Design in the Age of Almost-Everything If Everything Is Possible With AI—What Remains Relevant?

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New tools such as AI, digital twins and real-time visualization are being used intensively in product design. But what does this do to the work of designers? Lennart Baramsky from BMW Group Designworks provides insights into how processes are changing, but the design identity remains the same.

Almost anything is possible. Design has reached a point where artificial intelligence, real-time visualization and three-dimensional processes have long since set the standard. Where sketches used to be created and renderings marked the next step, design is now conceived directly in space. Products are developed, tested and experienced as digital twins before they are built. Materials, proportions and atmospheres can be simulated, compared and further developed. What used to require imagination is now visible. What once took time is now part of an ever faster process. Visual standards have also increased significantly: What used to be considered extraordinary now defines the basics. High precision, rapid iteration and differentiated elaboration are required.

The challenge today is not to confuse feasibility with relevance, but to understand design as a targeted lever for systematic added value. This is precisely where the BMW Group Designworks innovation studio, an independent subsidiary of the BMW Group, comes in. Every day, we experience how artificial intelligence is shaping design today, how the work of designers is shifting— and what new forms of responsibility, attitude and decision-making this entails.

Design Work is Shifting: from "Making" to "Orchestrating"

The classic idea of design as a sequence of fixed steps—idea, sketch, elaboration—is becoming less and less effective. Instead, design today is created in networked systems: from the interlinking of tools, from parallel processes, from conscious decisions along a strategically orchestrated workflow. The focus is not only on the result, but also on the process that leads to it.

In the future, this is precisely the designer's job: to combine the right tools for their benefit in such a way that the best result is achieved in the end.

Lennart Baramsky

Lennart Baramsky, designer at BMW Group Designworks, has long since left the classic disciplinary boundaries of product and UX design behind in his work. He describes this shift as a key skill for the coming years: "In the future, this will be the designer's job: to combine the right tools for their benefit in such a way that the best result is achieved in the end." AI is not seen as an all-in-one solution, but as part of a system. One AI model generates initial visual approaches, another refines them, a third raises the quality and level of detail even further. Design is created in the sequence—and in the decisions in between.

This also changes the requirements profile of the profession: designers have to rethink processes, recognize ideal workflows and control interrelationships. Technical understanding, 3D expertise and the ability to combine digital tools in a meaningful way are becoming the basis of creative work. "Today, the selection of tools alone is almost an artistic achievement in itself," says Baramsky. Design is shifting from the surface to the structure. Or, as he puts it himself: "In my work, I often feel more like an art creative director who decides in which direction the AI should be steered."

The aha moment is right here: Design is not losing importance—it is actually gaining responsibility. The quality of good designers has always been their ability to reduce complexity and make relevance visible. The more that is possible with AI today, the more important it is how possibilities are organized, filtered and brought together.

AI As A Sparring Partner in the Design And Decision-Making Process

Working with AI is a balancing act. Between clear control and deliberate room for the unexpected. Designers set the direction, the mood and the framework—and react to what comes back. "It's often about finding a balance between: I have control—and I relinquish control," says Baramsky. Deviations or supposed mistakes are not seen as a bug, but as an impulse. As a starting point for new ideas.

Baramsky explains: "This process describes a kind of dialog that you have with the AI." The creative achievement lies not in the initial result, but in the selection. In what is taken further—and in what is deliberately discarded. Creativity does not disappear, it shifts. Away from pure generation, towards conscious selection, combination and further thinking. Or, as Baramsky sums it up: "For me, creativity is a combination: a decision made from elements that are reconfigured and brought together."

How Design Identity Remains Visible Despite AI

This decision also touches on the question of creative identity. Anyone who has decided to enter the design profession does so out of a desire to create. The concern about giving up part of this identity is justified. At the same time, practice shows a different picture. "In my case, it tends to inspire creativity," says Baramsky. AI opens up new combination spaces, accelerates iterations without shifting the final creative responsibility.

For Lennart Baramsky, creative identity is something that takes time to form: "It's not just one picture—it's a mass of decisions." Only through the interplay of many works does it become recognizable what constitutes a signature: Which moods dominate. Which solutions are preferred. Which variants are consistently left out. "You only understand the creative signature once you have a certain number of pictures."

Design thus becomes less a question of individual output and more a question of structural consistency in the process. Those who curate develop a language. Those who make decisions repeatedly shape identity. And this is precisely where design remains distinctive—even, and especially, when working with AI.

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