"Not that my developers colleagues weren't helpful. But in a fast paced environment, where delivery is key and discovery is secondary, developers aren't always available. During my thesis research about AIs' impact on dev/designer collaboration, I interviewed designers that had the same experience. That, or they worked in an environment where developers and designers never interacted: everything went through the Product manager. That's when I decided to test an idea that wandered in my head for some time: the synthetic developer."
"And that's when you may be wondering: Is this designer suggesting we replace developers with AI? The answer is no.What I wanted to understand was whether a LLM could replicate the kind of reasoning developers use when making trade-offs and spotting risks. Not to take their place, but to help designers explore technical constraints when no human counterpart is immediately available."
Solo designers often experience isolation when developers are unavailable in fast-paced, delivery-focused environments. Research into AI's impact on developer-designer collaboration revealed environments where developers and designers rarely interact, with communication routed through product managers. The concept of synthetic users inspired exploration of synthetic colleagues and even synthetic departments. A mid-project situation lacking kickoff, discovery, or user research prompted creation of a synthetic expert named Tim. The synthetic developer was used to evaluate whether a large language model can emulate developers' reasoning about feasibility, risks, and prioritization. The goal was to assist designers in exploring technical constraints when human developer input is not immediately accessible, not to replace developers.
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