Welcome back! Thank you so much for the kind comments and love on last week’s newsletter. It was so great to connect with some of you. This week I’ve been contemplating the future of Design as well as sharing some of the tabs that have been cluttering my browser.
Earlier this month, Microsoft released a study titled: Working with AI: Measuring the Occupational Implications of Generative AI (Tomlinson et al, July 2025). The study looked at over 200,000 interactions with their Copilot assistant and analyzed the most common tasks. They then calculated an AI applicability score by looking at task success and the impact of AI on the overall task. From that, the report then ranked the top 40 occupations that are most at risk from being taken over by AI.
If you’re a designer and you’ve held your breath since clicking on this article, you can exhale (for now 😉). While many white collar jobs are on the list, the list does not contain design roles. The top two most affected occupations are predicted to be Interpreters & Historians. If you read last week’s newsletter (The Designer’s Pockbook Guide to AI Models) you’ll be familiar with some of the models that excel at the very kind of knowledge-retrieval and synthesis that these roles rely on. The full list of jobs likely to be impacted are listed below:
The top 40 most affected occupations by generative AI:
Interpreters and Translators
Historians
Passenger Attendants
Sales Representatives of Services
Writers and Authors
Customer Service Representatives
CNC Tool Programmers
Telephone Operators
Ticket Agents and Travel Clerks
Broadcast Announcers and Radio DJs
Brokerage Clerks
Farm and Home Management Educators
Telemarketers
Concierges
Political Scientists
News Analysts, Reporters, Journalists
Mathematicians
Technical Writers
Proofreaders and Copy Markers
Hosts and Hostesses
Editors
Business Teachers, Postsecondary
Public Relations Specialists
Demonstrators and Product Promoters
Advertising Sales Agents
New Accounts Clerks
Statistical Assistants
Counter and Rental Clerks
Data Scientists
Personal Financial Advisors
Archivists
Economics Teachers, Postsecondary
Web Developers
Management Analysts
Geographers
Models
Market Research Analysts
Public Safety Telecommunicators
Switchboard Operators
Library Science Teachers, Postsecondary
What was the least affected occupation? Well, good news for any Dredge Operators and Bridge and Lock Tenders that may be reading this. While design is not on the list, I do think we’re going to see / already seeing some impact to the discipline. I think there are two key areas orientated on what we do and how we do it. First on the What. Often our work lives at the intersection of understanding human needs, empathy and creative-problem solving. As AI shifts from tool to collaborator in the workplace, and tool to trusted advisor in our personal lives - I see our role needing to evolve to include deeper responsibility for the systems we create. Second the how we do our work. This newsletter exists because of the explosion of AI-powered tools, frameworks and knowledge that many of us are currently eagerly learning. Many of us have already adopted these tools into our workflows. Make no mistake, the voluntary nature of that will only exist for so much longer. So while, we’re not competing with AI, I predict we’ll see design roles that do not leverage any kind of AI tooling to be a thing of the past. So breathe for now and I’ll leave you with this week’s curated tabs
Useful Weekly Links 🔗 (Human Curated).
Principles For AI Agents - Linear dropped Agent Interaction Guidelines (AIG) that outline principles and best practices to consider when designing agents. I really love their invite to help shape these principles as a broader community.
Prompt Marketplace - This AI x Crypto creation called Promptd lets creators monetize their AI prompts and workflows without exposing the underlying IP. This could potentially signal the start of a new prompt economy emerging.
Claude Conductor - If you’ve found yourself dabbling with Claude Code, I’d recommend checking out conductor.build. It enables you to run multiple Claude Code agents at once and provides an alternative to jumping into the terminal.
SVG Loaders - If you’ve found yourself sharpening your front-end chops recently, you may have found yourself on the hunt for quality SVGs / animations for your work. This library of SVG loading icons has been created and
Prompt Introspection - I came across this prompt on social media and I’ll leave it with you to try:
