I’m curious how other UX designers are experiencing the shift brought by AI, especially those currently working in product teams.

My workflow has changed dramatically over the past year. I haven’t opened Figma in months, but I regularly have 2–5 terminals running Codex or Claude Code, designing, building, and shipping things that I previously would have needed an entire team to deliver.

What’s interesting is that I don’t feel like I’m doing less design work. If anything, product thinking, UX judgment, and the ability to make good decisions matter more than ever. It’s just that the boundaries of what I can actually build have expanded enormously.
And that’s made me wonder whether the traditional “UX Designer” title will eventually become too narrow to describe what we do.

I’ve been out of a traditional company environment for a few months, so I’m particularly curious to hear from designers currently working on product teams:
Are you seeing designers take on more responsibility for actually building and shipping products, rather than just designing them?

Are the boundaries between designers, engineers, PMs, and even data analysts starting to blur at your company?

Do you see roles like “UX Builder” or “Product Builder” becoming more common, or do you think traditional roles will largely remain intact?

I’m not suggesting everyone needs to become a developer, or that specialized design skills are going away. I’m genuinely curious whether this shift is happening inside established companies, or whether it’s still mostly something experienced by people building independently.

Would love to hear what you’re seeing.

Made 260k a year. I have a 6700 dollar mortgage with 2550 rent coming in. I spend about 4k-5k on credit card a month.

I probably have to go back to ux, but maybe there's another way to make money? I wanna be a therapist but school would be Hella expensive and it's years of school

I make music actively but that doesn't make me any money.

I just hate corporate. Doesn't help that I have autism and I notice all the fake bs and politics. I don't want to play the game.

But hi if I've worked with you

I have been hearing here and there from a handful of designers I know that they haven’t touched figma in 2 months. Currently I am unemployed. So I’m kinda nervous I am getting left behind in effectively incorporating AI in my workflow and dont know the reality situation in companies. Mind you, I have a paid claude subscription and I keep learning things on it on my own, I dunno if that’s enough though.

Anyway my question is, how much AI are you realistically using and where exactly? Everyone who haven’t touched figma in weeks, where do you keep your designs then? Elaborate on this as much as you want.

I just wanna know the reality of the situation. Thanks!

That’s it. I’ve always liked working with small companies because of the greater freedom and much less bureaucracy. Now, with AI, it’s just not doable anymore. All processes are bulldozed by the devs, and the entire user experience along with the effort to deliver the best possible outcome for the user, has been replaced by shipping, shipping, and shipping. It feels like even basic UI mistakes that a junior wouldn’t make have become the standard.

I’m simply fed up. I think I’ll have to go back to the bureaucracy of a large company.

Inspired by current events at the job I'm very grateful to have and would rather not lose. Sorry if this is the wrong flair to use.

Dear PM,

Software design is, if you boil it down, about creating a tool. Users approach software because they have one or more problems they need to solve, and they expect to use your software as a tool to solve that problem. Software is, in that way, much like other tools in the world such as hammers or vaccuums or what have you that people buy to perform a task. When people go out looking to buy a hammer, how often do you think they care about how long that hammer took to design? How quickly that hammer got to market?

They don't.

People looking to buy a tool to solve a problem will judge it based on three criteria: whether it 1. solves their problem, 2. is easy to use, and 3. is built to last. They don't give a shit about how long it took to design your tool. Maybe your bosses do, but they're not the ones buying the tool. Your users, if you are able to get any at all, will start judging your software on the three criteria as soon as they lay their eyes on it. If they are not able to solve their problems, or aren't able to do so easily, you have not only wasted everyone's time in the name of "speed", you've eroded your users' trust in your company's ability to solve their problems. You have created code for the sake of creating code, and without users it is useless.

If you don't want this to happen, you need to stop putting your own ego at the forefront of this project and start listening. Listen to developers, listen to designers, and most importantly of all, listen to your users. Listen to your user proxies, if you don't have users yet. Let them tell you what their problems are. Let your UX designers and researchers listen to them too so they understand the actual problem and don't have to depend on a game of telephone to get to the heart of the problem. And for god's sake don't change your application on a whim. If you take your time and back every decision with research, iterative research, you will find out somewhat paradoxically that you have both saved time and made a better product at the end.

The fruits of thoughtful software design don't end there, though. By allowing users to speak to your designers, you have also created a brain trust of sorts- UX personnel that can speak intelligently to users and may even develop an intuition about what problems your users will face and how to solve them more quickly. You've made happy developers who don't have to redevelop feature 96 for the fifth time in as many months. And most importantly, you've created a connection with your users who see their input directly fed into the software and can now trust that your software is in fact a tool you've made to solve their problems rather than code for code's sake.

This is ridiculously satisfying.

Bookmark it for your next spark of inspiration.

Are you rebuilding screens, removing elements, enhancing designs and/or creating completely new designs when building out your portfolio? If so, what are you doing? Is that generally accepted/recommended?

A few days ago, I was chatting with a designer about working on my portfolio. In passing they asked if I recreated the screens already. It took me by surprise.

I know it’s common to do this for NDA work.

I'm reviewing applications for a role I have open and I think I'm seeing a lot of AI generated portfolios in Figma Slides. They tend to be topical and lack important commentary, but are very targeted to the job description. Is this a thing? OK, I'm pretty sure it's a thing, but am curious how other hiring managers have navigated this.

And for those who are doing this, know that it's making me wary of a candidate. I want to see something less filtered, more reflective of the person using the tool. I want to see sincerity, depth, and nuance, not a presentation that feels like a sales pitch.

A bit of a location specific question and I don't know where else to ask.

I've noticed that Ashby has constantly has open design/eng postings, for as long as I was at my last job for almost 2 years, they've had 2-3 postings for my location. They currently have 55 positions open just in Canada on Linkedin, as a 200 person company.

These are ghost postings right?

Like the title says, I interviewed with an AI bot. My first time ever experience with this and I’m not sure how I feel. I think disappointed is the right word.

I had applied to this role a month and a half ago and they just now called me back.

Has anyone had experience interviewing with an AI bot and can tell me what the outcome was? Did you get moved to the next round? If so, did you talk to a human?

I have LinkedIn Premium and can see what experience level people have that have applied. 1% of applicants are CXO and the other 1% are VP level. This is crazy to me. Do design companies actually hire people who are beyond the role’s experience level? If so, I might be cooked for ever breaking in this industry 🫠

I'm working on a learning product. The paid plan has 20 full lessons a month, plus 3 suggested topics every day that you can open or skip.

My worry: if I show "14 of 20 left", people start saving them and use it less. If I hide the counter, they get surprised when it runs out.

Options I'm weighing:

- Show nothing until 5 are left.

- Show progress ("6 lessons this month") instead of what's remaining.

- Soft cap: ask before going over instead of blocking.

Has anyone tested something like this? Especially in products where you want people to use the thing more, not less.

Over the last month, my job has basically turned into polishing and providing feedback on the "AI slop" created by stakeholders.

They get to decide whether or not to accept my recommendations, even down to the component level (for example, advising them not to use Component X and to use Component Y instead because it’s a better fit for this use case).

Are you guys in the same situation? Are we all just polishing AI slop now? If so, it feels like this career is dying, as this type of workflow isn't sustainable. Nobody is going to pay thousands of dollars a month for a job like this.

Hey fellow Redditors!

I love designing mobile apps, but I had a question about your subscription cancellation flow. Do you answer questions like "Why did you leave?" honestly, or do you just answer "Other" or something random? I can't offer a discount on this flow because my app is already very cheap: $5, and it's an annual plan. Do you have any other advice for me?

This person just wants to sign off on everything, even to the point of approving after validation is complete. We have product managers for that.

Apparently, user research is just a suggestion until they personally weigh in. Their personal opinion or “I like it this way” is what often dictates the outcome. And their own designs look rough….. they reject peer feedback. And forget accessibility standards. Anyone else work for a person like this?

I’m at the lead level, so at what point when can I ask: how many cooks does it take to make it work? And why are we inviting the chef back after the food has already been served?

The kicker is…I work in a medium maturity org, and I can’t believe this is going on. The designers on my team are so talented, and this manager is just…. Not…. We all question their credibility because this is how it is. But somehow they survive?

How do I deal without cashing out? Advice please…. 🙃

Saw this in Family iOS App

You tap Continue the same button area expands into Cancel and Continue.

The motion helps explain the UX that this isn’t a totally new screen or decision, it’s the next step of the same action.

Feels a lot more connected, no?

I use Lucide icons in my designs, but I keep running into icons the library doesn't have. I want to create new ones that look like they belong to the set (24px grid, 2px stroke, rounded caps and joins). I've tried using AI agents several times, including sharing reference images, but the results have been poor. The proportions and stroke consistency are off, and they don't look like Lucide.

How do you handle this in Pen.dev or other tools?

Specifically: - Do you draw them manually with the pen tool, or is there a better workflow? - Is there a way to get agents to produce usable, on-style icons? - Any tips for keeping new icons consistent with an existing set?

Any help is appreciated, thanks!

1st screenshot is the final version.

2nd one is the AI-Built first version.

I think AI is really bad in compacting information, everything is always stuffed with information and even Opus 5.5 has little sense of minimalism and building a proper visual hierarchy.

For context; It's an overview page for a Website management tool I am building (basically have editor, analytics and booking system in one place for multiple sites).

This site is the overview page, once you select a Website in your portfolio.

Most importantly, what AI never really get's right - what do I actually want to see and a web admin first?

- Image of the live hero instantly tells me, if the site generally looks good and also I instantly know which site it is, in case I have sites with similar names.

- Then I want to see if everything is running, so there's status indicators, is the site online, are all the different tools working properly?

- Next is open edit requests of customers. In case i set it so a client can't publish himself, I have to confirm a requested change. This one has some urgency, since the client probably wants the change to be confirmed asap. This is why it has a slightly coloured background.

- History of previous chnages is hidden behind the button, since it's not too relevant for usual operation.

- Next one is analytics, which has probably already been scanned by now - just a quick feedback, if the website is performing well or if it's breaking in

- Booking is last, since for one, a lot of sites might not have a booking system implemented and secondly, apart from being functional, I as a web admin don't really care too much about the booking performance, but it's still nice to see some stats here.

Also, as many can probably tell, the header is indeed inspired by Vercel.
Hope these insights give some value.

Would also love to get your feedback on the current state, does everything feel right to you?

Lots of negativity on this sub about the job market and state of industry but very little UX or design discussion. I’d like to know what people are working on? If you are out of work what are latest projects? What problems are you solving for yourself or others?

Now is definitely the best time for us to build our own things.

Everyone keeps saying AI is going to replace designers, or at least cut our workload in half. Honestly? I feel like my workload has actually increased—at least mentally.

Last week I was working on an onboarding flow. I gave the AI a solid brief, clear direction, and context. To its credit, it followed my direction and spat out a solution in seconds.

The problem? Within that single direction, there were at least 10 different ways to execute it.
Suddenly, my job wasn't designing the screens—it was auditing them. I had to sit there and constantly think through the why, what, and where to pick the actual best option for the company and our specific target audience. I was stuck in an exhausting loop of evaluating technical constraints, hidden assumptions, and business tradeoffs. AI executes in seconds, which is cool, but it has zero clue what to execute, what to leave out, and why.

Plus, it got me thinking: if non-design stakeholders start using AI to bypass us and push features straight to production, aren't they just going to tank their metrics and need designers to come back and fix the mess anyway?

Idk, am I missing something here? I only have about 1.5 years of experience, so I could easily be looking at this the wrong way. For those of you who have been in the industry longer—what is actually going on? Are you guys feeling this too, or am I just using AI wrong?

I'm thinking about creating a UX benchmark to evaluate how good different AI models actually are at UX design.

There are plenty of benchmarks for coding and reasoning, even delivering better and better UI design, but not many focused specifically on UX.

The idea would be to give different models the same UX challenges and compare how well they perform.

Before I start working on it, I'd love to hear what other designers think.

A few questions:

• What UX challenges should be included? User flows, information architecture, usability improvements, wireframes, UX writing, research synthesis, etc.
• How would you evaluate the results? Heuristic evaluations, expert reviews, usability testing, or something else?
• Should the challenges focus on real-world product problems or smaller, isolated tasks?
• What would make the results useful or interesting to you?

I think it would be interesting to measure actual UX problem-solving skills rather than just how good an AI-generated UI looks.

Thank you!

Hi, I’m fairly new to automotive/infotainment design and I was wondering if anyone had advice on where I can view current infotainment across brands and even internationally. I was previously a web designer so I know of dribble and other sources but I would really like to see more automotive specs.

Also welcome to any tips, on how to better understand infotainment trends and anything relevant.

Cheers!

I know people travelling and spending huge amounts of money for flights and hotels just for this conference. Crazy

Are they useful in y'alls experience and how do you guys write them?

I use two paragraphs, one explaining my background and then the final one what I can contribute because of said established background. THis is coupled with applying to places with hires similar to me or who do applications that I've worked on (such as b2b saas as an example)

I'd love to hear what you guys have done / think