Why AI advantages younger designers

So a recent chat with Jenny Wen about the future of product design made me wonder if what we're experiencing in software is similar to what happened with poker.

In poker, for many years the people with both talent and time to get reps in became the best in the game - Phil Ivey, Daniel Negreanu, etc.

As poker became popular younger players played online and started playing multiple tables at once. Some with even 8+ tables going all at once. What that meant was the learning happened at orders-of-magnitude greater speed and new exceptional players emerged way much more quickly.

So in software, 10-15 years ago you had an idea, you designed it for a few weeks, maybe another few weeks of building and then you get feedback on whether your hunch was correct. Engineers maybe went from idea to test in half the time but at less fidelity. But still took days/weeks.

But now, designers who want to build software have a way to get way faster reps in. They can potentially build and learn in hours/days what used to take us weeks or months.

This means that it's not just that they're faster at building, but faster at LEARNING. That's key because the predominant thing we hear in design right now is - what will happen to the junior designers?!

HOWEVER, it could be that the junior designers, they're the ones that will thrive.

In 1-2 years, they'll have experience that took us 10+ years. AND they'll have the new way of working as their default.

So it could be that young designers are actually best equipped right now to succeed if they approach it correctly and the rest of us are in a “adapt or die” moment...