029 The Design Skills AI Can't Shortcut

I was just having a conversation with one of my students just yesterday.

I was going over how to do wireframes.

I'm a believer of paper wireframes.

You solve it on paper, and then you move from paper to digital.

So the student says, can I use a toolkit for that when I go to Figma? And I was like...

Well, sure.

I mean, you could use that toolkit if you'd like.

You know, it's up to you.

But here's the thing.

You have to look at what skills are you not developing by using that toolkit? Are you going to have what it takes to quickly, rapidly prototype something if somebody asks you to do it in a half an hour, if you just go grab a toolkit? Is the toolkit going to offer you those kinds of creative options that are unique? A toolkit usually is what everybody else is using, the toolkit that everyone else is grabbing.

So the possibility of a unique solution is limited when you're grabbing the same resources as everyone else.

I think right there.

is a tough one.

So developing that discipline to say, I'm going to use the easy button this time because it works and I understand what I'm doing, or I'm going to challenge myself, I'm going to apply some friction, and I'm going to go down the sort of tough road for a few minutes or an hour or a day just to develop a skill that I know later will... benefit me and make me a better coworker, employee, and person in general.

Lisa, I am so excited you brought this up because when I was running my animation studio, I used to hire my top students from Collin College and some of the other colleges I used to teach at.

And it would take about six months to a year To ramp up a top student like an A plus super talented student, it would take about six months to a year to ramp them up where I didn't have to babysit almost every artifact that they created and tweak it because at that time I was paying my mortgage, I was paying my rent, I was paying all my bills with the revenue that I generated from my studio and that student was going to make my client happy.

And if that student didn't make my client happy, then I would lose that client and lose revenue.

So what I learned, what was really interesting after about a year of working with me, which I would consider like a green beret business, bootcamp for designers and animators, because my pace was really fast at my studio, they would go into classroom and by the end of class have their assignments done.

Where other students would take the week or two weeks to get that one artifact done.

Because in education, we want to allow for everyone in the room to have a chance to be successful.

Yet in the enterprise environment, in the workforce, time is money.

So people are looking for people that can quickly execute on something, sometimes with minimal time, And as you were talking, I was sitting there going, right, we're getting so used to having those answers delivered to us in a particular way that I've noticed the compounding of what I used to call the Google effect, which is not retaining information.

I remember when we had rotary phones for some of us have been around long enough to remember those.

You memorized all your friends' phone numbers, right? because you had to.

You would be out somewhere and you needed to call someone.

I was just having a conversation with one of my students just yesterday.

I was going over how to do wireframes.

I'm a believer of paper wireframes.

You solve it on paper, and then you move from paper to digital.

So the student says, can I use a toolkit for that when I go to Figma? And I was like...

Well, sure.

I mean, you could use that toolkit if you'd like.

You know, it's up to you.

But here's the thing.

You have to look at what skills are you not developing by using that toolkit? Are you going to have what it takes to quickly, rapidly prototype something if somebody asks you to do it in a half an hour, if you just go grab a toolkit? Is the toolkit going to offer you those kinds of creative options that are unique? A toolkit usually is what everybody else is using, the toolkit that everyone else is grabbing.

So the possibility of a unique solution is limited when you're grabbing the same resources as everyone else.

I think right there.

is a tough one.

So developing that discipline to say, I'm going to use the easy button this time because it works and I understand what I'm doing, or I'm going to challenge myself, I'm going to apply some friction, and I'm going to go down the sort of tough road for a few minutes or an hour or a day just to develop a skill that I know later will... benefit me and make me a better coworker, employee, and person in general.

Lisa, I am so excited you brought this up because when I was running my animation studio, I used to hire my top students from Collin College and some of the other colleges I used to teach at.

And it would take about six months to a year To ramp up a top student like an A plus super talented student, it would take about six months to a year to ramp them up where I didn't have to babysit almost every artifact that they created and tweak it because at that time I was paying my mortgage, I was paying my rent, I was paying all my bills with the revenue that I generated from my studio and that student was going to make my client happy.

And if that student didn't make my client happy, then I would lose that client and lose revenue.

So what I learned, what was really interesting after about a year of working with me, which I would consider like a green beret business, bootcamp for designers and animators, because my pace was really fast at my studio, they would go into classroom and by the end of class have their assignments done.

Where other students would take the week or two weeks to get that one artifact done.

Because in education, we want to allow for everyone in the room to have a chance to be successful.

Yet in the enterprise environment, in the workforce, time is money.

So people are looking for people that can quickly execute on something, sometimes with minimal time, And as you were talking, I was sitting there going, right, we're getting so used to having those answers delivered to us in a particular way that I've noticed the compounding of what I used to call the Google effect, which is not retaining information.

I remember when we had rotary phones for some of us have been around long enough to remember those.

You memorized all your friends' phone numbers, right? because you had to.

You would be out somewhere and you needed to call someone.