I drew a designer who wasn't there
This week I drew a cartoon of my own method.
The method is the AI Way of Working, a plan for companies of 20 to 250 people to decide how they work with AI, in 90 days. The cartoon was meant to make it concrete: one invented company of 25 people, five named characters, and in every panel a name next to a job. Who fills in the self check. Who writes the list of screens that always get a second look. Who reads five random changes every Friday.
I finished it, liked it, and looked at it again. The designer was in almost every panel. She wrote the severity scale, sampled the changes, kept the file the AI tools read, and sat in the conversation with the CTO about what gets rewarded. The product manager barely appeared, and mostly as someone listening.
The company in my own method has no designer. I wrote that persona myself: a cofounder, a PM, two frontend engineers building the UI with AI help, nobody with design in their title. In my experience most companies that size look like that. And when I drew it, I put a designer in anyway, and made her the hero.
I know where that came from. Twenty five years of design leadership trains you to picture the org with a designer in it. When I imagine quality being owned, I imagine it owned by someone like me.
In June I wrote here about orphaned demand: a seed stage company with six engineers and no designer, where design work got done by whoever was nearby and nobody owned it. AI makes that pattern faster. Anyone can generate a screen now. The engineer can, the founder can, the PM can. When nobody owns what the customer sees, the customer becomes the review step.
If design leaders describe quality ownership only as a designer's job, we leave most small companies with an empty chair, and we tell them the fix is a hire they cannot make this quarter.
So I redrew it. In the new version the PM holds the job. She writes the list of screens that always get a second look, reviews the risky ones in person, reads five random changes a week, and keeps the file the AI tools read. To make room, she stops building everyday screens herself, so she reviews work she did not make. Her own risky changes go to the cofounder who talks to customers most. The week a first designer is hired, the job moves to the designer.
Why the PM and not an engineer? Distance. In a small team the engineers build most of the UI, now with AI help. The person who owns what the customer sees has to be able to look at a screen they did not make.
The one thing
Before the next AI generated screen ships in your team, write one name on one line, where everyone already reads: the person who owns what the customer sees. If you have a designer, it is the designer. If not, it is the PM, and the PM stops building the everyday screens. It is never the engineer who built the screen.
That is not a reorganization. It is one line, and one thing someone stops doing.
I am still catching myself drawing the company I wish existed instead of the one in front of me. The cartoon helped, because it made the bias visible in a way a paragraph never did.
So the recap: most small teams have no designer, AI lets anyone make the screen, and someone still has to own it. Name that person before the next screen ships, and let them stop making what they review.
In your team today, whose name would go on that line, and would they agree it is theirs?
The method is at marcosnahr.com/ai-way-of-working, and the cartoon at marcosnahr.com/ai-way-of-working/first-90-days. The kit is free to copy on GitHub.