Since when did loving the craft become shameful?

I was interviewing an amazing designer recently.

Her portfolio stunned me with great UI and thoughtful, complex design flows. It was exactly what we were looking for.

Yet throughout the whole interview she kept talking about how much she loves strategy, product work and wants to almost become a PM.

At the end of the interview, I told her that the position was actually likely to be more UI-heavy than strategy-heavy.

She was visibly relieved.

She said she thought talking about metrics, PM work and strategy was what we expected from senior designers.

But since when did loving the craft become something you have to hide?

If everybody is doing strategy, who is going to build the product?

Apparently many teams now hope AI will take over this part. Maybe it will. In some cases it’s already happening.

But will AI create iOS with the same attention to detail? Or Duolingo with the same bold personality? I doubt it.

AI recycles what it knows. It gets you to “good enough” remarkably fast.

But “good enough” is rarely what people remember.

Yes, maybe 80% of products will get by, especially if they are B2B systems or platforms like Amazon where users have little choice.

But in a world where launching a SaaS product is becoming easier every month, I think design becomes more important, not less.

When features become commodities, what differentiates you is the experience.

The UI.

The brand.

The elegance.

The feeling people get when they use your product.

A personal example: We recently switched from Objego, which manages our real estate, to Vivi Home.

Both products solve essentially the same problem. Objego was a leader. But Vivi Home appeared out of nowhere with greater attention to details and since switching is easy it was a no brainer.

Good luck to the Objego team that is visibly doesn’t care about good experience.

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I actually think the industry will make a full circle.

First we’ll push designers towards PM work, engineering and strategy.

Then companies will realise their products all look and feel the same and become a replaceable commodity.

And eventually they’ll rediscover the value of people who obsess over the craft.

Maybe not every company.

But the ones competing on product quality will.

So if you genuinely love design, I wouldn’t give up on it just yet.

We might simply be living through the awkward transition before people remember why great designers mattered in the first place.

A question to you: do you also feel like loving the craft has become almost shameful to admit?

🩶