A late-night DM from a listener named Chris asked me something I couldn’t answer: did I lose my identity as a designer? My team just went one hundred percent Cursor, no more Figma. This season, I figure out what AI actually changes about the work, and what it never touched. |
When the tool that defined your job for a decade disappears overnight, what part of “designer” actually leaves with it?
For a decade, we let a tool stand in for a skill.
"Figma proficiency." Named layers. Auto layout. Clean, organized files. We put it on job descriptions and screenshotted it for LinkedIn as if any of it were the same thing as being able to actually design something.
It wasn't. It just happened to be visible.
You can see a clean file. You can't see judgment, taste, storytelling, or the ability to influence a stakeholder. So we measured the thing we could see, and we ignored the thing that actually mattered.
Then my team dropped Figma and went one hundred percent into Cursor, and a listener named Chris sent me a DM I couldn't answer: did I lose my identity as a designer?
My gut said no. Thirty seconds later, I realized I had no idea.
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That question kicked off something I've never done in all the years of this show. Season one is a full solo series. Eight episodes, no guests, just me working through what AI actually changes about our work, and what it leaves completely alone.
Episode one is about the world right before the change, back when Figma was just how we worked.
​A few things I get into:
⇢ Why we spent a decade treating tool fluency as if it were the only skill that mattered.
⇢ The unspoken ways designers ranked each other (lots of it not capital "D" design)
⇢ The opportunity cost math that explains why AI matters NOW
⇢ Why the real threat was never the technology. It was who believes in it
Here's where I landed, at least for now: the research, the flows, the judgment, the taste. That was always the job. The tool was just where the job became visible.
If your team has already made the switch, or you can feel it coming, hit reply and tell me where you are with all this, because I read every one of them!
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You iterated, pivoted, circle-backed, and made it out of Q4 (barely).
You’ve earned a Merit-ish Badge!
Choose from four sets:
​• Soft Skills, Sharp Tongue
• Cult of Figma Initiation
• Pixel Pusher Survivor Kit
• Field Notes & Frayed Nerves
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They don't teach this stuff in school
Learn the things they left off the syllabus.
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Also available at these fine retailers
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