Designing in Times of Abundance

There is a recurring question that designers tend to revisit over time: what is the value of design?

I first asked myself this question many years ago, in a very different technological context from the one we experience today. Since then, tools, workflows, and production capabilities have changed dramatically. Yet despite these transformations, I find that the core answer remains surprisingly similar.

We are currently designing in conditions of radical abundance. Interfaces can be generated from prompts, prototypes assembled within hours, and increasingly complex systems produced with minimal technical barriers. What was once difficult and resource-intensive has become progressively accessible.

This shift raises an important reflection for design practice: when creation itself becomes abundant, where does value move?

This question strongly resonates with ideas explored by Kevin Kelly in his essay Better Than Free and later in The Inevitable. Kelly argued that when access and replication become abundant, value shifts toward what cannot easily be copied: interpretation, trust, personalization, immediacy, and experience. Although his article is from 2008 and he was writing about digital media and information, I believe the same logic applies to design nowadays.

Throughout the evolution of design, the perception of value has continuously shifted alongside technology and culture. For a long time, the discussion revolved around form and function. Later, attention expanded toward interaction design, services, and systemic thinking. These transitions changed the scale and complexity of what designers engage with, but they did not fundamentally change what I believe gives design meaning.

For me, the central value of design has always been the human-centered solution. What remains significant is the ability to create relationships, emotional resonance, and memorable moments that shape how people experience products, services, and environments over time.

This perspective becomes increasingly relevant in the context of AI.

As generative technologies accelerate execution, design work gradually shifts away from production alone and toward interpretation, judgment, and direction. Functional artefacts can now be generated rapidly. Meaning, trust, contextual sensitivity, and ethical intentionality cannot.

In my own practice, AI has become part of the workflow primarily as a support for synthesis, transcription, translation, and research organization. These tools reduce busywork and create more space for reflection and strategic thinking. More interestingly, they also open possibilities for exploratory and hypothesis-driven work during early-stage research and concept development.

In one project, for example, the absence of budget and existing user data made conventional research methods difficult to execute. Rather than treating this as a limitation that prevented progress, we experimented with the generation of synthetic personas constructed from available signals, analogous contexts, and existing literature. These personas were not treated as evidence or truth, but as hypotheses intended to support discussion and move forward.

What proved valuable was not the artefacts themselves, but the conversations and strategic direction they enabled. The personas provided enough structure for stakeholders to begin making decisions, testing assumptions, and developing early partnerships. As the project evolved and real-world evidence became available, many of the initial assumptions were later validated through practice.

Projects such as Aurali make this especially visible. In these contexts, technology alone is not the differentiator. The real challenge lies in designing experiences that support reflection, guide decision-making responsibly, and establish ethical relationships between people and intelligent systems.

In my experience,  design is not defined by the ability to produce outputs, this is more or less given with the available tools. Its value lies in shaping experiences that carry meaning, responsibility, and long-term relevance in a world where creation itself has become increasingly abundant.

References

Kelly, K. (2008). Better Than Free. The Technium.
https://kk.org/thetechnium/better-than-free/

Kelly, K. (2016). The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future. Viking.

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