How to get ahead of changes in the design industry that are likely to happen in 2024.

As we step into 2024, we are faced with an increasingly fast-paced and changing industry as UX, product and digital designers.

The end of 2023 was marked with a shift towards new forms of entrepreneurship and progression paths for designers, the onslaught of new tools and updates to existing tools that challenge what it means to be a designer, and an overall sense of malaise and change about the industry we operate in.

However, we don’t have to be pessimistic about the future of design. There is a sense of rapid change, absolutely, but also a sense of breaching a new frontier and treading new ground. Of entering a world where more and more people can create great designs, and where the act of being a designer skews more and more towards bespoke, custom and interesting projects.

We only need to be aware of changes that have a high chance of happening in our industry, so we can better prepare for them.

And with that, my predictions list for product, UX and digital design in 2024…

As AI begins to mature we are starting to see more and more tools that seek to aid designers in their day to day work.

The likes of ChatGPT broke new ground by making AI accessible to the masses but leaving the execution more or less in the hands of the user — they choose how to leverage the technology.

As we move into 2024 we’ll start to see more and more tools that focus on leveraging AI tech in specific packages designed to tackle specific problems for specific industries.

Things like design system generators, user persona creators, usability test idea generators, and much more.

These will start to package the technology into a format that takes the text-based output of engines like GPT, and…