u/mmxxio

There is no reason in the world that everything should be so badly designed. There are more out-of-work designers than ever. Good ones too. Ready and able to solve your product problems at fire-sale prices. The standards of good design have never been so widely available to anyone who wants to reference them. We even have AI tools available to lighten the load of the drudgery, freeing up the design staff to focus on solving problems.

But you don't need me to tell you how bad things are now. Things have never been worse designed. Your ability to manually control things is slowly being taken away. Everything is a fucking popup because some hung-like-a-mouse middle manager wanted their sad little feature to get better OKRs. Even something as basic as a mouse hover state is going away now.

Thanks to AI, there are now a host of entirely new interactions in desperate need of design... and yet nobody is designing them. You can tell that they just threw them together without so much as a glance in the direction of UX. Who needs them now, anyway, right? Just get some karen PM to make the decision.

And yet, all I see is moping. A sort of pathetic resigned and passive acceptance of the status quo. Little to no anger. Anger at the fact that you are being screwed from both directions by the same companies. They're screwing you as a designer by denying you a living doing the thing you invested your life to do. They're screwing you as a user by churning out trash products that practically boast "we made this without your help... intentionally. Also, fuck you."

I said before that AI will not take your job. That's true. It won't. It doesn't have to. These corporate scumbags and adult child techbros want to eliminate your job regardless and AI is just a convenient alibi.

None of this makes any sense. The corporations actually stand to profit by hiring you and making proper use of your skills. The above AI example is the most recent and egregious. The sheer number of excess prompts and associated token costs due to the bad usability of AI products is driving down their bottom line, driving up their debt, not to mention the chances of a class action lawsuit from shareholders when they realize their hundreds of billions in investments are being set on fire. The case has long been closed that UX has a crazy high ROI. And yet they STILL treat UX like it is 3.6 Roentgen.

You have to realize. They aren't just incompetent, or greedy, or foolish. They want you to suffer. They are your enemies. This is a zero sum game. Us or them. So what are you going to do about it?

If you're a real UX designer and not some low-grade bootcamp churnout, you are 100% safe from AI in the long run.

I have seen so many people saying downright embarrassing crap like "OMG ur training AI to replace you!!!". Is that really what you believe?

First off, in order to even discuss the possibility of AI replacing actual UX design, we would need to see the existing of actual competent AI training. That is:

• a trained professional class of evaluators educated in both the relevant AI models and the general principles of GAI
• an equally trained class of QA with strong accountability mechanisms, even more heavily educated on the specific AI models
• domain expert project managers.

None of those things are in evidence so far.

Secondly, even if those conditions were met, to say that AI is going to replace you is unhinged.

The more charitable explanation for these claims is that they just don't understand what GAI is fundamentally capable of. As someone who has used the tools extensively and worked on improving them (or rather, trying to), I can see its hard limits fast approaching. I can also see that its fundamental strengths are being ignored in favor of imaginary capabilities for the sole purpose of defrauding smoothbrained execs and clueless investors.

But I fear that there's a less charitable explanation that applies better to most AI hysteria. It's not that people fundamentally misunderstand what AI can do. It's that their core skill set is one that's easily replaced by glorified autocorrect. They are Figma monkeys and pixel pushers. They do the most superficial, semi-skilled parts of interface design, then call themselves UX, and insult the rest of us by claiming our work can be done by AI.

Now, a more defensible claim is that AI won't replace us per se, but rather it will enable a process that is already well underway. That is the race to the bottom in user experience quality. Between intentional enshittification and cost cutting, AI isn't a replacement for skilled UX professionals, but rather low-grade offshore slop. If those conditions I listed above were optimally met (and slim chance of that), then maybe companies could replace their overseas slop shops with AI models.

But I suspect even that won't happen. I think there is already a feedback loop nearing its complete cycle wherein the ghettoization of UX will ultimately hit the pocketbooks of investors. The economy is struggling, and that means that people are going to start cutting expenses. People willingly bleed $30/month here and there for frivolous crap when times are good. But when the belt tightens, that crap is the first thing out the window. We have to wait a little longer, though.