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

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Paul Dichter: Stranger Things writer on why the writers’ room isn’t so different from the design studio

Paul Dichter: Stranger Things writer on why the writers’ room isn’t so different from the design studio

Both Aarron and I are official Stranger Things nerds. We watched the show ourselves when they came out, and again when our kids were old enough. As children of the 80s, the way it captured that partic...

22 Apr 32min

Tessa Forshaw and Rich Braden: "Innovation-ish" and why most innovation doesn’t have to be a moonshot

Tessa Forshaw and Rich Braden: "Innovation-ish" and why most innovation doesn’t have to be a moonshot

We’re all familiar with the tropes around innovation and how it starts. You just need a garage in Silicon Valley, a few geniuses and visionaries, maybe some good snacks. Our guests today help us debun...

16 Apr 46min

Luis Mendo: Designer turned illustrator on making things that could only come from you

Luis Mendo: Designer turned illustrator on making things that could only come from you

Luis Mendo is a Spanish-born illustrator based in Nagano, Japan, and his work is unmistakably, irreducibly human. His drawings are populated by bespectacled bird-like figures — part alter ego, part ph...

8 Apr 32min

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 Mars 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 Mars 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 Mars 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 Mars 22min

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