Catt Small, product designer at Dropbox, argues that AI-generated UI is not a universal solution. Her work spans tens of millions of users across products with years of accumulated context, the exact conditions where prompt-to-UI tools break down.
The core of her Config 2026 talk is a decision framework: how to identify which design problems require deep, manual exploration versus which ones can be delegated to AI. That distinction matters because skipping the thinking phase on complex problems does not save time, it produces wrong answers faster.
Read the full talk for the framework itself, not just the conclusion. The value is in how Small defines complexity thresholds and maps specific problem types to specific tools. If you design at scale, that taxonomy is what you need.
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