Chris Butler wrestles with a generations-old problem in his latest piece: new technologies shortcut the old ways of doing things and therefore quality takes a nosedive. But is it different this time with the tools available to us today?

While design is more accessible than ever, with Adobe experimenting with chat interfaces and Canva offering pro-level design apps for free, putting a tool into the hands of someone doesn’t mean they’ll know how to wield it.

Anyone can now create something that looks professional, that uses modern layouts and typography, that feels designed. But producing something that feels designed does not mean that any design has happened. Most tools don’t ask you what you want someone to do. They don’t force you to make hard choices about hierarchy and priority. They offer you options, and if you don’t already understand the fundamentals of how design guides attention and serves purpose, you’ll end up using too many of them to no end.

Butler concludes that as designers, we’re in a bind because “the pace of change is only accelerating, and it is a serious challenge to designers to determine how much time to spend keeping up.”

You can’t build foundational knowledge while chasing the new. But you can’t ignore the new entirely, or you’ll fall behind. So you split your time, and both efforts can suffer. The fundamentals remain elusive because you’re too busy keeping up. The tools remain half-learned because you’re too busy teaching [design fundamentals to clients].

Butler—nor I—know if there’s a good solution to this problem. Like I said at the start, this is an age-old problem. Friction is a feature, not a bug.

This is just the reality of working in a field that sits at the intersection of human behavior and technological change. Both move, but at different speeds. Human attention, cognition, emotion — these things change slowly, if at all. Technology changes constantly. Design has to navigate both.

And while Butler’s essay never explicitly mentions AI or AI tools, it’s strongly implied. Developers using AI tools to code miss out on the fundamentals of building software. Designers (or their clients) using AI to design face the issues brought up here. Those who use AI to accelerate what they already know, that seems to be The Way.