Generative ai in the product design life-cycle

friend, foe, or frenemy //

here we go

Let me start with a confession: I like generative AI. There, I said it. It’s fun and I like that it can churn out wireframes faster than a caffeine-fueled intern. I especially love that it can turn user research data into actionable insights without me having to spend three days buried in spreadsheets (to know me is to know I loathe Excel). But, do I think it should take over the entire creative process? Absolutely not. That’s like hiring a robot to write love letters—you might get the words right, but the heart just isn’t there.

Now, I know that admitting any fondness for generative AI puts me in dicey territory. The design world is split between people who think AI is the best thing since Adobe Photoshop and people who think it’s a slippery slope to creative doom. The truth, as always, is somewhere in the middle. AI isn’t the villain in some dystopian sci-fi movie, but it’s not a magical creativity genie, either. It’s a tool—a very smart, occasionally infuriating tool—that can either make our lives easier or suck the soul out of design, depending on how we use it.

Let’s talk about what AI is really good at: the boring stuff. Need fifty versions of a wireframe by lunchtime? AI’s got you covered. Want a mood board for a client pitch that looks like you spent hours curating it instead of thirty seconds typing prompts into MidJourney? Done. Honestly, if I never have to manually build out another design system again, I’ll sleep just fine at night. These are the kinds of tasks where AI shines—it’s efficient, it’s consistent, and it doesn’t get cranky when someone suggests yet another iteration. For example, Airbnb’s design team leveraged generative AI to create dynamic, user-friendly interfaces by automating the creation of design variants, saving weeks of manual labor.

And let’s not forget research. If you’ve ever waded through user testing feedback, you know it can feel like trying to decipher the Rosetta Stone after an all-nighter. AI can take that mountain of data and turn it into clear trends and actionable insights in a fraction of the time. It’s not replacing your brain; it’s just doing the heavy lifting so you can focus on solving actual design problems instead of wrestling with Excel.

However, as a process and efficiency junkie, I’m super keen on implementing AI into the product design life-cycle responsibly. That said, I hold this view with a healthy amount of caution. Introducing Process Bloat. Ironically, while AI promises efficiency, it can also create unnecessary complexity. Teams that adopt too many tools—or fail to integrate them seamlessly—can find themselves overwhelmed by technology, slowing down workflows instead of streamlining them.

In a study by McKinsey, design teams reported that over-reliance on generative AI tools sometimes led to “decision paralysis” as teams grappled with managing multiple overlapping technologies. Not to mention, we’re very much in the wild-west stage of AI tools, agents, etc. I literally had to force myself to stop reading so many articles and watching the hundreds of Instagram videos about a flashy new this and game-changing new that. I kept playing around with whatever someone was calling the best new thing ever and never got any actual work done.

But here’s where I draw the line: creativity. Ideation. The stuff that makes design, well, design. Sure, AI can generate ideas, but they’re only as good as the data they’re trained on. It doesn’t have intuition or lived experience or the ability to think, “You know what? Let’s try something totally weird and see if it works.” That’s what humans do. AI is great at remixing what already exists, but the magic of design comes from creating something entirely new, something that resonates because it was born from empathy and emotion.

Of course, there are always those who argue that AI can do it all—that it’s only a matter of time before machines take over the entire creative process. To which I say: NOPE! I don’t want to live in a world where every logo looks like it was spit out of the same algorithm or where brand identities are as soulless as a corporate mission statement. We need the human touch in design—the quirks, the imperfections, the “happy accidents” that lead to breakthroughs. AI might be able to mimic creativity, but it can’t replace the messy, beautiful process of human ideation.

But hey, let’s play devil’s advocate for a minute. What if AI did take over the creative process? Would it be the worst thing in the world? Think about it: no more brainstorming meetings that could’ve been emails, no more mood boards that get scrapped five minutes before the pitch. AI would just spit out fully-formed concepts, and we’d all go home early. Tempting, right? Except then we’d all be out of jobs, and honestly, what would we even do with all that free time? Take up knitting?

Humor aside, the real danger of AI isn’t that it’ll replace designers—it’s that it’ll make us lazy. If we let AI do all the thinking, we risk losing the skills that make us great designers in the first place: critical thinking, empathy, and the ability to take risks. AI might be able to tell you what users want based on past behavior, but it can’t anticipate what they’ll need next. That’s where we come in.

And then there are the ethical concerns, which we can’t ignore. AI learns from data, and data can be biased—or worse, downright problematic. If we’re not careful, we could end up perpetuating stereotypes or excluding marginalized voices, all in the name of efficiency. There’s nothing user-centric about that.

So where does that leave us? For me, it’s simple: use AI as a sidekick, not a replacement. Let it handle the grunt work—wireframing, prototyping, data analysis—so we can focus on the stuff that really matters. But when it comes to the big ideas, the creative leaps, the “aha!” moments that make design worth doing, leave that to the humans.

Generative AI is a tool, not a threat. If we approach it thoughtfully—questioning its outputs, integrating it responsibly, and remembering that it’s here to assist, not take over—we can harness its potential without losing what makes design truly special. But if you start letting it run the show? Don’t come crying to me when all your designs start looking like they came from the same factory.

In the end, the future of design isn’t AI versus humans; it’s humans and AI, working together. AI might be able to help us design faster and smarter, but it’s up to us to make sure we’re still designing with heart. Because no matter how advanced the tech gets, the soul of design will always belong to us. And honestly? I wouldn’t have it any other way.

So, to answer the question in the title of this article, my take on the use of generative AI in the product design life-cycle right now is… Frenemy.