This way, we can focus on augmenting our creativity and generate more ideas for the future.