Before starting a project, define its intended feel with key adjectives (e.g., "techie," "classical," "sharp"). This vision becomes a powerful filter, helping you make consistent decisions and resist the temptation to chase trends or get discouraged by other designers' work.
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The abstract, subjective term 'beauty' often incites disagreement. More useful and agreeable words are 'interesting' (the opposite of boring), 'charming' (playful and considerate), and 'meaningful' (contextually relevant). This provides a better framework for design and critique.
Inspired by architect Christopher Alexander, a designer's role shifts from building the final "house" to creating the "pattern language." This means designing a system of reusable patterns and principles that empowers users to construct their own solutions tailored to their unique needs.
Canva operationalizes big ideas using a "chaos to clarity" framework. An initial chaotic idea is progressively clarified through small, tangible steps—starting with writing it down and culminating in a vision deck. This process makes amorphous concepts real, shareable, and easier to build.
Leverage AI as an idea generator rather than a final execution tool. By prompting for multiple "vastly different" options—like hover effects—you can review a range of possibilities, select a promising direction, and then iterate, effectively using AI to explore your own taste.
The true creative potential for AI in design isn't generating safe, average outputs based on training data. Instead, AI should act as a tool to help designers interpolate between different styles and push them into novel, underexplored aesthetic territories, fostering originality rather than conformity.
Instead of debating individual features, establish a clear "perspective" for your product. Artist's perspective as a "push-based product for quick insights" makes it easy to reject requests that don't align, like building an in-house video hosting tool. This aligns the entire organization and simplifies the roadmap.
AI coding tools generate functional but often generic designs. The key to creating a beautiful, personalized application is for the human to act as a creative director. This involves rejecting default outputs, finding specific aesthetic inspirations, and guiding the AI to implement a curated human vision.
AI tools can drastically increase the volume of initial creative explorations, moving from 3 directions to 10 or more. The designer's role then shifts from pure creation to expert curation, using their taste to edit AI outputs into winning concepts.
When exploring UI solutions, use a tool like Magic Patterns and its "Inspiration Mode" to generate multiple, distinct design approaches from a single prompt. By asking the AI to "think expansively and make each option differentiated," product managers can quickly explore a wide solution space and avoid getting stuck on a single initial idea.
