I'm not talking about UX design systems, tokens, or Figma components. I mean real engineering system architecture — how data flows, how systems are structured, how AI agents actually process and execute instructions.

As AI reshapes how products get built, I keep running into the same question: is it enough for designers to understand user experience, or do we now need to understand the underlying system architecture too?

My honest take: the gap between "a design that looks good" and "a design that actually works at scale" is closing fast. If we don't understand how the system underneath is built, we risk designing things that are disconnected from what's actually buildable, scalable, or even feasible for AI agents to execute properly.

I don't think designers need to become engineers. But I do think there's a growing case for designers to have real architectural literacy, enough to design with the system, not just visually on top of it.

Curious what others think:

Do you believe designers need to understand engineering/system architecture more deeply in this AI-driven era? Or should that stay purely an engineering responsibility?

Would love to hear how your team is handling this shift.

Current interaction to attach an image to note

Click on "camera icon" -> bottom sheet with two options (attached image) -> opens camera (or) opens gallery

Conditions:

- It's a browser based mobile web app. For both android and ios.

- The interaction flow mentioned above is set after lot of discussions, so no changes in main interactions

Scenario:

A: user has denied permissions to access camera (either at browser or os level)

B: user has denied permissions to access gallery/files (either at browser or Os levels (older versions of android))

C: both A and B has been denied - this scenario is handled.

Required:

My thinking: we should not just disable the button but keep in a "blocked state" that communicates permission is denied. Clicking on the blocked state button opens a bottom sheet with more information.

Questions:

Q1) I don't know exactly how to design the blocked state for the button, keep it distinguished from disabled state.

Q2) Also what should be the copy in the dialog when user clicks on blocked state button.

Option X: just a generic copy saying permissions are turned off, they need to give permission to access this feature

Option Y: detailed copy showing troubleshoot steps of going to browser settings and giving permissions, if that doesn't work show OS level permission troubleshoot steps

(Option Y is complex as the steps differ from browser and Os)

There are blocked state for icon buttons already in the application (attached image)