Thoughts from a 60-year-old designer on responsibility, UX, and the next generation
I’ve lived through many technological shifts.
And every time, I was told that this would be the moment when everything changed—and design would become obsolete.
It never happened.
On the contrary: with every new technology, good design became more important, not less.
That experience makes me optimistic—even now, in the age of Generative UI and GenAI.
Here especially, the focus is clearly shifting.
Today, I would put it this way:
In the future, it will be less about individual screens or components
and more about explicit, machine-readable style guides.
This is not a loss.
It is a transformation.
When UI Is No Longer Designed but Generated
What happens when interfaces are no longer designed, but generated?
When layouts, text, hierarchies, and interactions emerge dynamically?
Then style guides are no longer documentation.
They become control mechanisms.
Suddenly, they define far more than colors and spacing:
visual grammar
tone and language
interaction patterns
accessibility
legal and ethical constraints
In short:
design systems become a crucial layer for AI.
And this is where my concern begins — not out of fear, but out of responsibility.
Consistency Replaces Control
In traditional projects, we had control:
over screens, states, and flows.
Perhaps you should know - or I should mention - that I worked as Informationarchitect for a very long time.
With generative UI, that control no longer exists.
What remains are guardrails:
the space for variation
the boundaries of what is allowed
priorities (for example, clarity over efficiency, trust over conversion)
Good style guides define exactly these guardrails.
They express values — not taste.
A Prompt Is Not Design
I watch with concern as young designers are told
that design can be replaced by “better prompts.”
That is a dangerous oversimplification.
Prompts are:
fleeting
situational
individual
Style guides, by contrast, are:
stable
reusable
verifiable
Anyone who believes design can be replaced by prompt optimization
underestimates what design has always been about:
judgment, context, and responsibility.
Design Becomes Normative — Whether We Like It or Not
Generative UI forces us to make explicit decisions:
What does “trustworthy” actually mean?
What does “human” look like in an interface?
Where must AI not be creative?
These are not purely aesthetic questions.
They are normative ones.
Style guides thus become places of negotiation—
between technology, business, ethics, and culture.
The Quiet Question of Power
And then there is a question that is rarely asked out loud:
Whoever defines the style guides
defines the everyday behavior of AI.
That is governance.
Not just design.
After a lifetime spent advocating for good UX,
this does not make me nostalgic—it makes me attentive.
Why I Worry About Young Designers
My concern is not the technology.
It is the environment in which it is introduced.
If we teach young designers
that speed matters more than judgment,
automation more than values,
output more than responsibility—
then we lose something that cannot be generated:
design maturity.
And Still: Why I Remain Hopeful
I remain optimistic because I see
how many young designers are asking exactly these questions.
How they talk about ethics, accessibility, language, power, and responsibility ...
not as a checkbox exercise, but out of genuine curiosity.
Generative UI can flatten design.
But it can also deepen it ...
if we understand style guides not as technical artifacts,
but as cultural agreements.
If we truly want to shape the Intelligent Age in a human-centered way,
we need fewer grand promises
and more conscious design.
That is why I keep writing.
Why I keep thinking out loud.
And why I share these reflections on my blog
and even cover these topics from time to time on my mental Health Blog
as I see and feel that these Changes touch mental health more and more an various ways
Not because I have all the answers.
But because I am convinced
that good UX design will continue to emerge
where experience meets curiosity—
and optimism meets responsibility.
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