This week I attended Hatch Conference in Berlin ostensibly to run a ‘Designer to Founder’ round table. But really, I was there to immerse myself in the energy of the design community—a community I hadn’t gathered with since speaking at Jam London back in 2019 (ah, pre-covid days).

In the intervening years, I’ve done plenty of design work. But I haven’t held a designer title or had the chance to nerd out with my people. So, walking into Hatch felt like stepping back into a world I’d missed, just as that world is being reshaped by new questions and possibilities.

The product design discipline, as with many others, is in flux right now. I previously wrote about a new way of working unlocked by this emergent technical landscape, but the existential questions being asked of — and by — the design community were in full force in Berlin.

Most talks referenced AI, either directly or implied — whether designing for new AI-driven paradigms or using AI as part of a design process. What was common across all was that after years of playing around the edges of a design process that fundamentally hasn’t changed since the double diamond, there’s a real opportunity right now to question everything.

Unbundling of the title

A theme not directly mentioned by any of the speakers but that I sensed when taking the content as a whole, was one of an unbundling of the ‘Product Designer’ skillset.

Ben Thompson coined the phrase ‘Aggregation Theory’ in reference to businesses bundling and unbundling continuously. This natural process, where many small challenger companies build interesting technology only to ultimately be consumed by (or become) broader platforms who in turn are disrupted by new challengers, plays out over and over again.

But the same is true of skills and titles. Groups of skills collapse into each other with efficiency gains, only to be augmented by new emergent needs as technology evolves.

What once was a UX and a UI designer became a product designer: the efficiency of new tools in part drove an opportunity to bring two skillsets together.

What once was a front end and back end developer pair increasingly warped into a single full stack dev as technology moved the skills closer together. This isn’t true of everyone. But for smaller companies needing expensive designers and developers, the convenience of hiring one ‘double threat’ was compelling.

Now we’re seeing AI unlock new capabilities at the edges of the traditional Product Design skillset. Not only can a designer build prototypes and even production code with AI support but also ideate radical — and until now time‑consuming — new directions in minutes with the latest image models and creative tools.

This emerged as two fairly distinct narratives in Berlin.

Emmet Connolly evangelised the ‘technical designer’ skillset. As Intercom pivoted the business to Fin, their customer support agent, they were also upending their ways of working with every designer expected to ship production code in Q2 2025. A deep technical focus.

Meanwhile Cam Worboys, head of product design at Cash App, spoke passionately about designers becoming curators, ‘throwing things into Goose’ (Block’s agent runner) to generate walls of new visual ideas in minutes. The designer’s leverage isn’t in creeping into the front end but with an emphasis on taste and curating exceptional experiences.

Jenny Wen — who led FigJam and now designs Claude at Anthropic — contrasted both archetypes. The Figma team was more exploratory, playful, and creative, while the Anthropic design team was highly technical, with innovation coming from partnerships with engineers.

There’s no wrong answer here, clearly.

Where’s your energy?

To me these archetypes feel fundamentally different. Like, different sides of the brain. Artistic, creative, exploratory, visual led vs logical building led mindsets.

I see two distinct futures for product design emerging: one technical, one creative. What’s more, I suspect most designers will truly only get energy from one or the other.

This might even be at the heart of the ‘should designers code’ debate that now feels kind of retro. Perhaps all along we were talking about different people, and the real answer is that for some of us yes, and for others, no.

So this leads me to wonder — are we headed for a world in which job titles fully bifurcate into ‘Technical Designer’ (or Design Engineer), focused on designing and building the UI, and ‘Creative Designer’ (or Art director?) tasked with bringing an experience to life in new delightful and unique ways?

And if so, how many of each will any team need? And where will they come from? I for one would love to see someone step from a different discipline into the creative side, without fear of having to learn how to build good Figma components.

Will each design team continue to take a stance here? Only hiring designers with technical chops or choosing to make their design team taste makers while giving engineers more autonomy over the front end?

Finally, how do these groups work together to build something that truly makes sense for an end user?

One thing I’m convinced of: for designers wanting to create at the edge of what’s possible in this moment of pure invention, they’re going to have to embrace a new path. A path that involves both deep instrospection and a growth mindset.

For those watching closely, this might just be the most exciting time to be a designer.