With every new technology platform or toolset, and with the general maturation of manufacturing alongside design and engineering, we’ve seen something subtle but powerful happen over the past few decades: deeper integration. Teams that once worked in parallel now converge. Those who thrive are those who can bring together supply chain thinking, manufacturing expertise, material innovation, and advanced engineering.

Consumer electronics brought out the best in this convergence, especially for electrical engineers. But I’d argue it was the mechanical designers who defined the interface, who built the shell between emerging technologies and the real world.

*Editor’s Note: This essay is part of a new series exploring how AI is transforming the way physical products are imagined, designed, and built. **Hardware is the New Salt *will spotlight several thinkers and makers at the intersection of AI and product design and their insights into this dynamic technology ecosystem. This series is supported by Enzzo, who offers an AI-first product development platform created to support the next generation of builders.

On the design side, we’ve always chased that moment when an innovation doesn’t just give us better tools—it gives us more freedom. More expressive range. More opportunity to shape something meaningful.

Whether it was early CAD, SolidWorks, or modern simulation platforms, the deal was always the same: learn the tools deeply and you’ll unlock their potential. Fluency was the price of freedom.

Now something else is happening. The tools are changing—and so is the nature of fluency.

What we’re seeing with AI is a different kind of liberty. You don’t necessarily need to master a tool in the traditional sense. Instead, you need to engage with it intelligently. If you can articulate your intent—if you can curate a process—AI can help you realize ideas that once required years of technical training. That’s a profound shift.

It means a new kind of designer is entering the conversation. Not necessarily someone from a traditional technical background, but someone with imagination—someone who can guide AI toward outcomes that matter. And they’re achieving results. Compelling ones.

But it’s also confusing.

When someone doesn’t come from product design, it’s easy to jump too quickly into solutions that aren’t thoroughly thought through. You can generate something that looks viable, but has no real path to manufacture. Due to the complexity and potential of AI, even the most brilliant minds are adopting a phased approach, beginning with a careful exploration of its possibilities to ensure effective and responsible utilization.

We’re not at the point where AI can create a manufacturable product on its own. Not yet.

Still, the shift is fundamental. More people can now participate in design—and that’s a good thing. But we’re also witnessing a loss: specialized skills that were once rare are starting to feel like commodities. That’s the cost of automation. And we’re all going to feel it.

But the real opportunity isn’t just in what these tools can do today—it’s in what happens two, three, four generations from now. As our ability to curate and prompt improves, we’ll get closer to truly intentional results. Not just happy accidents.

That said, there’s value in those accidents. Early on, especially in branding, people loved the serendipity—put in a prompt, get something surprising back. Suddenly, you’re the editor, not the maker. That’s exciting. Serendipity reveals things we wouldn’t have found otherwise.

But if we rely too heavily on it, we get soft. We stop pushing. We stop refining. And then we don’t get what we intended—we just get what the algorithm gave us.

This applies in industrial design, too. Some interesting forms emerge from these tools. Yet, it still requires considerable effort to transform those forms into something that can be built. That gap is real.

The tools will improve. They’ll get smarter, more accurate, and more aligned. But adoption right now is messy. Chaotic. Everyone’s coming at this from a different angle, without shared standards or principles. It’s asymmetric and scattered.

The winners? They’ll be the ones who can bring order to that chaos. Who can tie systems together? Who can make the tools not just more straightforward to use, but better at understanding what designers want? Tools that align with creative intent, not just generative capacity.

And then there’s trust.

That’s the big one. Some people still have a gut reaction against AI-generated content—as if it’s less valuable, less “real.” That reaction isn’t going away anytime soon. But trust will come. It’ll grow when these systems start delivering reliably, when people see that creativity and AI can coexist, not in tension, but in collaboration.

We’re not quite there yet. But we’re getting closer.

About the author: Inspired to help craft a new generation of design-driven brands, Kirk James formed Cinco in 1998 to help innovators connect big ideas to people who crave them. Since then, he’s been leading a dynamic team of strategic thinkers and designers working to bring 360° brand experiences to life, building brands that not only endure but keep breaking through year after year. Working with start-ups to Fortune 100, from C-Suite to the front line, he knows what it takes to drive affinity and growth. A designer at heart, he can’t resist a blank sheet of paper.

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