Remember when the internet first became a thing? When you could finally afford that Adobe Creative Suite or your first web hosting package? Those moments felt revolutionary, didn’t they? Well, here we are again, standing at what feels like the precipice of another technological revolution—the AI boom—and I can’t help but feel both exhilarated and slightly bewildered by it all.
The digital product landscape has never buzzed with so much energy and possibility. It’s an intoxicating time to be alive, creating and building in this space. Yet paradoxically, while opportunities seem endless, they also feel increasingly elusive. Mastering any single skill has become something of a Sisyphean task—just when you think you’ve got it figured out, the tech shifts, role responsibilities morph, and some jobs vanish into the digital ether altogether.
Take a stroll through the current marketplace, and you’ll find no-code and low-code tools sprouting like mushrooms after rain. Suddenly, anyone with a spark of an idea can birth it into digital existence without writing a single line of code. You might think this would make designers and developers about as necessary as a sunroof in a submarine, but here’s the funny thing—getting from “functioning prototype” to “market-ready product” still requires that human touch of expertise. It’s like giving everyone access to professional kitchen equipment but forgetting that it doesn’t automatically make them Gordon Ramsay.
Over the past year, I’ve generated more code than in my entire previous career combined. The productivity boost feels nothing short of miraculous—10x, 20x what I could do before. But there’s also something oddly familiar about this sensation. I’ve felt this same rush during previous technological growth spurts throughout my career. Each new advancement arrived with fanfare, promising to revolutionize how we work forever—and in some ways, they did. Our creation methods today would be unrecognizable to our professional selves from a decade ago.
Yet for all this progress, the digital landscape remains cluttered with mediocrity. The world is still drowning in poorly designed products and bloated software that users open once and promptly forget. Only a tiny fraction of what gets created actually becomes useful in people’s everyday lives. It’s like we’ve given everyone megaphones but forgotten to teach them what’s worth saying.
After each hype cycle, the dust settles. A handful of innovations stick around, things stabilize, and we drift back to our familiar patterns of human behavior. The early adopters who pushed boundaries reap the rewards, new businesses emerge, and entire industries materialize seemingly overnight. Remember when “social media manager” wasn’t even a job title?
I’ve been spinning in mental circles trying to figure out how AI fits into my career’s next chapter. After much contemplation (and several existential crises over coffee), I’ve landed on this: AI is just another tool in our ever-expanding digital toolbox. Yes, it’s creating a tsunami of hype right now, but like every technological wave before it, we can either ride it skillfully or get pulled under by its current.
The fundamental truths haven’t changed. The humans we build products for still have the same core needs. Most of them haven’t even begun to adopt AI into their daily lives. Just as the internet took decades to reach global ubiquity (and still hasn’t), AI benefits will initially flow to economies and communities that already enjoy technological privilege. My aunt in rural Wisconsin still calls me to help her attach photos to emails—I doubt she’s experimenting with ChatGPT anytime soon.
The problems we solve remain fundamentally unchanged. People need transportation, entertainment, and convenience. Vast regions like Africa continue to face the same digital accessibility challenges. Despite all the AI buzz, the world spins on largely unaltered. If we’re just becoming more productive at solving the wrong problems or building products without market fit, we’re simply creating digital junk more efficiently—apps that will gather virtual dust in app stores while real user needs go unaddressed.
Going forward, I’m redirecting my focus to those everyday problems that need solving, using AI as an accelerator to drive production and business results—which, surprise surprise, have the same objectives as before. True innovation isn’t just about what we build; it’s about how we build it. People don’t necessarily need AI to answer their questions (they’ve had Google for that forever and many still don’t use it effectively), but they do need tools that make their lives better, wiser, and more enjoyable.
It reminds me of the fitness industry—the world is full of exercise equipment, yet obesity rates continue to climb. Availability doesn’t guarantee adoption. People still need the gym, the personal trainer, the tailored experience that encourages consistent use to achieve results. Similarly, our digital products need that human element of design and understanding to truly make a difference.
So here’s to finding our balance in this brave new AI world—leveraging these amazing tools while keeping our eyes fixed on what truly matters: creating digital experiences that genuinely improve human lives, one thoughtfully designed solution at a time.