Where Does Product Design Go From Here?

How Design is Evolving in the Face of Rapid Change

This piece is a culmination of many discussions and some thoughtful feedback sessions with my former colleagues, Denis Lacasse and Peter McNulty, at Momentum over this past year. We spent a great deal of time reflecting on the rapid changes within the design industry and the challenges that these shifts have posed. There were too many evolutions, ideas, and insights often overflowing given the sheer volume that we wanted to express. As we talked through our experiences and perspectives, often during a spirited discussion over a pint on a Friday,  it became pretty clear that we needed to condense our thoughts into something more cohesive, readable, and something that could effectively communicate the core of what we were all trying to say. 

The result of what you're about to read is a distilled draft of our collective insights as viewed through my lens. 

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Reflecting on my journey through the design industry since the late 1990s I've witnessed firsthand some of the cycles of expansion and contraction that have repeatedly redefined what it means to be a designer. These types of shifts have not only transformed the skills required but also the way we as employers approach hiring and cultivating talent. This piece is a reflection of those cycles and exploration and where we feel the design is heading next. 

The Early Days

In the late 1990s and early 2000s during the dotcom bubble, the design industry was in a phase of rapid expansion. As designers, there were new opportunities everywhere and the role was often defined by versatility. Many of us were expected to wear multiple hats working across visual design, interaction design, a bit of usability, and have a good handle on frontend development with some backend capabilities. We had to pitch in everywhere from campaigns, marketing, branding, product, product marketing, etc. However, at the time not all designers possessed these types of diverse skills. So when the market contracted almost overnight with the burst of the dotcom bubble those of us who had these multi-disciplinary skills were better positioned to push through. This profile more easily spanned the wide chasm left by the industry implosion and transitioned successfully into the Web 2.0 era a few years later. I knew a lot of others that struggled during this time as they needed to find a way to adapt.

This was the age of the X-shaped designer, those who could design across multiple disciplines, but also code and self-manage projects. At Momentum Design Lab, the agency that I founded and more recently departed, this multi-disciplined profile allowed us to thrive in this environment. We leveraged the broad skills of our team to tackle a wider range of projects with versatility which was key to our success. These profiles looked a lot like this:

The Rise of SaaS and Specialization

As we moved into the early 2010's the design industry experienced another significant expansion with the rise of both SaaS and mobile apps. The complexity of these projects required not just versatility, but also a deeper specialization of the unique capabilities amongst our team. However, during this period the X-shaped designer who had been valuable to us in the past became hard to find. The rapid expansion of the industry created a scarcity of talent capable of bridging design and technology forcing us to rethink how we were hiring. The market shift was toward an increasing amount of specialized I-shaped roles driven by both the rapidly expanding design market and the narrow focus of experience design education and training programs. As a result, the role of the designer became fragmented with narrow specialists emerging to meet the demand.

To continue our success we latched on to M-shaped designers who had deep expertise in multiple areas while augmenting our team with T-shaped and some X-shaped designers whenever we could find them. Our core team profile looked like this:

Creative Dilution in the Face of Contraction

As the market continued to expand the focus on specialized design led to what I call "creative dilution." The programs that were producing these new graduates with strong process skills tailored toward specific roles, often lacked the diversity and creative depth creating resources with thinner design skills from what had previously defined the field. 

This dilution in the breadth of skills was particularly evident during most of the countless resume and portfolio screenings, in-person reviews, and interviews I conducted which began to look and sound increasingly similar, often showcasing a one-size-fits-all and repetitive approach to design with many of the projects missing foundational design theory and often relying heavily on generic design systems and templates. There was very little differentiation and the craft seemed to be slowly disappearing. 

The lack of creative diversity left many of our clients creatively stuck, unable to achieve the unique high-quality outcomes that they desired. They turned to agencies like Momentum often seeking teams capable of breaking through these creative barriers. Our ability to cultivate these types of designers who could think critically and adapt fluidly across these different disciplines became both increasingly rare and increasingly valuable to us in a market that was struggling to maintain a creative edge.

The Emergence of the S-Shaped Designer, Strategic Designer

During 2022 and 2023, two significant developments took place almost simultaneously: the market contracted once again and GenAI tools like ChatGPT and hundreds of AI-powered productivity tools began to take off. These two parallel shifts introduced new challenges and opportunities within the design industry. Employers went from struggling to acquire enough talent to suddenly having a surplus of high-quality candidates in their hiring pipelines. 

If you look at the past periods of market contraction, it often shifted towards and directly benefited more multidisciplinary designers. With the rise of AI-powered tools, the market is calling for an even more versatile designer, one that is more capable and seamlessly integrates various disciplines and navigates the complexities of modern digital products. This evolution has led to the emergence of the “S-shaped designer.”

This S-shaped designer represents the next evolution in design profiles. It symbolizes someone who can weave together design thinking, technology, and business acumen all while delivering comprehensive solutions. The fluid curvy nature of the “S” letter reflects a designer who embodies adaptability with continuous learning and the ability to integrate diverse skills into a cohesive approach. It's a return to the fundamentals of an old era but with a broader set of capabilities that include prompt engineering, coding, research, product strategy, functional prototyping, product management, visual design, creative direction, and system architecture.

At the center of this evolution is prompting which has become a powerful tool for designers helping us iterate through necessary steps more effectively and strategically. This new breed of designer excels at strategic thinking often moving beyond traditional roles to encompass everything distilling research through to requirements into crafting the user experience to executing fully coded prototypes. Additionally, while Automation and AI handle more and more routine tasks this S-shaped designer steps up the value chain where strategic insight and creative direction are becoming more essential to the process.

In this role, this "Strategic Designer" effectively serves as their own Chief Product Officer guiding the entire process with a holistic approach to strategic vision. What truly sets them apart is their ability to integrate these diverse skills. They leverage AI to enhance experiences using prompting to iterate and refine concepts and workflows applying research to inform both design and the system architecture. In essence, this designer bridges a gap between the complexity of digital products and the transformative potential of AI thus connecting the dots between disciplines. They know how to use AI in the process and design for AI as a product. They ensure creativity, craft, and strategic insight remain central to the design process.

Closing the Loop

This latest adaptation needed in design is marking a defining moment with the market demand for the Strategic Designer which brings both a skills gap and and the opportunity to fill them. The potential for growth designers can go through is immense for those who want to embrace continuous learning and adapt quickly. While this may feel like we're closing the loop to where we were just years ago, it's with an entirely new set of tools, skills, and methodologies to go with it. Perhaps in another 5 to 8 years, we'll see we might see specialization come back to being en vogue. Only time will tell.

Adversity always seems to have a way of forging the next generation of talent, those who will rise to the occasion and adapt to the new realities. If you're trying to figure out how you fit into all of this, now is the time to dive deeper into your critical thinking skills, explore foundational design more deeply, measure every word in your prompts, and learn to code. This will be the greatest gift you can give yourself.

The future of design will be defined by fluidity and interconnectedness giving us a full range of possibilities. What are you going to do to prepare yourself? How do you see design evolving? And are you ready to meet those demands?