Adobe’s Scott Belsky on the ‘Creative Professional’ Evolution

Today, Scott Belsky(Opens in a new window) is Adobe’s Chief Product Officer, but he started out in finance before founding Behance(Opens in a new window), an online community for creative professionals acquired by Adobe in 2012, and launching the 99U (Opens in a new window)conference. He recently stopped by PCMag Labs to discuss trends in digital design and why Adobe chose to make XD(Opens in a new window), its new interface design suite, available for free.

“The term creative professional is going to be a weird term in the future,” Belsky says. “What company doesn’t say that design and creativity isn’t important to them?” As Belsky sees it, labor is increasingly becoming commoditized and automated. AI is going to do everything for us.

“Everyone needs to be outfitted to be a creative,” Belsky says, and Adobe XD is going to be a part of that toolset. “I think this will be as big if not bigger than Photoshop. Experience design will involve spatial computing, augmented reality, and even voice interfaces.”

Creating those new interfaces will challenge what it means to be a designer, particularly when it comes to setting the defaults that consumers may never actually see. “When you tell Google that you want something, you get a lot of options. You have ads at the top, but you still have visual discovery.”

This will be very different in the voice-driven world of Google Home and Amazon Echo. “In a voice interface and you say you want to buy batteries. You have no idea what is happening under the hood. You don’t know if you are going to get Duracells or Energizers. It is kind of scary. There is a battle to be the default in these new mediums.”

Belsky says these default-questions will plague the next generation of AR designers as well. “There is only a certain amount of real estate around you,” Belsky says. “Physical discovery is limited, just like voice.”

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Ultimately, the question is a philosophical one. “What is the responsibility of the designer to preserve a consumer choice?”

Check out our full interview with Belsky in the video above. For more Fast Forward with Dan Costa, subscribe to the podcast. On iOS, download Apple’s Podcasts(Opens in a new window) app, search for “Fast Forward” and subscribe. On Android, download the Stitcher Radio(Opens in a new window) for Podcasts app via Google Play.

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