What Ran Segall Got Wrong

Ron Seagal, he dropped this video and it seems like it's blowing up in the community. 46k views in just 7 days. And there is a very interesting points that he makes that I'm not sure I fully agree with. Command AI. He's talking about design, dev, and marketing. This is how you make a website, how you build it, and then how you market it and you know push it and have it live and hosted and everything around it. And he makes the argument that the dev is shrinking. Uh the dev is solved. And this is basically what also web flow did in the web flow conf with with AI so the dev is solved. Right? This is where I'm not sure I agree with it. Uh I think dev is becoming design or like design is becoming dev or they are like being very intertwined right now. Um and I'm calling it like not just me it's just called design engineering. This is where you build and design in the medium where you ship whatever you are shipping it. And what I'm seeing as a change is more and more designers are tipping uh in like they are doing more and more of coding without needing to to do the coding. We do it with agents and uh developers who wouldn't touch design now they can do decent designs just with AI because AI is just like average uh at design. So I think what's happening is also Ron talks about that it's like the brand and the brand design that is getting more and more important and I would argue that developers are people who can actually now um merge into that world or like start to participate more in that as we saw with the the type of work that we we did together and I the other type of work that I'm doing with other agencies um you do need to build like for a unique brand you need to build like tooling and image pipelines and editing and things like this that can all play a role in creating that unique brand which is more important than ever. So I don't think it's the dev becoming something small in the middle or shrinking. I think the developers the like the traditional developers they can now participate in a wider range of things and the same is happening with designers. It is the the job of the AI is like enabling more and more people from different areas to participate. uh the part that I would agree with him is I guess if you are just a developer and if you were you your focus was only development and doing like very like this narrow area of development I think that's where your job is potentially shrinking um but if you are a designer who doesn't mind to be a bit more technical with AI or if you are a developer who has a good taste like There were so many developers who would say I'm not a designer but I have a good eye for good design. Like these types of people they can now handle this entire section uh of design and dev which is to me all design engineering. So it's more of a merge of those two roles as opposed to like the removal completely. Yes. Yes. Because like even in web flow source they showed that example with the AB they not AB testing but they did two versions of the hero section with a webgl effect. Is that design is that development? Which one is it? Like if you are only a designer and has no technical ability. you probably can't get a good result as good of a you know a a design a a developer who understand webgl but also has taste you know that person can get probably better results with AI so you know it's it's a mixed it's it's completely being mixed and I think as if if you are uh considering yourself a developer that should be the takeaway essentially if you consider yourself a devel developer, I think you should try to get more uh to get more of more design done to get better at design and understanding what makes a good design, what makes a good brand, what makes a brand stand out so you can work with designers better and with clients better. And if you are a designer, I think it's it's really about time to uh to to be AI enabled like fully to to at least try to design with AI and not be afraid of the technicality, not be afraid of you know we as we say designers with terminal access, right? M a lot of traditional like UI UX design that you would do with like basic hierarchy or basic wireframing like wireframing is solved, right? Like I I wouldn't I wouldn't go to a designer to build me wireframes today, right? It it's it's just completely solved. or like sitemap uh two 3 years ago that was a service um that designers like we had UX designers which I never I never and I know Ron agrees with me very much like I would never like hire a person to do just UX design it doesn't makes it it's like UX was with UI for me but nonetheless there were people who were uh giving like they would give you only the site map and the wireframes and maybe a few menus and navigations and that was the whole service. That's solved. The only thing I'll say here though is you're talking about the technical task of producing wireframes or structure website is solved. Sure. But so I've I've hired UX designers just UX designers in the past, right? And all they did was produce wireframes. The reason for that is unless a designer shows that they understand why UX exists, I can't trust that they're really going to It all comes down to what they put in that prompt, right? Are they someone who collects um KPIs and uh sort of understands user journeys and how a website needs to funnel someone through a specific set of touch points to get to the result which could be contact form. It could be signing up to a mail whatever unless the designer has an awareness that they need to include that or or interview the client. What I would do is I interview the client, ask them certain questions. What are the KPIs? Um what sort of uh use whatever. Yeah. And then I would put that into the the the prompt itself to produce the wireframes or produce the design that that that respects the user journey that we've previously talked about. Unless a designer shows that they understand that, then either they're not going to get the job cuz it's like, well, you don't understand understand UX principles and the importance that a website needs to be a tool that works for the company. It's not just a flashy thing that tells you about the company. No, it needs to actually produce results. It needs to produce an ROI. If you don't understand that as a designer, then you're not going to get the job from me. So, yeah, the technical task of UX and wireframes is done. I mean, you don't even need to do them anymore. You just go straight to design. But you still need to understand it to put it into the prompt to to to instruct it on how that journey should play out cuz sometimes they're very unique. They're very bespoke. I I agree. But that's kind of like a web strategist type of work and even to some degree a brand designer because a brand designer also in my mind a brand designer also touch touches on the different touch points and a good brand that still needs to go into the website that still needs to manifest as code on a website and who's responsible for that the designer/developer or what did you call it design engineer a design engineer ultimately needs to come through the design engineer to to to include that staff in their prompt or in their whatever it is they're using to for the for the eventual design website at the end of it to include that information that yes, a web strategist collected, but they still need to they still need to be like, "Oh, let's take that document that web strategist produced and make sure it's in my prompt or or understand it in such a way where they're able to just not be a meat proxy and actually, you know, cuz you wouldn't just provide hide everything and then make no mistakes. You'll piece meal it. You'll work things in. So, you need to understand what it is you're doing to know that, okay, now's the time to bring in the web strategy stuff and we'll work through it page by page or work through it component by component or whatever it is. So, just that awareness is still something I'm looking for. I just agree with you. The the it being a solo job is a very questionable thing at the moment for marketing websites, not necessarily for apps. That's a whole different ball game and it's a very very different I agree. Yeah. And just to be clear the design engineer like traditionally in the community it's more towards people who create like interactive elements. U that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about it as like a whole uh thing like you can see a design engineer as somebody who does the whole thing. It's not just small interactive uh stuff. It's design engineering the entire experience. This is part of a larger conversation on my show Command AI which we stream live every single week. We discuss the news and all things related to AI in the world of design and web. Catch us next week and join in the banter. Command AI.