The Brief: Afraid of losing your job? Become irreplaceable
Design Better20 Mar 2025

The Brief: Afraid of losing your job? Become irreplaceable

Becoming an irreplaceable designer By Aarron Walter The software industry is in a tough contraction phase. Teams are downsizing, and companies are prioritizing efficiency. It’s a stressful time for many. But it’s also an opportunity—to reflect on your work, your skills, and the unique value you bring as a designer. What could you do to make yourself indispensable to your team? In my career, I’ve worked with a number of truly irreplaceable designers, and they all share a common trait: they became more than just a designer. They bring additional skills in coding, research, or business that expand their value, make them better cross-team collaborators, and help them solve problems more effectively. Irreplaceable designers thrive in the blurry space between disciplines. They adapt their language and perspective as they work across teams, earning respect from their peers. These designers are rare—but they shouldn’t be. AI is making it easier for all of us to bridge the gap between disciplines. While there’s a lot of excitement about how AI can help designers improve their craft, the real opportunity lies in designers learning to build as well. Continue reading this issue of The Brief on Substack

Episoder(238)

David Shim and Rachana Rele: Read AI CEO and VP of Product Design for AI-native products at Adobe on amplifying creative work — not replacing it

David Shim and Rachana Rele: Read AI CEO and VP of Product Design for AI-native products at Adobe on amplifying creative work — not replacing it

Today we have two guests from two different companies who have one shared conviction: AI works best when it amplifies people, not replaces them. Today we’re joined by Rachana Rele, VP of Product Desig...

1 Apr 35min

Leonardo Giusti: Archetype AI's co-founder on physical AI and the limits of the chatbot

Leonardo Giusti: Archetype AI's co-founder on physical AI and the limits of the chatbot

Leonardo Giusti has spent his career in the spaces between disciplines — between art and science, between research and product, between the physical world and the digital one. It’s not a conventional ...

25 Mar 28min

Brooke Hopper: Adobe's machine intelligence design lead on what AI can't touch

Brooke Hopper: Adobe's machine intelligence design lead on what AI can't touch

Brooke Hopper stays close to her craft. Before she hopped on a call with us to chat about her role at Adobe, she was deep in Cursor prototyping navigation design ideas. Though Brooke holds an individu...

18 Mar 47min

Daisy Fancourt: Epidemiologist on how creativity rewrites your biology and extends your lifespan

Daisy Fancourt: Epidemiologist on how creativity rewrites your biology and extends your lifespan

You probably already know that exercise, sleep, a good diet, and spending time in nature are the pillars of a healthy life . But what if there’s a fifth pillar we’ve been undervaluing, and in many cas...

12 Mar 46min

Fiona Crombie: Academy Award-nominated production designer on storytelling without words

Fiona Crombie: Academy Award-nominated production designer on storytelling without words

If you’ve ever wondered what a movie production designer actually does, our guest today describes it in the simplest terms: it is everything you see in the frame that isn’t a costume. It turns out, p...

4 Mar 22min

Sam Beam of Iron & Wine: Grammy-nominated musician on creativity, collaboration, and why a good day is finding one great lyric

Sam Beam of Iron & Wine: Grammy-nominated musician on creativity, collaboration, and why a good day is finding one great lyric

Most musicians start learning at an early age—or so we think. But that wasn’t the path our guest today took. He was an arty kid—drawing and painting in his bedroom—then a film teacher, before he beca...

27 Feb 22min

George Newman: Cognitive scientist on why creativity is more like archaeology than magic

George Newman: Cognitive scientist on why creativity is more like archaeology than magic

We’ve all heard the mythology around great ideas: the lone genius struck by inspiration, the eureka moment in the bath or shower. But George Newman believes we’ve been thinking about creativity in the...

20 Feb 25min

Nate Koechly and Matthew Darby: YouTube's UX Director and Director of PM on redesigning one of the world's most-used apps

Nate Koechly and Matthew Darby: YouTube's UX Director and Director of PM on redesigning one of the world's most-used apps

Redesigning one of the world’s most-used apps is no small feat, especially when that app is also the second largest search engine in the world: YouTube. Over the last four years, Nate Koechly, UX Dire...

12 Feb 43min

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