Should designers train models? - by Carly Ayres

People are asking a lot of designers lately: Designers should be product engineers. Designers should do sales. Designers should be founders. And, yes—once and for all—designers should code. But when Russ Maschmeyer tweeted: “Designers should learn to train models,” I thought: maybe we’d gone too far. But the thread was sincere, andeven included resources. So by the time Justin Ouellette entered the discourse, I was listening. The sentiment echoes a recent conversation I had with Jessica Hische (also Russ’s partner), but with a different flavor: While both agree that designers need to understand the tools they use, Justin is most concerned with how that understanding affects the design of consumer products, especially those that embed AI. Justin sees AI as a design problem. That framing changes how he engages with it: not as a shiny new feature to bolt on, but as a material with real constraints. “The more I see it as a design need,” he says, “the more interesting it becomes.” He’s neit

saved by

• Andi