Intentional design: the difference between shipping something and shipping the right thing

I just returned from Figma’s annual Config conference in San Francisco, where tens of thousands of designers, engineers, and product folks from over 140 countries packed the Moscone Center. 

I'm not a designer, I'm an admirer — an outsider who gets extremely fired up about what design does to people when it's done right. 

So I was surprised to see a number of conference goers wearing hats that said "Design Is Dead."

Is it? Working in the life insurance space, I see everyday how good design practices inform better business outcomes. And besides, no one flies in from 140 countries to watch something die. 

Over time, I deduced that the hat was more of a friendly jab. A conversation starter. A nod to AI and the changing of the design landscape. Design isn’t really dead, it’s just being redesigned, and the people who actually do this work can feel it. 

Figma CEO Dylan Field said the thing that cut through the whole week: "AI has lowered the floor, but it has not raised the ceiling."

Everyone can generate a passable screen now. The floor is on the ground. That's fine. The floor was never the interesting part. AI works by taking the average. It synthesizes from what already exists and, by definition, cannot push past it. The ceiling, the work that's genuinely better and more innovative, only moves when a person cares enough to find the real problem before touching the solution.

What Config made clear is that the conversation isn't about tools replacing people. It's about what happens when execution gets cheap. What's left is judgment: knowing what to build, what to cut, and the difference between shipping something and shipping the right thing. That’s particularly crucial in life insurance, which features complex product flows, vast regulation, and higher stakes than, say, your average ecommerce experience. 

Here’s what that can look like: 

A large life insurance carrier came to us with a technology and user experience puzzle they’d been grappling with. Nola Shi, one of our designers here at Bestow, spent real time digging into the solve. Not a quick pass. Actual research. Hypotheses. Testing. Assumptions we were sure about, confronted, and rebuilt because the data showed something different. The kind of work that's humbling, and that takes time and real human problem solving. The kind of work some teams skip because the roadmap can’t wait.

When we brought it to our client, they called it "an amazing north star." They assumed it was an aspirational design for a far-off future. It was a joy to break the good news: we could deliver this next quarter.

Shock. Silence. Excitement. The best moment I've had at work this year.

That's what great design does. It’s what happens when someone cares enough to get it right before calling it done, when someone gets their eyes off the floor, looks to the ceiling, and challenges whether that’s really the limit. 

The barrier to entry may be lower, but design is not dead. Designing for the average is. And that’s good news for the life insurance industry, because we’ve got big challenges to tackle. Challenges that require fine-tuned human judgment, the ability to challenge assumptions, and the ability to push AI-based solutions even further. 

Stephanie Nieves-Sanchez is Lead Product Manager at Bestow, where she works on the agent and applicant experience. Problem-solver by training. Design obsessive by choice.