Every designer wants sharper craft and better taste. But with the new tools generating close to all of your work, it's tempting to skip the design fundamentals entirely. I mean... who knows anything about gestalt or color theory anymore?!

Also, social media is full of hot takes claiming UX is dead and the double diamond is over. None of this or the above helps you to enjoy your job as a Product Designer. Luckily, there's a better way.

In this episode of The Design Table Podcast, Tyler and Nick continue their series on becoming a modern, in-demand product designer with part two: improving your hard skills. They skip the hype and focus on how you get better at the output, whether you like building everything by hand or running 20 directions in parallel.

Tyler makes the case for learning the fundamentals the slow way first, so you can art direct the tools instead of just trusting whatever they come up with. He shares how he uses Figma's agent to apply a design system to his mockups, and why talking through a problem with ChatGPT for 30 minutes is part of his discovery. Nick is much more skeptical and explains why reviewing an AI-generated 80% version can be more exhausting than designing it yourself.

They also agree on a very boring answer: repetition. Copy the designers you admire, make something every day, and build a playground of experiments that shows off your range.

In this episode you will learn:

🔸 Why junior designers need to nail hard skills before leaning on AI tools
🔸 What AI design tools still get wrong, from happy path flows to generic styling
🔸 Why the journey map is the one step you shouldn't skip
🔸 How a branch-and-merge workflow could make code the source of truth for design
🔸 Why repetition and daily design challenges still beat every shortcut
🔸 Why one to two year goals beat a five year plan
🔸 How a playground page with 52 experiments helps you stand out, especially as a freelancer
🔸 How Tyler uses Figma's agent to apply components, spacing, and variables from a design system
🔸 Why the double diamond isn't dead, it's on steroids
🔸 How talking a problem through with ChatGPT turns into personal discovery
🔸 How Nick and Tyler's opposite working styles show up everywhere, down to a broken dishwasher
🔸 This week's challenge: a portfolio hero section with no centered layout that works in English, Spanish, and German

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More about Tyler and Nick Tyler: https://www.designtablepodcast.com/hosts/tyler-white Nick: https://www.designtablepodcast.com/hosts/nick-groeneveld