What kind of designers will be the most valuable in the next few years? I don’t think it will be designers who only master one thing.
The way products get built has changed faster than the way we describe the people who build them. AI tools shrink the distance between an idea and something you can test. Teams are smaller, cycles are shorter, and the handoff between one specialist and the next is often the slowest part of the whole process.
1. From T-shaped to M-shaped
For years we talked about T-shaped designers: deep expertise in one area, broader knowledge across others. That made sense for a long time. It still does in big teams with clear lanes.
But the more I work on AI products and complex systems, the more I see the value in M-shaped designers. People who can go deep in multiple areas and move between them when needed.
2. What an M-shaped designer looks like
Someone who can:
- do research
- think about product strategy
- prototype ideas quickly
- understand systems and workflows
- work with AI tools
- talk to stakeholders
- and still care about good UX craft
Not because they want to do everything themselves, but because product teams move too fast for rigid specialisation now. The value isn’t in owning every step. It’s in understanding enough of each one that nothing gets lost between them.
3. Why now: teams move faster than handoffs
When a question can become a working prototype in an afternoon, the bottleneck moves. It’s no longer the build. It’s the time spent explaining the problem to the next person, waiting for their answer, and translating it back.
I felt this most clearly on Cohivo, my scope-control product for agencies. It went from a product requirements document to a working product and a live pilot waitlist in about five weeks. That speed didn’t come from working longer hours. It came from the research, the strategy, the interface and the code living in one head, so a decision in one area could immediately change the others.
4. Range is not the same as shallow
An M is not a flat line. Each leg has to be real depth, built on real projects, not a list of tools on a CV. The strongest designers I’ve worked with are usually comfortable stepping into unfamiliar areas, learning fast, and helping wherever the team needs them. But they always come back to a base of craft they never stop caring about.
If you want to grow in this direction, pick depths that sit next to each other. Research and strategy feed each other. So do systems thinking and prototyping in code. Go deep in one, then let the next project pull you into the neighbouring one.
Being adaptable is becoming just as important as being exceptional in one specific craft.
Specialists will always matter
There will always be problems that need someone who has spent a decade on one thing: accessibility, motion, type, complex data visualisation. Teams need those people.
But in AI-driven teams, I think the biggest impact often comes from people who can connect design, product thinking, systems, business and execution together. They’re the ones who notice that a research finding changes the pricing, or that a technical constraint opens up a simpler flow, because they’re standing in both places at once.