Sprinkle Some AI On It

So, you adopted AI tools. How's that working for you?
Expectations gone up? Headcount justification gone down? The brief is getting shorter because "you have AI now"? Timeline compressed because "AI handles the repetitive work"? And when the output isn't what anyone hoped for - the rushed, under-prompted, under-reviewed work that was due yesterday - it gets written up as a design quality problem?

AI burnout is here and it is real, coming at us from both directions.From the organization: mistaking a capability for a magic fix, resetting expectations upward without adjusting support, guidance, or process, and leaving the team to absorb the gap. From the practitioner: the pressure to appear AI-fluent, the reluctance to flag when AI output isn't good enough, the self-imposed obligation to keep pace with every new tool while still delivering everything else at the same standard.

And then there's the output itself. The ability to rapidly generate x10 the amount of work creates a problem of intake and processing that causes cognitive overload on levels the profession hasn't dealt with before.

When it does go wrong, the argument that lands is the same one that works for accessibility and design systems: hours logged, rework cycles, revision costs, and the documented gap between what was expected and what shipped.

A bandaid on a broken process doesn't fix anything. It just creates an illusion of functionality.