Designer Fund survey: designers ship more AI code but collaborate less

Designer Fund's second annual survey of more than 900 designers across 60-plus countries argues that AI hasn't sidelined designers so much as pushed them up a layer, into building tools and shipping code rather than just producing deliverables. Weekly AI use for design tasks rose from 54% to 91% year over year, and half of respondents, not just design engineers, say they've shipped AI-generated code to production. The less flattering finding: reported collaboration decline quadrupled, from 5% to 20%, as more work shifts into solo prompting sessions. Formal policy is lagging behind too, with only 28% of leaders updating evaluation or hiring, and just 4% touching compensation, despite 73% of designers feeling higher expectations.