Overview
Jenny Wen from Anthropic argues that traditional design processes may be outdated in the AI era. Instead of following rigid user research → personas → wireframes workflows, designers should prioritize rapid prototyping enabled by AI tools that make exploration faster and cheaper.
Key Arguments
- The traditional design process is outdated for today’s AI-enabled world where anyone can build quickly: The conventional workflow of user research leading to personas, user journeys, and wireframes before building anything may be too slow and rigid when AI tools make creation more accessible
- Prototyping should replace process as the primary design methodology: AI makes prototypes much more accessible and less time-consuming than before, allowing designers to explore ideas through building rather than extensive upfront planning
- AI reduces the cost of building wrong things, enabling more experimental approaches: Previously, wrong design directions could waste months of development time, but AI-assisted programming means wrong directions now waste only days, allowing teams to take more risks and explore the problem space proactively
Implications
This represents a fundamental shift in how product teams should work in the AI era. Teams can now afford to be more experimental and prototype-driven rather than planning-heavy, potentially leading to faster innovation cycles and more user-centered solutions discovered through rapid iteration rather than extensive upfront research.
Counterpoints
- Traditional design processes provide necessary structure and validation: User research and systematic workflows help ensure products actually solve real user problems rather than just being technically feasible prototypes
- Rapid prototyping may lead to surface-level solutions: Without deep user research and strategic thinking, teams might build polished prototypes that miss fundamental user needs or business requirements