Keep the Poetry is where Tenny Pinheiro writes about how designers stay essential, human, and indispensable in an AI-accelerated world.
You can't kill the artefacts that enable micro-nudges and key flow decisions (as early as in the problem space) and then complain you lost your job to a bot.
Q1 2026 just broke all records with $300B poured into AI startups globally.
Creating forced-friction will get you better results with Stitch, Claude Design. Break down your zero to one explorations into (0 -> .5)*n explorations.
Maybe modal dialogs are wrong. Maybe forms are wrong. Maybe tabs, breadcrumbs, side nav, settings pages, the entire vocabulary we’ve been treating as physics is actually just a set of conventions we never bothered to re-examine.
The AI code + design space is not a monolith. As plans of attack are shaping up, I can see paths emerging. Here's a horizon lookout.
We are coming out of an era where the discipline of product became the discipline of picking which feature to build next. Now, we are entering one where build is no longer scarce.
They say AI killed designers. I say: we are about to see the craft explode. My thesis, and 4 things to (really) monitor if you are a designer 👇 .
“Claude Design just killed designers,” said the people who’ve never had to move something 8px to the left.
Ain't no one a "curator" here (what? 😂). Designers are builders. Fluid UIs are exhibit A.
AI is forcing teams to optimize designers for speed. The winners will be the ones who keep the poetry.
To say "converge and diverge" is dead, is to literally say lateral thinking is dead. Ok, let's talk about Mehrabian’s 7-38-55 rule, then.
The AI-kills-designers narrative is dead. Craft-centric is coming back. And why Service Design matters, more than ever (but, with a catch).
AI produced garbage, is (also) waste. Power is increasing exponentially. Control is lagging. Why this is great for designers?