Designing With AI? Make a Jig.

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One thing I’ve learned as an amateur woodworker is that when a job is difficult to do precisely—or tedious to do repeatedly—you make a jig. A jig, by its broadest definition, is a tool that makes it easier to make something else.

If you’re building a bookcase with adjustable shelves, you need to drill two straight, evenly spaced rows of holes. If you’re making a set of drawers, you need to cut the same interlocking joints again and again. Jigs make jobs like these simpler, more accurate, or both. They constrain the position or movement of a tool or workpiece, making consistent results less dependent on a steady hand. A shelf-pin jig guides a drill from hole to hole; a dovetail jig guides a router through every joint. Jigs can be as simple as a block of wood or as elaborate as a custom-built metal guide.

Jigs are also finding their way into AI-assisted interface design. I first saw the term used in this way by Josh Puckett, the cofounder of the design studio Iteration and creator of Interface Craft, a growing library of user interaction tools and knowledge. Puckett is also, perhaps unsurprisingly, a hobbyist woodworker himself, who sees many similarities between building furniture and building software.

“To make more advanced and creative things, you have to make tools to help you make the thing,” he told me. “Sometimes you’re like, ah, God, I need an extra pair of hands. That’s where jigs really come into it.”