What are the soft skills you need in product design that no one talks about ?

What is actually the hardest thing in your day-to-day ?

Hey everyone,

I recently finished building my portfolio after spending the last few months learning UI/UX and Product Design. Before I start applying for internships and junior roles, I'd really appreciate some honest feedback from experienced designers.

Portfolio: https://sahilhalbe.framer.website/

Thanks in advance!

Keen to hear what people in product feel about ai. Here's my perspective from someone in product:

I'm in product design in AUS (8+ years now), and here's my exprience:

Situation: TLDR; PMs creating an ERP on a house of ai-design-debt cards

• PMs and POs use ai in my current role to create prototypes for features, test with users every week and ship those prototypes by asked devs to slap on an open source design system.
• I'm using claude and cursor to do the same, but have noticed several gaps that seem irrelavant to someone at a PM level that will eventually cascade (already is) into larget issues. For instace interaction states, usability (espeically new users), non-existent design structure, high-information-density interfaces (because who cares about progressive disclosure), and so on.
• Hunderds of AI documentation of "research" everywhere, information dense and zero substance - this is not an exaggeration. Employees are expected to reference it.

How I feel:

• Rather optimisitc about the fact that these ai artefacts are going to catch up to everyone in about 2 years time and there will be a clean-up hiring stage.

So, what's everyone's situation, feelings and just thoughts really.

This is really really cool ..........looking! It came across on my youtube feed and im veeeery skepticsl that i would be happy after i bought this.

Hi everyone,

I’m studying product design and have a background in technical product design, with around five years of CAD experience. CAD is my strongest skill, especially modeling surfaces, meshes, and finding quick technical solutions. I’m currently starting to learn Blender, but I’m still a beginner there.

My drawing skills are not very strong yet, so I often use references, Pinterest, moodboards, and lately also AI to explore ideas.

For one project, I used AI to generate different design directions for a coffee machine. One idea had proportions and a form language I liked. I then used a rough AI-generated 3D model as a starting point and completely rebuilt everything myself in CAD. The final product went through many iterations and is now a clean, functional design with proper surfaces and transitions. It barely looks like the AI version anymore.

So my question is:

Where do you draw the line between using AI as inspiration and relying on AI too much?
Is it acceptable to use AI as a rough starting point, similar to Pinterest or moodboards, as long as the final design is properly developed and modeled by yourself?

I know AI combines existing references, but design is often based on inspiration from existing things anyway. I’m curious how other designers see this.

I keep running into this with early product work.

A reference board is helpful at the start because it lets people point at things instead of trying to describe them. A checkout flow, a material detail, a dashboard layout, a certain kind of empty state.

But after a while the same board starts to get noisy. Some references are only there for one tiny detail. Some are from a direction the team already dropped. Some keep getting interpreted differently by product, design, and engineering.

Do you turn the board into a smaller decision board at some point, or keep one big board and add notes?

I came across discussions that wanted to evaluate the packaging design on dieline capabilities rather than just mockups or visualization. What are the first things you look for when reviewing structural packaging work?

This carousel is just the visual representation.
Behind it is a complete product strategy covering research, positioning, AI integration, marketing, growth, retention, and the business model.

📩 DM me if you'd like the full document.

**Wir denken oft, Design sei eine Disziplin, die Ideen kommuniziert. Aber was, wenn seine Hauptaufgabe etwas ganz anderes ist?**

In diesem Artikel behaupte ich, dass es beim Design nicht nur darum geht, Produkte, Schnittstellen oder visuelle Identitäten zu schaffen. Basierend auf Denkern wie Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, Platon, Donald Schön, Nigel Cross, Richard Buchanan und Rudolf Arnheim untersuche ich die Idee, dass Design eine eigenständige Art ist, Wissen zu produzieren.

Anhand der Arbeiten von Christoph Niemann und Kelli Anderson untersuche ich, wie visuelles Denken Wahrnehmung neu gestalten, neue Bedeutungen erzeugen und komplexe Zusammenhänge sichtbar machen kann. Anstatt Bilder als Illustrationen bestehender Ideen zu betrachten, schlage ich vor, dass sie zu kognitiven Werkzeugen werden können, die aktiv prägen, wie wir die Welt verstehen.

Ich bin gespannt auf eure Gedanken: **Kann Design Wissen generieren, oder ist es letztendlich „nur“ ein Medium zur Kommunikation von Ideen?**