Adopting AI in design teams

At our recent Design Leaders’ Roundtable, we explored design teams’ readiness for adopting AI. How to seize the opportunities presented by it, while tackling possible challenges?

Our guest speaker, Matias Vaara, shared a three-tier model for preparing organizations for the AI-driven future of digital product development. His model focuses on tools, training, and processes.

Choose the perfect set of tools for your team and train your staff accordingly

The first step in successfully adopting AI is ensuring your designers are well-trained and confident in using AI tools.

Second, curate the right set of tools. With so many AI options available, choose the ones that work best for your team. This is especially important, as standard and Frontier AI tools differ substantially.

To make choosing your tools and training your team easier, Matias introduced the concept of the “golden ratio” of human and AI input. The concept is similar to the jagged frontier of human-AI labor division.

The golden ratio refers to assessing each skill in a profession separately for AI suitability. In UX design, evaluate tasks like copywriting, prototyping, wireframing, and user interviews individually to determine if AI can help in completing them. This way, you’ll gain a good understanding of the potential gains or losses.

Moreover, there are still hurdles in the way of fully benefiting from AI in specialty fields like digital design. General AI models, like ChatGPT, can’t handle many key tasks. New AI tools, such as Figma’s built-in features and Motiff (an AI-driven competitor for Figma), are emerging to address these gaps.

Embrace AI on an organizational level for it to work in your favour

The third tier in Matias’ model is organizational readiness.

To successfully adopt AI, organizations must allow teams to use it. If you limit your employees to approved software, like Microsoft Enterprise tools, they can’t fully leverage the fast-evolving AI repertoire. This hinders maximizing organizational AI potential.

In discussions with 20 design leaders from top Finnish companies, we found that organizations are at varying stages of AI readiness. While some companies struggle with allowing AI tools in general, forward-thinking organizations like YLE have already created their own AI systems, like YLEGPT, to secure their data.

How have we prepared for AI at Qvik?

Matias’ three-step model really resonated with us at Qvik. It’s similar to what we’ve been doing to prepare our team for AI: we’ve been offering training, sharing the latest tools, and working on our internal AI strategy and policies.

Yet, we recognize there’s still a lot more to do to stay ahead of the game – and to guarantee that our company and our employees will be prepared and competent for the inevitable change in the technology domain.

Join or invite us!

We host Design Leadership Roundtable sessions several times a year at Qvik. If you’re an in-house design leader, get in touch to join our future sessions!

I’m also giving talks on AI in product design and what we’re doing to stay in the game. Feel free to reach out if you’re interested!

You can check out what Matias has to say about generative AI on his website https://www.matiasvaara.com/.

Another hot design topic for spring 2025: Accessibility

Is your digital service accessible? By the end of June 2025, new EU-wide accessibility requirements will come into full force. This will bring nearly every organization offering a digital service into the scope.

If you need help getting everything in order, you can read more about the requirements or reach out to me directly at lassi.liikkanen@qvik.com.