The evolving role of the designer in the age of ML and AI - a personal reflection

Design has been part of my life for decades, yet I have never experienced a shift as profound as the one we are living through now. Machine learning and AI are reshaping the landscape of creativity and problem-solving in ways that would have felt like science fiction only a few years ago.

And yet, despite the pace of change, I find myself more convinced than ever of the value of design, and the value of the designer. Not the designer as stylist or decorator, but the designer as thinker, translator and steward of the human experience.

Looking back to understand where we stand

Whenever people ask where Design Thinking really came from, I find myself tracing it back much further than the modern narrative suggests. Long before it became a boardroom buzzword, researchers such as John E. Arnold at Stanford were reframing design as a fundamentally human-centred discipline. Arnold argued that innovation should begin with human needs, curiosity and imagination, not predefined processes or technological constraints.

Around the same time, the American architect Buckminster Fuller was pioneering systems thinking through his Critical Path methodology, urging designers and engineers to consider the broader ecological, social and structural implications of their work. His approach expanded the very idea of what a “design problem” could be and positioned designers as stewards of interconnected systems rather than creators of isolated artefacts.

More recently, the popularisation of Design Thinking owes much to David Kelley and Tim Brown at IDEO, who translated these academic and philosophical roots into an accessible, market-ready methodology. They gave language and structure to ideas that had been evolving for decades, and in doing so, they made human-centred innovation understandable — and desirable — to organisations around the world.

These influences form part of the lineage we inherit today. And in the age of AI, their core message remains unchanged: design begins with people, not technology.

From stylist to strategist

I started my career when design was still largely associated with aesthetics. Clients brought designers in to make things look right or apply a final layer of polish to something already defined. One of my earliest projects was working on the original Land Rover Discovery interior design concept. My work focused on surface, form and visual language — using design techniques to reinforce ideas of strength, capability and purpose. It was meaningful work, but it was still fundamentally styling. The mechanics, decisions and strategy lived elsewhere.

That world has gone. Today, designers are invited in much earlier, precisely because the problems organisations face are too complex to solve through styling alone. We help shape the questions before anyone jumps to answers. We challenge assumptions. We frame what success should look like.

As AI accelerates what is technically possible, organisations need help staying grounded in what is meaningful. That is where design earns its place at the strategy table.

From maker to orchestrator

AI has already changed the way we work. Tasks that once required hours of crafting — layout exploration, idea generation, even early prototyping — can now happen in minutes.

But this does not replace the designer. It reframes the role.

I now find myself orchestrating rather than simply making. Curating outputs rather than producing all of them by hand. Drawing together the perspectives of technologists, researchers, stakeholders and users. Using AI as a partner in exploration, not a shortcut to answers.

The role is becoming wider, more conceptual, and more connected to decision-making than ever before.

The ethical dimension we can’t avoid

With power comes responsibility.

AI has pushed designers into new moral terrain. We are no longer only shaping products. We are shaping behaviours, systems and outcomes that have social, cultural and ethical impact.

I no longer ask only “How should this work?” but “What should this do?” and “Why are we making this?”

Design has always had an ethical dimension, but AI has amplified it. We now sit at the intersection of capability and consequence. That is not a place we can occupy casually.

Curators of values

One of the most surprising things about AI is its capacity to produce vast quantities of creative output — ideas, variations, solutions. But abundance creates its own challenge. Someone has to decide what matters.

That responsibility will never belong to the machine. It belongs to us.

A designer today is, in many ways, a curator of values. We choose which ideas reflect human need. Which align with the organisation’s purpose. Which hold integrity, and which drift into novelty or noise.

AI might expand the space of possibilities, but designers define the space of relevance.

Why the human role still matters

For all the talk of automation and acceleration, the qualities that define good design remain stubbornly human. Empathy. Judgement. Imagination. Context. Moral reasoning.

AI can support these qualities, but it cannot replace them. And it certainly cannot guide an organisation through ambiguity, uncertainty or change.

Designers bring the clarity that technology alone cannot deliver.

Rethinking our careers

This brings me to something I have been reflecting on personally — what this means for the designers working today.

We can no longer define ourselves by the tools we master, because tools will continue to change. We can no longer rely solely on craft, because AI will increasingly share that space with us.

Our value lies somewhere deeper: in our ability to think critically, to guide ethically, to interpret complex situations and to design with intent.

This evolution invites each of us to rethink our own path. What skills do we want to grow? Where can we contribute most meaningfully? How do we want to shape the systems that will define the next decade?

The answers will be different for each of us, but one thing feels certain to me: the future of design belongs to those willing to step beyond execution and into leadership. Not leadership in title, but leadership in thought, clarity and purpose.

AI is not the end of design. It is the beginning of a broader, deeper version of the discipline — one that requires us to stay curious, stay human and stay intentional about the world we are helping to create.

Design as a foundation for modern innovation

As I reflect on the shifts happening around us, I keep coming back to one simple truth. Design has never been a superficial practice. It has always been a way of seeing, questioning, and making sense of the world. What has changed is that businesses now have the language to recognise this.

Design thinking has given creatives a way to articulate their value in environments that once struggled to understand it. It translated what Nigel Cross once called “designerly ways of knowing” into a framework that analytical minds can grasp — structured, teachable and measurable. It has expanded the boundaries of the profession and positioned design not as an embellishment, but as a core driver of modern innovation.

This is why the evolving role of the designer matters so much. In a world shaped increasingly by ML and AI, the designer’s ability to navigate ambiguity, interpret human needs and guide ethical decision-making is not just relevant, it is foundational. Businesses rely on it far more than they realise.

If AI accelerates possibility, design determines purpose. And the responsibility for shaping that purpose — thoughtfully, ethically and with humanity at its centre — is ours.