AI-first design is a culture shift, not a tooling upgrade
March 9, 2026
What interests me is something far less theatrical and far more consequential: how AI fundamentally changes the way product organisations learn. Over the past 6 months, we have invested deeply in AI-first design workflows, not as a side experiment or a hackathon, but as a serious shift in how we build.
The results have been tangible. We have significantly reduced the time to go from idea to validation. What previously took weeks now takes days, and traditional handoffs between design and engineering are starting to look a little different. Most importantly, we are getting through the build, measure, learn loop more often.
Just as the practice of software engineering is undergoing a transformation, so too is design. And just as right now, we don’t really have answers, just a lot of questions in software engineering, in design, people are asking those questions as well. So here are some thoughts about how design practice is transforming now that ostensibly things are easier to make.
