When I was growing up I watched a lot of cartoons. Batman was one of my favourites. Excitement, drama, action, and one hero who could solve any problem with his wits and a very cool toolbelt.
Then Robin showed up, and it annoyed me. Why would you want some kid getting in the way of a perfect hero? Someone who was doing fine on his own. To me it looked like he was after Batman’s job.
Looking back, I don’t think the problem was Robin. I think the ‘problem’ was me.
What I felt was fear, though I couldn’t have called it that at eight years old (and how much fear can you actually have over a cartoon). Batman was mine. He was complete. And the second somebody else could do part of what made him special, something I looked up to felt a little smaller. A bit of the shine now belonged to a guy in a yellow cape.
That’s the thing about heroes. You want them to be cool all on their own.
And that is exactly the mood in our profession as designers right now. We think we’re arguing about tools. We’re not. It’s that uncomfortable feeling when something you were proud of being good at turns out to be doable by something else. It doesn’t matter that it’s done differently, or worse, or with no idea who it’s for. What matters is that it isn’t only yours anymore. That stings somewhere that has nothing to do with productivity.
So we do what I did as a kid. We go looking for reasons why this new thing doesn’t belong, find reasons why it could actually not be any good after all or forcefully try to work with it because we have to.
But here’s what I never noticed watching those Batman episodes. Batman didn’t get smaller when Robin turned up. He got room. Someone else chased the henchmen and covered the other exit, so Batman could do the part he excelled at: read the situation, decide what the real fight was, and carry it when he got it wrong.
And Robin was never a lesser Batman either. He was fast, he was capable, and he could absolutely handle himself. He never took over because of where he stood, not because of what he could do. Batman decides which fight matters and who they’re doing it for. Robin makes him better at it. Two capable people, one of whom carries the decision and perspective.
We gave AI a cape and a seat at the table.
Most agencies I know are busy adding AI to what we already do. Faster research, generated wireframes, automated QA. It’s real and it works. But it’s placement by accident. You end up with AI standing next to everybody, doing a piece of everyone’s job, with an opinion on everything and no stake in any of it. That’s not a sidekick. That’s another stakeholder in the room, and we have plenty.
A sidekick sits next to you. It knows the work. It hands you what you need before you ask. And it never makes the call.
Because Batman’s job was never the punching. Ours was never the pixels. It’s recognising what somebody actually needs, in a specific moment, and deciding that this is the version worth building, for people who will never be in the room with you. Guess which one AI just got very good at. And guess which one it can’t touch, because it has no clue what it’s like to be on the other end of what we ship.
Now the uncomfortable part, because Batman has homework too.
Robin only works if Batman is doing the Batman job. If you spend your days producing, you’re not leading a sidekick, you’re competing with one. And that’s my worry. A lot of designers have come to believe that being fluent in the tools is what makes them a designer, right when the tools became the cheapest part of the job. If that’s where your value sits, you’ve quietly applied for Robin’s position.
It took Batman and Robin a while to sort out who does what. Once they did, neither of them got smaller. They just stopped doing each other’s work.
So don’t worry. You’ll always be Batman. Just make sure you’re doing the job.
Also published on Medium