December 10, 2025

Key Shifts in the Future of a Designer

JetStyle’s CEO Alexey Kulakov shares his thoughts on how AI is changing the designer profession:

What designers should do to avoid being left behind:

Understand the client’s perspective: empathize, describe your understanding, conduct interviews, and be observant.
Master negotiation skills: quickly understand someone else's worldview, adapt, and clearly communicate your thoughts.
Understand psychology and behavior patterns: study cognitive psychology and model behavior.
Test scenarios.
Use AI tools for scientific research.
Prototype quickly with no-code and vibe-coding.
Learn new tools fast, manage pipelines, and automate workflows.
Manage your personal knowledge base.
Build your taste, curiosity, and empathy.
Develop a clear vision of the product’s form and behavior: the depth and accuracy of this vision will be key.

This list is useful not just for designers.

This skill set helps create a product’s image in its raw, real form. Therefore, the best designers will be those with a deeper vision, better empathy, and the ability to describe it clearly.

I’ve always considered the visual part to be just the surface of design. I guess we’ll keep managing it for a while. The visual carries a crucial message, sometimes just as much as words.

But let’s be honest — this is relevant for about 10% of design words. In the other 90%, style doesn’t carry much weight, and the designer’s job is simply to make it "look good enough." And this job is already being taken over by machines.

We’ll have to become what we were always meant to be — people who define the meaning of communication, add a spark of creativity, and make it unique.

The rest will be handled by machines.

We share a lot about our approach to integrating AI into our processes to speed up production. Read more on our website

Let’s talk about how AI can save your resources: orders@jet.style

FAQ

Will AI replace designers in the near future?

AI is already replacing a large part of routine visual work where the task is simply to “make it look good enough.” However, designers who define meaning, understand users, shape communication, and build a clear product vision are not being replaced. Their role is shifting, not disappearing.

What skills do designers need to stay relevant in the age of AI?

To stay competitive, designers need to go beyond visuals. Key skills include client empathy, interviewing and research, negotiation, understanding psychology and behavior patterns, rapid prototyping with no-code tools, and the ability to use AI for research, testing scenarios, and automation.

Should designers learn AI tools or focus on core design skills?

Designers should do both. Learning AI tools is no longer optional — it’s becoming a baseline skill. At the same time, AI increases the value of structured thinking, taste, curiosity, and the ability to clearly describe ideas and intentions. Tools amplify skills, they don’t replace them.

How is AI changing the role of a designer in product teams?

AI shifts the designer’s role from execution to meaning-making. Instead of focusing mainly on visuals, designers are expected to understand the product deeply, prototype quickly, test hypotheses, manage workflows, and help shape how a product behaves and communicates with users.

What should designers focus on if visuals are increasingly automated?

Designers should focus on vision, empathy, and interpretation. Defining what a product is, how it behaves, and why it exists becomes more important than manual execution. AI handles production faster, but humans define intent, context, and uniqueness.

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