I need to clear something up about my book, “Products People Actually Want.” When I write about how “anyone can build anything” now, some people assume I’m anti-AI. That I think these tools are ruining design or product development.
That’s not it at all.
AI tools are incredible leverage. They make me think faster, broader, and help me produce better work. But like any creative partner or colleague, this doesn’t happen out of the gate. I’ve spent hours—days—training my AI on how we write at Summer Health so the tone is right. I’ve taught it our business model. I tweak its suggestions to better match the experience we want to build.
The problem isn’t that AI exists. The problem is how most people use it.
The real issue with “anyone can build anything”
My book focuses on a specific problem: people building things without knowing if anyone actually needs them. When the barrier to building drops to zero, we get flooded with products that work fine but solve problems that don’t exist.
But there’s a second issue too. While AI can help you get started quickly, it won’t build something ready for mass market. Users’ expectations for polish and detail are much higher than what AI produces by default. You can spot AI-generated work from a mile away because it lacks the intentional decisions that make products feel right.
The combination is brutal: people building the wrong things, and building them poorly.
Just last week, we saw a perfect example. Food influencer Molly Baz discovered that Shopify was selling a website template featuring what she called “a sicko AI version of me.” The image—a woman in a red sweatshirt eating an onion ring in a butter-yellow kitchen—looked almost identical to her cookbook cover.
This isn’t really an AI problem, it’s a laziness problem that AI makes more tempting. What used to be someone using an image without permission now gets dressed up as “AI-generated content.” The ironic part? Creating something unique with AI tools is actually easier than trying to replicate someone else’s work. The tools are there. The capability is there. The only thing missing is the intention to actually create something new.
How I actually use AI
I use AI tools extensively, but strategically:
Granola for transcribing user research sessions
for transcribing user research sessions Visual Electric for images that are impossible to find in stock libraries (like families that aren’t white middle class)
for images that are impossible to find in stock libraries (like families that aren’t white middle class) ChatGPT as a sparring partner and for writing better copy
as a sparring partner and for writing better copy Cursor for building websites and prototypes
for building websites and prototypes A custom copywriter agent trained on our brand voice
But here’s what I don’t do: I don’t use AI to replace thinking. I saw a tool recently that listens to user interviews and suggests follow-up questions. Tools like this make designers lazier, not better. You need genuine curiosity. You need to understand what you’re looking for before you can synthesize anything meaningful.
What AI is great at is helping you process large sets of information and pull out themes. But if you don’t understand your users and what they’re struggling with first, it’s impossible to prompt any AI tool for a real solution.
Here’s the thing about AI tools: if you don’t know what your customers want, if you as a designer don’t have a view on how to package it, AI will happily make all of that up for you. That just doesn’t mean it’s the right thing. AI fills in the blanks confidently, but those blanks are exactly where the real design work should happen.
The skills that actually matter
The divide for engineers is easier to see: tools can help them code much faster, but it’s worthless if they can’t understand the generated code.
For designers, the key skill going forward will be taste and curation. Understanding what you want to prompt before diving in. Knowing good work from generic work. Being able to refine and iterate until something feels intentional rather than automated.
I think designers who resist AI entirely will find themselves without jobs in the next five years. When you can use AI to speed up tedious tasks, what’s the reason for doing them manually?
But designers who treat AI like a magic button will struggle too. The ones who thrive will use AI as leverage—to think better, work faster, and explore more possibilities than they could alone.
AI amplifies everything
Here’s how I see it: AI is leverage. It amplifies whatever you bring to it.
If you understand your users deeply, AI helps you explore more solutions. If you have good taste, AI helps you iterate faster. If you can communicate clearly, AI helps you refine that communication.
But if you don’t understand the problem you’re solving, AI just helps you build the wrong thing more efficiently. If you have poor judgment, AI amplifies that too.
The future belongs to people who combine human insight with AI capability. Not people who think they can skip the human part.
My book isn’t the antidote to AI. It’s about developing the judgment to use any tool—AI included—in service of building things people actually want. The better you understand users and business fundamentals, the better your AI-assisted work becomes.
AI didn’t create the problem of people building useless products. It just made it easier to build more of them, faster. The solution isn’t to avoid the tools. It’s to get better at the human parts of the job that the tools can’t do for you.
Yet.
My book Products People Actually Want is out now.