The Greeks knew the answer to this problem, 2300 years ago
“We cut design production time from four days to six or eight hours. Exponentially decreasing the time to market. But optimizing my internal processes, that is the easy part.” — Head of Design, Cybersecurity
Something is happening to design timelines.
Many of us are working under shorter timelines because of AI, and it’s got us stressed. Generating research insights, which used to take weeks, now takes days. A round of concepts that used to take an afternoon of sketching takes twenty minutes of prompting.
The generation part of the job has gotten quicker.
But it raises a new problem: you’re not the only one who noticed.
If the company sees that “generating designs” is quicker, even if you haven’t implemented it at work, they’ll ask you to work faster. Cut the timeline in half. Churn out features. Ship, ship, ship. So how do you fight back?
The answer, according to 32 design leaders, isn’t exactly about getting faster.