For example, I think design, as they mean it, could be described as "how to get that thing we care about". The correct amount of design depends on how exacting the outcome and outputs needs to be across different dimensions (how fast, how accurate, how easy to interpret, how easy to utilize as an input for some other system). For generalized things where there's not exacting standards for that, AI works well. For systems with exacting standards along one or more of those aspects, the process of design allows for the needed control and accuracy as the person or people doing the work are in a constant feedback loop and can dial in to what's needed. If you give up control of the inside of that loop, you lose the fine grained control required for even knowing how far you are away from theoretical maximums for those aspects.
Thank you for so succinctly demonstrating the problem with using AI for everything. You used to have to either care enough to do the design yourself or find someone who cared and specialized in that to do it for you. Now you quickly and cheaply fill in the parts you don't personally care about with sawdust, and as this becomes normalized you deprive yourself and others from discovering that they care about the design part. You'll ship your thing now, and it'll be fine. The damage is delayed and externalized.
I won't advocate against use of new technology to make yourself more productive, but it's important to at least understand what you're losing.
Or worse, you gave up because you did not have the time to learn the skill or the money to hire somebody. In this case, your dream just died.
If Grok didn't create the fake nudes users were dreaming about but couldn't create with Photoshop,
would my headstone crumble down?
As "intel" dashboards stay a dream,
the Hollywood wind's a howl
As photos are just still
The Kremlin's falling
As Einstein is not wrong
Radio 4 is static
You think most UI/UX designers, or the artists creating slop for content marketing spam factories for the past decades, cared? Some, maybe. Most probably had higher ambitions, but are doing what actually pays their bills.
It's similar to software developers. Most of those being paid to code couldn't care less, they're in there for the fat paycheck; everyone else mostly complains the work is boring or dumb (or worse), but once you have those skills, it makes no economic sense to switch careers (unless, of course, you're into management, or into playing the entrepreneurship roulette).
The paychecks weren’t great. Everyone was offering to pay designers with “exposure”. If they didn’t innately care about the field they would have done something more lucrative.
the parent's point is that it doesn't work that way. The point is self reinforcing. Design is not a thing. it's the earned scars from the process. Fine to disagree but it reinforces the point.
Like, maybe I just want to make an interface to configure my homemade espresso dohickey, do I have to wear a turtleneck and read Christopher Alexander now? I just wanted a couple buttons and some sliders.
We don't all have to be experts in everything, some people just need a means to an end, and that's ok. I won't like the wave of slop that's coming, but the antidote certainly isn't this.
It's true that design theory writing is annoyingly verbose and intangible, but that doesn't make it wrong. Give someone a concrete language spec and they will not really know how it feels to use the language, and even once they do experience its use they will not be able to explain that feeling using the language spec. Invariably the language will tend to become intangible and likely very verbose.
But to answer your question: no, it's of course perfectly serviceable to just copy the interface others have created, and if the needs aren't exactly the same you can just put up with the inevitable discomfort from where the original doesn't translate into the copy.