#168 Nobody Invites the UX Designer Anymore (UX Identity Crisis, Part 2)

Future of UX | Your Design, Tech and User Experience Podcast | AI Design

The episode examines the identity crisis facing UX designers as AI-driven prototyping and 'vibe coding' allow non-designers to build interfa

Key takeaways

• The 'gatekeeper' approach fails in modern teams because any extra step is perceived as a blocker to rapid prototyping.
• UX is splitting into three distinct roles: the Screen Maker, the Builder Designer, and the Evidence-based Builder Designer.

Main topics

• UX Identity Crisis
• AI-driven prototyping

Notable quotes

He asked for a gate at the exact moment when everyone around him had stopped waiting at that gate.

Conclusion

To survive the AI transition, UX designers must move away from being a

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) So I'm working with a client right now and I find it super interesting because I'm watching one UX designer slowly lose his seat at the table. And the thing that really, really gets me is that he's doing pretty much exactly what most of us were taught to do. The client is actually quite advanced. They use AI in almost every workflow and the whole way they build has changed so much in the last few months that it's kind of hard to keep up. Everyone is vibe coding a bit, everyone's prototyping and the whole team is involved in it. And the UX team used to be bigger, but some people were let go. So right now there's one UX designer left in that team. And what I'm seeing is that all of the other teams simply work without him. He just isn't pulled in because everyone can prototype now. And I think... Everyone also believes they understand UX well enough themselves because UX has always been treated a little bit like common sense. So what did he do? He did what I think a lot of us would do. He stood up for his role. He went to the teams and said, hey, I want to be involved. Please send me your work so that I can review it and sign it off. And what ended up happening after that is something I did not see coming. I've been thinking about it ever since. So last week I said UX has an identity crisis and that AI is kind of just the inspection that finally opened the wall. And I think this one designer shows us really clearly how the rebuild goes wrong. And if we are a bit smarter about it, how could it go right? So welcome back to the future of UX, Patricia. And this episode sits inside three questions that I keep turning over. How do you stay involved when everyone around you can already build a thing without you? What does a UX designer actually need to be able to do right now so that the team sees you as someone who makes them better and nobody calls you a blocker? And the one I can't fully answer, which is whether UX can become sexy again and whether we even want the older version back. So let me quickly tell you what's waiting for you inside the next 20 minutes. Number one, and I will finish the story of that designer, including the meeting that made his situation so much worse. So bear with me. And I think you will recognize yourself in it a little bit. I know that I did. Number two, why he lost, which, and this surprised me, has almost nothing to do with how good he is at his job. And number three, the three roles that I think your ex is splitting into right now. And the one, yeah, I would bet my own career on. Number four, what I would do in his place starting Monday, including how you bring real evidence into a room where nobody gives you a real budget or research budget. And number five and the last number where I think. This whole profession ends up in the next two years. And I would really like you to hold me to it. So by the time we are done, you will know how to walk back into a room that stopped inviting you and what to bring with you. when you do. Okay, so back to the story. You remember the designer, right? So he goes to the team and asks to be involved. And what happens is that the team basically ignores it. And when I asked around a little bit, the answer that I heard roughly was, why would we run our work through him? You know, that's another blocker and we'd only get slower. And I actually think that's a really honest reaction from people who just found out that they can build a prototype in an afternoon. Because when you can go from an idea to something clickable in such a short time, every extra step feels like somebody standing in the doorway. So what does he do next? He escalates it. He goes to his manager. and then to their managers and says, I am not included. And because it went up the chain like that, a meeting happens where everyone has to come together and sort it out. Imagine that. And the result is that meeting, the way it was described to me was basically, okay, so now the UX designer is escalating on top of everything and that doesn't help us at all. So why should we work with him in the first place? So by fighting to be a part of it, he made his position a lot harder than it was before. And that really made me stop and think. I'm in this project as an external consultant and I'm not there as a new expert. So I get to watch all of this a little bit from the side. And the uncomfortable part for me