Today’s topic comes from Peter B., who submitted a question via my AMA:

UX Design: Over? Or about to experience a renaissance? 

First, Peter, I appreciate that you just went for it. UX has been dead, and then not dead, for my entire career. There have been times when the money was flowing, the teams were growing, and UX was the hot thing that everyone felt they needed to invest in.

Then budgets got cut and UX was first to go. Followed closely by content, in a lot of cases.

But is it dead?

UX is not dead, no. But here are the signs that I’ve seen that point to it not being effective and, thus, ready to be passed over and pass on.

1. It’s viewed primarily or solely as a visual design exercise. “UX” gets smooshed into a small box that can easily be duplicated, replicated, and – potentially – automated. There are real advantages to automating some of this work both for designers and design leaders, but the idea of automating all of it often equates with low UX maturity or the team’s lack of leverage.

2. It’s viewed only as a diagnostic tool. Usability testing, for me, was my entry point into UX at large (alongside IA and wireframing.) So I get it. But when UX is seen as something to include after a launch, say, it blunts its impact. It can still have an impact, no doubt, but it shuts out lots of things that can provide direction and guidance way earlier.

3. It’s viewed as too slow. This is the eternal push-pull of anyone who works in this space. Quality work simply takes time, and sometimes, time isn’t something that we have, so questions naturally turn to “Can we just do this same thing faster?” Slow processes are cut out for myriad reasons, usually political.

So many of these attributes depend very, very heavily on an organization, what drives them collectively and individually, what expertise they have at hand, and much more. I don’t think clumping design into a singular bucket has been helpful in the long run, but it is extremely common – see point 3 above – and thus makes parts of the job of design (which is an enormous job!) less important or timely or useful.

[Peter Merholz has done a lot of work writing and thinking and teaching about how UX is positioned and what it does.]

Overabundance

One thing I’m seeing in UX circles and others is the default to making and doing everything. AI has ushered a lot of this thinking in because it’s had extremely few guardrails. Without guardrails, new technology is left in a “well, what’s it for?” state that puts all of the testing, figuring out, guessing, and critically the risk on the people that use it.

And since automating everything is super cheap (or, more precisely, the costs aren’t borne by the end organization), it certainly looks cheaper. It looks faster. So why not just pass the testing, figuring out, guessing, and risk on to the users? Put every design option and feature out there, test it, ask users a few questions, and voila. But is it good to put everything in front of a user and have them figure it out?

In short, no, it isn’t. And that’s where “classic” UX comes into play because it can help answer that.

But there’s hope

I believe what we’re seeing is the emerging “oh no” moment: organizations learn that not everything should be abstracted away or completely automated, and there’s a real need for a person to either a) tell the computer what to do, b) tell the computer what to do better, or c) just do the thing themself as goals aren’t being hit, or there’s no clear idea on what users actually want, or what-have-you. People trained in or curious about classic UX are poised to be the most successful in that world, and the leaders who frame UX in terms of quality over quantity are going to win.

I’m optimistic here, but this isn’t an instant flip – unless something collapses out of our control. It takes time and plenty of extremely talented people are sitting on the sidelines while organizations go through this. Some orgs won’t ever come out the other side and will just push everything out to everyone, which will instantly open up a huge market for people that are “good” designers and “experienced” leaders because they can crisply define where things should go and how to get there.

And similarly, leaders are still going to feel AI pressure today (and [insert next tech thing] pressure tomorrow.) Part of the opportunity within UX and adjacent worlds is to navigate this moment but be prepared for the next one, which may look similar or radically different. That means understanding users, measuring what’s built, and being smart about it.

A great question, Peter. But UX is not dead.

Thanks for reading. See you next time.

Paul