The AI Designer's Guide: Who Am I, Where Did I Come From, Where Am I Going? | A Conversation with ByteDance AI Product Designer Pozzo and Freshippo/Tmall IP Designer Zhao Chen
October 13, 2024
"Crossroads" has produced two "guide-style" interview episodes: The AI Product Manager Guide and The AI Engineer Guide, both well received. Having covered product managers and engineers, this week we're turning to designers.
For this episode, we invited two senior designer friends to share how AI is impacting their work:
Pozzo Zhang Yuan, an AI product designer at ByteDance's Douyin, who interviewed over 50 designers in the past year. At ByteDance, Pozzo handles product design for image-text content, platform features, and intelligent creation (AIGC). He also spent years doing AI product design at Alibaba and Microsoft. Zhao Chen, founder of ZAX Studio, whose two most famous works are Freshippo's hippo IP and Tmall's abstract "cat head" design IP. Together they represent two archetypes — product design and creative design — sharing stories of how designers actually use AI in their day-to-day work, and their perspectives on how AI is reshaping design, the business of design studios, and even our era's aesthetics.
What struck us most was their remarkable agreement on which designers AI would make obsolete and which it would empower. Both find the prediction that "AI will put all designers out of work" overly absolute and exaggerated — in their view, AI can be highly creative, but the creative engine still comes from people.
AI replaces some tasks that previously required human designer labor, but simultaneously raises the bar for the deeper thinking behind any design decision — why this approach, how to do it more efficiently. This applies not just to design, but to many professions.
We hope you find this episode valuable!
Podcast Timeline
🟢 Part 1: Personal Journeys
03:50 Pozzo's career doubt: a technically impressive personal assistant that users only wanted for singing and telling jokes
05:01 Pozzo's career highlight: AI meets the physical world — combining mature technology with experience design to drive scalable change at controllable cost
05:21 AI applications in retail stores
07:07 Zhao Chen's career doubt: witnessing the iPhone revolution at a 4A agency, struggling to make a move
10:18 The epiphany: even shooting "the ceiling of milk powder ads" — follow your heart
11:30 How the Tmall cat head IP was created
12:22 Zhao Chen's career highlight: creating the Freshippo IP on a tight budget, growing a Douyin account from zero to 50,000 followers
🟢 Part 2: AI vs. Designers
16:31 Has AI permeated every corner of product design? Pozzo: actually, not really
17:24 AI extends scenarios, but product design itself hasn't changed dramatically
17:42 First impressions of using AI, Pozzo: seeing AI-generated images, the first reaction was "impossible"
20:13 First time generating images with AI, Zhao Chen: like encountering the internet for the first time
21:51 Pozzo: established a dedicated AIGC designer role within the team
25:46 Zhao Chen: AI makes it easier to become a "super individual"; AI is most effective at the proposal stage
28:11 AI is currently in an awkward growth phase, not yet easily tamed
28:55 How can creative designers use AI to become more creative?
34:29 Don't tell AI "I'm out of ideas, you draw" — that just turns AI into something everyone despises
35:29 In an AI-saturated era, the thinking process from 0 to 1 matters most
36:19 How can designers use AI to improve themselves? Looking beyond the tools themselves, designers should focus more on elevating aesthetics, understanding business, and understanding final interaction forms
42:31 What better experiences does AI enable? For example, AI effects that make the impossible possible, creating contrast
44:22 What entirely new experiences does AI create? For example, AI customer service — shifting from 1-on-1 human service to humans supervising AI
🟢 Part 3: Young Designers, Take Note
47:28 How have hiring standards for designers changed since AI arrived?
48:55 What kinds of hires have proven most helpful to the team
51:26 In the AI era, hiring designers values creativity, aesthetics, and curiosity more
53:42 AI will make designers who only pursue technical skill obsolete, and empower designers with ideas and creativity
55:06 Have designer positions increased or decreased since AI emerged?
57:07 If you could go back to fresh out of college with AI's help, how would your career differ?
🟢 Part 4: Glimpsing the Future
1:00:26 After using so many AI design tools, we're still far from the endgame
1:02:39 An integrated tool is needed where all design work can be completed
1:04:14 Today's AI products resemble the years just before the iPhone unified phone form factors — a hundred flowers blooming
1:05:47 No true all-in-one AI-native design tool exists yet
🟢 Part 5: Who's Changing
1:06:21 An illustrator "training" their own artwork into a distinctive style model, using it to take commissions and publish work
1:07:49 Previously limited to advertising agencies, now able to reach more end clients directly
1:08:55 In the advertising agency ecosystem, when clients start doing what agencies did, where do third-tier firms find opportunity?
1:11:20 An employee built an internal ByteDance survey generation tool using AI
1:12:12 Base model + Figma = a plugin that breaks out of Figma to generate designs based on business models
1:13:46 Outside imagination of AI+designers is overly dramatic and exaggerated; AI product experience is still being defined, opportunities abound
🟢 Part 6: Designers on the Present Moment
1:15:54 Is our aesthetic being shaped by AI? Will "AI-ness" become the style and imprint of our era?
1:20:03 AI dramatically raises the floor of design and beauty, while making the ceiling higher and harder to reach
1:22:30 Creating an IP today still requires insight — soul first, appearance second
1:25:29 Don't underestimate AI, don't become addicted to AI; today's design practitioners must find balance
Join the "Crossroads" Active Agents Salon: AI Designer Special 🟡
"Crossroads" continues hosting "Active Agents Salons" because only offline settings enable face-to-face exchange. Through immediate in-person interaction, deep discussion, and human connection, we spark creativity and explore the industry's future together — an irreplaceable experience that listening to podcasts alone cannot provide.
This "Active Agents Salon" focuses on the AI-era design industry and designers. Beyond this week's podcast guests, the event will feature Zhang Zijie, LiblibAI co-founder and designer by background, and Xiao Youge, head of NIO's digital space experience team, among other frontier design practitioners.
Building on this week's podcast, we'll discuss: What changes will the design industry face in the AI era? How should designers plan their career development? Will AI give birth to a new generation of products that disrupt Photoshop and Canva?
Looking forward to seeing you there! Scan the QR code on the poster to register.
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We track the industry transformations and entrepreneurial opportunities brought by the new wave of AI technology. "Crossroads" is Steve Jobs' metaphor for Apple — standing at the intersection of technology and liberal arts, where great products are born. AI is transforming every industry. We seek out, interview, and bring together "active agents" of the AI era to explore and embrace new changes and new possibilities.
👦🏻 Host Koji: Co-founder of The Fair and Tangdao. I believe technology, especially AI, will fundamentally transform society and empower humanity. Welcome to chat, exchange ideas, and connect on what's next. Koji's Jike, Koji's website
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