Designing delight: What product engineering looks like in 2026 | Tech Radar

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Designing delight: What product engineering looks like in 2026

Designing meaningful products in an AI-driven world

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Ask a product engineer what they love about their job and very few will talk about coding.

That’s because good product management has never really been about the output. It’s about building something that surprises people, earns their trust and ultimately drives impact.

But it really excels when creating something original; when it’s about designing delight.

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Currently though, this is under threat. Not from the engineers themselves, but from a rapidly evolving challenger that makes anything in creativity possible: AI.

AI tools have made creation feel limitless. In an era of possibilities, individuals no longer have to rely on a writer or a graphic designer to bring their ideas to life; it can happen with a few short prompts.

This shift has changed the face of creation. It’s a process that’s long been rooted in effort, inspiration and ideation. Now it’s something that happens quickly and without the need for advanced tools.

Which raises an important question for product engineers: when AI can literally create anything and the cost of creation drops to near zero, what makes a product meaningful?

My son creates monsters. He’s nine, so at the beginning of his journey as a creator and, who knows, maybe even an engineer.

These monsters come straight from his imagination. Recent highlights include a crow crossed with snowman (a ‘crowman’) and a flame-wielding, eyepatch-wearing monster that defies categorization.

But while my own childhood creations stopped at this stage, my son’s continue to evolve with the help of AI. With my supervision, his drawings become prompts. From here, the AI model helps them take flight, hurl fireballs and come to life.

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Nevertheless, however convincing these animations are, one thing is missing that only my son can bring to the process: a compelling story. AI can generate content, but to be meaningful, it needs to be selective, intentional and directional.

My son still carries this missing ingredient in him because, unlike AI, he isn’t optimizing for what makes sense or repackaging what’s gone before. The crowman is not based in market research, customer feedback or even logic. Instead, it exists because a nine-year-old found the idea funny and strange and worth exploring.

He runs on curiosity, surprise, delight and sometimes pure chaos. And these are very human qualities that remain essential to designing what delight looks like.

Building isn’t just about creating something – it’s choosing what matters. The principle behind the ‘crowman’ is the same as product engineering and Saa S: a good creation or product needs a good story, it needs the why

AI has seduced individuals into generating more, quicker than ever. Even engineers and developers are vibe coding – using AI to generate code through prompting instead of writing it line-by-line. There is nothing wrong with taking a few shortcuts here and there. But the output must not be sacrificed in the process. Unless human storytelling and craft retain their role, users will always feel the creator’s absence when it comes to the product.

For my own part, I tell my team that we need to care. This is a non-negotiable when we’re trying to create beautiful products that are built around beautiful, compelling stories. That’s what we all got into the job for.

Design for emotional outcomes, not just functional ones: Unlike AI, we are capable of emotional intelligence. So we have to make the most of this by not just tapping into what we want our customers to do, but how we want them to feel when they do it.
Craft as a core engineering responsibility: Similarly, it’s important to remember the link between initial product design and eventual craft. It’s not about replacing skills with a paler alternative. It’s about giving them the platform to shine.
Intentional constraints vs infinite generation: When there is an infinite number of choices, it can be hard not to fall into an uncoordinated, ‘spray and pray’ approach. Maintaining clarity over what you are trying to achieve and establishing creative guardrails is essential. Knowing what to build is just as important as knowing what not to.
Narrative-led product decisions: Great products don’t just function – they tell a story. So we must ground decisions in a clear narrative about who the user is, what they’re trying to overcome, and how a product helps them get there.

AI has changed the model for how we create. Not just as product engineers, but in most walks of life, from writers to artists, teachers and more.

But some things – partnerships, empathy, judgement, ethics, stories – will stay just as important. These are rooted in human creativity and are the things that create story and meaning, not just output.

In a world of infinite generation, we must acknowledge that value has shifted from making things to choosing what matters. In this era of possibilities, AI isn’t the enemy; designing without purpose and delight is.

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