There’s a scene early on in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone where Hagrid takes Harry through Diagon Alley to get his wand at Ollivanders Wand Shop. The shop is jammed to the ceiling with little boxes of wands and the place looks like it’s been there since the dawn of time. Ollivander brings wand after wand for Harry to test. Nothing clicks — each wand misfiring, causing havoc and destruction. But then an idea hits him, and he goes and fetches one wand in particular for Harry. Harry picks the wand up and we see a fundamental and, in the movie, we see an almost spiritual fusion of Harry and his wand.
The shot of Harry’s connection with his wand — music swelling, lighting and camera dramatically moving, hair standing on end, mystical breeze blowing through the shop — is the image that came to mind as I drove down a dusty road, going to pick up groceries and listening to @krispuckett’s tell @ridd_design about his experiences with AI. And it’s come to mind again and again, ever since. I want to explore a little bit why I think this scene in Harry Potter is a fitting representation for what’s happening in the design world right now, and look more broadly at the subject of design and AI through the imagery of Harry and his wand.
1. The internet is jammed with AI tools and processes; pick the one that works for you.
There are new tools dropping every week for agentic design. Big, small, you name it. Things are moving so fast that six months is often outdated when it comes to specific tooling and tech. A few weeks ago I learned about Agentation from @benjitaylor. Amazing! Then the next week @bengold told me about CSS Studio which appears to be kind of the same but a little different and way more powerful. Astounding!
The same for processes — the combinations of tooling + your own working style + what’s needed (and when) is endless. Everybody’s process now is a little different and a heck of a lot more fast-paced, iterative, and exploratory. One designer will just design in Claude, no canvas. Another will wireframe with Paper but fine-tune the UI polish details in Figma and code. I saw one designer on Twitter who did his UX wireframing with literal paint on a canvas on his desk. (Stunt, maybe, but it captures the fun of where we’re at.)
@designertom points out that we need to remove the word “should” from our vocabulary when it comes to process and tooling, and this is really something I’ve come to appreciate. “How exactly do you do this?” is no longer a dumb question, because it really does vary from person to person. “What’s in your tool stack?” is not a question any more with two or three main answers. Everything’s up for grabs.
Ollivanders Wand Shop was jammed with wands, and each wand was unique. Pick the tool and process that works for you, in this moment, and keep your eyes open for other things that might fit your workflow better. Don’t hesitate to make a mess as you try things out.
2. Learn how to use the tool properly.
There are a few scenes in Harry Potter when the kids are learning to use their wands. It’s a learning curve. One of the other students, Neville, causes an explosion when he’s trying to cast a simple spell. Another can’t get anything to happen even though he keeps stabbing his wand in the air and saying the magic words — but not doing either in the right way.
Similarly, your AI tool of choice isn’t something to just wave around and stab the air with. You need to actually learn how to use it. Invest time in the system. Learn the ins and outs. I remember, early on, a time when I gave ChatGPT a prompt. It didn’t do what I wanted. I gave up and then spent way more resources doing it by hand. This was pretty silly of me, in retrospect.
Learn how skills work. Learn how memory works, how agents work. Learn what makes a good prompt a good prompt, and not a bad prompt. Use Claude to help build a prompt for image generation with, say, ChatGPT. Learn what kinds of non-verbal inputs (URL, links to Figma or Paper documents) work better. Learn how to plan and scope things. Create skills and break them down. Listen and absorb what other people are doing constantly. Don’t just stab the air with Claude! Learn how to use AI to get the result you want. Neville had to learn to use his wand correctly. Ron learned it was levi-OH-sa and not levio-SAH. You have to learn your tool, too.
3. Make magical and wonderful and fun things.
Harry Potter was chock-full of magic and wonder. It could’ve been a nihilistic, brutalist story, but it wasn’t. It had wonder, amazement, awe, grandeur, and beauty.
This kind of goes without saying because so many designers are already doing this and it’s been amazing to watch, but use AI to make really cool, awesome, amazing, grand, wondrous, beautiful things. Many folks are shipping such things right now; my Twitter feed is full of stuff made by people that previously either didn’t have the skill and ability to make, or else did but couldn’t do it quickly.
But now, if you know how to use the tool, so many things are in your grasp. Make interactions that are more quirky. Make groovy things for the sake of making groovy things. Use ChatGPT to generate a UI based off a vibe and then work with Claude to make it real. Create 3D effects on the web for no reason other than because you can do it now. Create shaders because they look very psychedelic. Create ripply login screens.
Personally, I create throwaway jigs all the time — little tools I needed for one specific purpose — and it’s so much fun, for me, to do this. It feels magical to say, “Give me a tool in the browser that will allow me to take this placeholder pile of photos, add photos, drag them around to adjust their spacing, then give me a button to copy a prompt back to Claude to update the positioning.” And then it does. What!
4. Make the world a better place.
What did Harry ultimately use his wand for, in the end? As a tool to help defeat Voldemort.
You and me, we designers, need to make the world a better place. Are the tools we’re building doing that? Are we building flows, microinteractions, features, modals, and systems into magical experiences without considering if they actually make life better for people? Sure, this question gets a little philosophical, but I think it’s one we need to ask. In a world that in many ways is progressively going more and more crazy, is our design work a breath of fresh air? Are we intentional infusing our designs, say, with a bit of calm for our users’ sake? Are the tools we’re building actually needed? Are the cultures we’re responsible for shaping in our companies actually good cultures? Are the people thriving?
We designers have been given wands. “Yer a wizard, Designer.”