Designing for 2026: process, agency, and decision quality in the age of AI
Last week we had our OneSignal company offsite in San Diego, where I hosted a workshop with our design team focused on how our process is evolving as we head into 2026.
The goal wasn’t to define a new, rigid framework. It was to reflect honestly on how design is actually getting done today, and what needs to change as AI reshapes the pace and shape of our work.
As part of the session, we watched Why Designers Can No Longer Trust the Design Process by Jenny Wen at Anthropic. The talk challenged the idea that design happens in a clean, linear sequence of steps, and argued that designers often confuse process artifacts with real progress.
That framing resonated. AI has accelerated prototyping to the point where following a step by step process by default can slow learning rather than support it. The work now requires more judgment, not more ceremony.
A recurring theme in our discussion was agency. Designers have more leverage than ever to explore ideas, test assumptions, and shape direction early. I wrote about this previously in Empowering Design Agency: How AI Is Revolutionizing Early-Stage Prototyping, and that same idea came up again in this workshop. With faster tools comes greater responsibility. Designers are making more decisions earlier, and those decisions matter.
In practice, this often means skipping or compressing parts of the traditional process. Sometimes going straight to high fidelity or building a vibe coded prototype is the fastest way to learn. Lo-fi wireframes are still useful, but they’re no longer required for every problem.
At the same time, this is not an argument for abandoning process entirely. Speed without clarity leads to thrash. As designers take on more agency, decision quality becomes even more important. We still need guardrails, clear ownership, and shared expectations around when ideas are exploratory versus when they’re becoming real commitments.
We also talked about craft and quality. In a world where AI can generate decent UI instantly, “good enough” is no longer a differentiator. Taste, clarity, and coherence matter more than ever. Human judgment is what turns output into a product people trust.
Tooling came up as well. We’ve been experimenting with v0, FigmaMake, Replit, Lovable, Claude Code, and Cursor. They’re all improving quickly, and part of the challenge is knowing when to explore new tools and when to focus. Not everything that can be automated should be.
Cross functional collaboration was another important thread. Faster design should not reduce collaboration. It changes how it happens. A vibe coded prototype might never ship to production, but it can be a powerful way to get early feedback, align teams, and validate assumptions with users. Part of our responsibility is teaching others how and when they can contribute, even as the artifacts look different than they did before.
The takeaway for me is that while we may no longer be able to blindly trust the traditional design process, some structure still matters. The process needs to support learning, decision making, and quality, not exist for its own sake.
Overall, I’m excited about what 2026 brings. Design has more leverage now, which makes judgment and quality matter more.
