This post isn't so much about automation, as it is consolidation into one company's control. And how it appears to me, that innovation is not really coming from product improvement, but buying and expanding product offerings (which is one of two ways that a company can stay relevant, and with one way being harder and harder to do with 30+ yr old software and in my estimation has a lot of technological debt to it).
I could care less about UX design. Since the advent of no-code development anybody who cares to can develop their own app. The bar to entry is so low that it is not worth my time.
I'm glad I'm nearing retirement. These days you can just speak some prompts to your phone and get a fully rendered illustration. My skills are irrelevant... either that or my unique drawings filtered through years of observation and experience will suddenly become the new hip thing!
Not really. The bar to entry maybe lower, but still to get anywhere beyond that entry level still requires knowledge and skill. You mention "no code", that will only take one so far as well. Only so much can be compensated with no to low code that to get anywhere more sophisticated requires more knowledge. So while that basic app maybe able to be handled with no to low code, try to get anywhere more sophisticated, it doesn't hold up. Even if that no code framework allowed for actual code snippets in it to handle more complicated stuff. It is still very much opinionated in the direction that one can take.
Same thing with the construction of illustrations.
Or at least how it is now.
The ones that do the best are still the ones that have skills and knowledge of what it's like to be able to handle things that have been abstracted away by automation and go beyond. That know when to use abstraction and when not to use it or know what/how to fix it if something doesn't come out quite right. I see so many that are stuck on things like power trace/live trace/auto conversion (whatever "your" favorite term is) that not only can they not get away from that when they actually need to, but they are also stuck on whatever program that they are used to, because they are used to that unique workflow specific to how that program handles that abstraction. Where as someone that is more comfortable with the more manual and typically more available tools and typically those tools are at the same level from one program to the other, can typically go from one program to the next with less effort compared to someone that needs that same level of abstraction. This isn't even getting into the legal ramification of who owns what just yet with regard to AI generated art. I equate something like this with Github Co-Pilot. And because of that, I would also stipulate a lack of uniqueness to the end result as well. Because operations like this are opinionated in how things are done, there tends to be repetition with the end result as well.
When I was starting to learn digitizing (and this is something that a lot of people depend on automation today, the auto conversion), one mouse click equaled one needle insertion. No "stitch engine", no semi-manual tools even. It was all user. Now the software has their own equivalent to live/power trace (yet it sucks far more and the software costs astronomically more as well) and yet, knowing how to do things manually still puts one ahead of others. While yes, there may be more people able to come in to the market, there is typically a reason why they needed that extra layer of abstraction to get into the market as well. I doubt that that they will be able to go much further than that lower rung of the market.
To even go back to your wheat example. Again, that clears out that lower rung of entry, knowing what wheat to use for what purpose, the technique to mill it etc, but even doing all that, there is still knowledge that has to be used at the end in order to have it still turn out to be something worth eating/selling/whatever the desired end purpose is.
One can take this into animation as well (one of my passions) and with tweening, IK that is far more automated via software compared to frame by frame. Unless one knows how to fix the issues that crop up from time to time doing the more automated ways, it still sticks out. Even though the barrier to entry for those wanting to do animation is less with those animation processes (it also doesn't quite come out the same as really well done frame by frame, but I am biased towards that).
www.figma.com
techcrunch.com
