The AI-kills-designers narrative is dead. Craft-centric is coming back. And why Service Design matters, more than ever (but, with a catch).
For the past two years the narrative around AI adoption has been sheer existential dread. Now, a new report from Figma shows the opposite: Designers actively ramping up their AI usage are 25% more likely to report increasing happiness than the skeptics.
For the adopters, these "Big Three" benefits have become the new baseline:
- 89% report that AI helps them work faster.
- 80% say AI allows them to collaborate more effectively with their teams.
- 91% agree that AI tools have actually improved the quality of their creative outputs.
Also according to the report, with AI handling routine production, the value of the craft has matured and shifted toward "systems thinking and the ability to translate complexity into clarity".
Now, system thinking is practiced in all kinds of design attacks, but one in particular is damn good at it: My good and old Service Design.
As one of the co-founders of Livework, the agency that invented Service Design, and the author of six books on the craft (with a seventh on its way), I could not be happier to see the attention moving back into the craft of designing ecosystems.
But...but... but...
Service Design is the unlock, with a catch.
I'm not talking about Service Design as a "profession", I'm talking about Service Design as skill. A skill that every designer MUST unlock.
Service Design for All.
I've been talking about it for years. I've been right about it for years.
Now, it's here.
Service Design as a vertical profession will continue to be as important as it is today, with its scope in the pipeline limited to discovery. The massive unlock I see coming for designers is in Service Design: the skill.
The superpower to see relationships, craft and operate ecologies when others see transactions and funnels.
Like I've always said:
A Service Designer is like Neo in the Matrix, while people see transactions and funnels, we are trained to see the complex interdependencies of life unfolding and spot opportunities in this web.
So what is slowly becoming the holy grail hire in Design? Not Service Design specialization.
This:
The service-design-red-pilled designer, that is able to produce outcomes in the UX/AI co-piloting stack, and proof-defend taste in high stakes product pipeline.
Bet on it.