It’s hard to quantify great design, but it seems that the more secure something gets, the more compromises on how the product feels, and acts, and responses we accept. The result is that people tend towards less secure options that are better designed because they’re more convenient, more conforming.
Software (and a lot of technology in general) is a field where folks expect things to work frictionlessly, even without training. Great design can add to that.
Too many well-intentioned projects fail because their creators don’t have the time and resources to iterate to the point where they compete with products whose designers are paid far too much to make people want things they don’t need.
AI has the potential to level that field, and to bring an unrelenting ethic to user experience that has hitherto been economically unfeasible. Practitioners are still required to put the work in, but under-resourced individual practitioners can now do the work that perhaps teams were required to in the past.