Does Automation Make Us More Creative?

Automation involves using technology to perform tasks usually done by people and is applicable to various industries and sectors. Recently, this concept has been widely discussed, especially following the emergence of ChatGPT, which can analyze large data sets, extract relevant information quickly and accurately, and generate summaries and data reports efficiently, allowing teams previously responsible for these tasks to now focus on more valuable ones that artificial intelligence cannot perform.

Is everything automatable?

The answer to this question is obviously no; not all projects are automatable nor all tasks. Each project is unique, but according to our experience, those with the most automation potential are those that:

• Are based on a monthly fee.
• Involve constant delivery of material.
• Are worked on with little time margin, therefore, also with little margin for error.
• Have little profit margin.

Regarding processes, the perfect candidates for automation are recurring and repetitive tasks such as changing copy, cropping images, reorganizing layouts after updating content, or reusing interface components.

Benefits of Automation

At Runroom, we are committed to Design Automation, and these are all the benefits we gain from its application:

• The creation process is standardized, making it known to all team members. This ensures that tasks are not blocked if someone is unavailable because anyone can take them on without delays or compromising the quality of work.
• Speed is gained, and time is saved, thus increasing productivity.
• The time saved can be invested in searching for references, trends, and new tools, as well as in the ideation and creation of new design proposals. All this adds value to the project, but also to the team, which expands its knowledge beyond daily tasks.
• Following the previous point, the team feels motivated by seeing that they can contribute and continue to grow professionally.
• Working faster can generate more errors, but by applying automation, the chances of error are reduced. This has a direct effect on the time spent, as there is no need to constantly make changes. Another effect is that designers gain confidence and security in each delivery.
• The client feels satisfied with the material they receive, positioning us in their eyes as experts and placing more trust in us, allowing us more freedom. Additionally, it enables us to take the initiative, not just follow instructions, and present proposals that help retain the client, ensuring project continuity and/or fostering new ones.
• As mentioned in the previous point, each project is unique, but the experience of automating processes makes scalability to other projects possible.

Automation in Design

Design is creativity, but when the workload is overwhelming, the production process becomes a sequence of tedious and repetitive tasks, where we are also constantly interrupted by client-requested changes, leading to more room for errors. All this was affecting the team, who frequently felt discouraged and frustrated, not only due to the constant feeling of racing against time but also because we couldn't find the opportunity to work from the ideation and creativity that fuels this discipline.

Moreover, working this way makes projects very dependent on designers, making it harder to replace or swap team members, and also creates a dependency on the client and their demands, leaving no room to take the initiative, innovate, and anticipate their needs.

Our Experience with Design Automation

Leveraging Figma and its possibilities, at Runroom we were able to systematize our production of pieces for projects and marketing campaigns, mainly banners, landings, and newsletters. The result was so positive that we shared our experience in a talk with Friends of Figma where we explained how through the use of components, styles, and autolayout, all functionalities of Figma, we managed to generate flexible templates that allowed us to handle a large volume of requests, reducing the time to market.

We also explained how we took advantage of plugins like Google Sheet Sync to integrate spreadsheets where copywriters added content, allowing us to update them automatically in Figma. This reduced copy errors to zero and improved collaboration between roles.

Here is the talk for you to better understand the details of our Design Automation application and three real cases. Additionally, we share a playground where we automate a project from scratch live, something that will be very useful for you to implement in your work as soon as you finish watching the video.

In Conclusion

Automation, regardless of the discipline in which it is applied, has a transformative effect on the functioning of teams and organizations. In the marketing world, as we have seen, it can be crucial for delivering up to four times faster, reducing errors to zero, optimizing processes, and retaining clients, as we have verified at Runroom.

Apart from the mechanisms we develop internally, there are more and more open tools aligning with automation. This is the case with Midjourney, an artificial intelligence program with which users can create images from a textual description, similar to DALL·E 2.

Addressing another facet of marketing, content creation, ChatGPT can create texts, answer questions, and hold conversations. Besides this system, other AI options are emerging, more focused on specific tasks like Jasper, capable of creating texts based on user search intent, Copy.ai which creates texts and incorporates templates and narrative styles, or Copymatic, more specialized in languages.

However, over-relying on systematization and artificial intelligence also has its risks; on one hand, there is the high development cost, the impact on employment, and, in terms of content creation, the potential bias and lack of neutrality that could invade texts without human supervision. Additionally, if the use of these systems for text writing becomes widespread, it is possible that content categories will be created: first-class, crafted by people, and second-class, written by AI, cheaper and faster, but with a higher risk of containing errors. With this idea in mind, OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has already released a tool to detect texts written by artificial intelligences.

As you can see, at Runroom we are passionate about design, technology, and innovation, and we never tire of learning, applying, and iterating, so we hope you enjoyed learning about our experience with Design Automation. If you want to delve deeper into the topic of artificial intelligence, don't miss episode 042 of Realworld where Frankie Carrero, Head of Product at Doofinder, host of the podcast Digital Thinking, professor, and investor, shares experiences and knowledge with us.