Key Thoughts

  • Designers tend to care about people as people. Instead of just as prospects or customers.
  • Design as a field has evolved to speak more machine, more scale, and more $$$s.
  • A lot of work has been done in the design world to birth a new “aesthetics of ethics.”
  • Speaking human really well will matter more than speaking machine in this next chapter. 
  • But it’s not mainstage because it doesn’t sound like “time or $$$s saved” or “new $$$s.”
  • Next year’s report will center around the business value of this new kind of design.

Design in Tech Report 2023: Design and Artificial Intelligence

The letters “AI” visually shifting into negative words like “inadequate” and positive words like “imaginative” by virtue of the letters “A” and “I” sitting in them.

This year’s report provides a primer on how to speak machine in the new age of pre-trained foundation models and so-called “large language model (LLM)” AIs.

Thank you to Henrik, Frederik, Sean-Wood, Kai, Kim, Samuel, Henry, Ryan, Chris, Colin, Agnieszka, Bob, Gary, Agu, Dave, Moisés, Me, Ankita, Darius, Rachel, Aldo, PChia, Heather, Justine, Miguel, Florentin, Juliana, Amanda, Sam, Gaby, Kerry, Chloe, Duncan, Jan, Harshika, Arum, Gael, Raffaela, Ghizlene, Marcel, Narasimha, Eelko, Jason, Debk, Andrea, Ashish, André, Bill, Maria, Art, Puneet, Vidhi, Matt, Lauren, Brian, Sridhar, Gaurang, Julie, Ocean, Axel, Sithembiso, Rodolfo, Sanmitra, Sébastien, Bruce, Jason, Maria, Carlo, Bs, Angelina, Silvia, Filippo, Manisha, Roland-Philippe, Andrés, Ame, Lucas, Marin, Mark, Cristin, Quang, Juhan, Pat, Luiza, Zyo, Chrys, Mea, Rupert, Ellie, Richard, Paolo, Sean, Guy, Kaladhar, Sebastian, Alessio, Surya, Richard, Andre, Dani, Vivek, Christina, Jesper, Ranjeet, Kshipra, Betsongeorge, Jodean, Marc, Paul, Akshay, Roman, Dylan, Naomi, George, Paul for contributing to the 2023 survey!

PDF Version

I think all the links in the doc work. And if not, I’ve made QR-code versions of the linked content so that you can enjoy it from your mobile device.

Video Version

This is an abridged version of the 1-hour long talk I gave at SXSW. Enjoy!

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What Is The Design In Tech Report?

Back in 2015, I started sharing everything I’d recently learned into a kind of “music album” of knowledge to drop at SXSW. It’s a side project that hasn’t left my side, thus far—I guess it saves me time so I don’t have to write another book :+). Big thanks to the SXSW team for letting me come back for nine consecutive years! —JM