Well, I’m done teaching for the year and I’m not in the classroom, but reading articles and making videos is hard work. I’m considering publishing this newsletter twice a week, poll at the end. If you’re getting value out of this, please forward it to a friend.
Figma’s Config Conference is June 21-22.
Not really AI news, but so many great sessions in person in San Francisco or online. There’s a panel discussion on AI and the Future of Design and presentation from the team at Duolingo.
In late 2022, OpenAI approached Duolingo with early access to GPT-4. It only took a single demo for our CEO to exclaim, “Pivot your team immediately—this is going to transform education.” Fast forward to March 2023: Duolingo is launching a new subscription tier, Duolingo Max, as one of the few launch partners for OpenAI’s newest GPT-4 model.
Why UX Design Still Matters
It seems like every major tech company has now given us a writing assistant, but if it just gives you re-generated marketing copy, it’s still not great and you’re not growing as a person. Instead Maggie Appleton suggests they make a tool that helps us become better writers instead of writing for us. This is a great article with videos of her excellently crafted Figma Prototypes. Highly recommended read!
Paradigm Shift of the Week #1
I’ve been reading Luke W’s blog for over ten years and he had a brilliant and concise point to make about nature of the tools we use.
To date, most digital image and video editing tools have been canvas-centric. Advances in artificial intelligence, however, have started a shift toward more object-centric workflows.
He then goes on to describe how AI assisted tools can now identify, add, and remove individual objects from your photo or video and we should rethink our entire workflow.
Paradigm Shift of the Week #2
In a similar way, Rei Inamoto of the UX Collective says It’s the End of Brands as we Know Them. He explains that people no longer need years of training to create technically advanced imagery and that has now raised the quality of what we previously perceived as average. As well as expectations of how quickly we can produce great work.
The good news with generative AI is that the space between your idea and execution has been collapsed to a second, The bad news? It’s clear mediocrity is now free. People that have no discernible artistic talent can create something that’s actually pretty good.
An AI Version of Your Best Self
If you’re really excited that Google Docs is now going to write the words for you while Photoshop makes the pictures, you’ll probably be let go in the first round of layoffs. But if you’re interested in using Chat GPT as your personal mentor to become a better version of yourself, you’ll really enjoy this article by Tony Jin of the UX Collective.
And if you’re just starting out in your design career, feel overwhelmed, or you just feel stuck in your current situation, you should read this article by Yeasin Arifin, also of UX Collective. It’s geared towards beginners so that they can stay competitive in the workplace.
Adobe Illustrator Gets Generative Recolor
I’m writing this on 6/13, the day of the release, but you’re reading this on 6/19 when this Newsletter is published. By now YouTube is probably with flooded with demos. Check the Adobe Press release, try it out with Firefly online, or Upgrade to the latest version of Illustrator. You can read a brief article from the Verge or check out their slick promo video.
Framer AI Now Does Everything For You
Framer has come a long way in recent years and has positioned themselves as reasonable competitor to Webflow in the world of modern ‘No Code’ tools. But Webflow is still working on it’s AI assistant and Framer has launched theirs. Just type in a lengthy prompt or description of the type of site you’d like and Framer picks a layout, colors, fonts AND writes all the code AND designs responsive layouts for smaller screens AND writes the copy AND finds images from Unsplash. You can then cycle through different color pallates and fonts, edit the copy and images, or just ask it to “regenerate” a brand new layout. This all happens in about 2 minutes. Check out their slick promo video.
That’s it for this week, but I read so many more articles, I could easily publish this newsletter 2 or 3 times a week. Would that interest you?
The article on leveraging AI for creativity was amazing! Thank you-- I have some things now I want to try over the summer.