r/UXDesign

I don’t know, I have a master degree in UX but I feel completely lost… it seems very confusing.. or is it normal because I am very junior?

Yesterday someone in r/vibecoding showed an impressive Lightroom alternative they built. Someone else in r/accelerate shared what they describe as a full-featured audio workstation vibe-coded in 26 hours.

The first creator says he fed an agent tutorial videos and used them to map and implement features. The demo is polished. No AI slop because it's based on existing flows and patterns.

This feels like photocopying money that we can actually spend.

And yet the experiences we design are becoming easier to reproduce. And so are the products we’ve always wanted to build ourselves.

Where will our UX craft and judgment still hold value?

Just for context, I got a new manager about a year ago and initially we were sort of getting along but I never gave it much thought and just minded my own business. However, lately they have been acting weird and non-responsive and overly involved in day to day tasks.

They sometimes don't reply to teams messages, want to be involved in each and every tiny feature we are working on. Adding unnecessary processes and meetings just to track our work. Our design system is huge and extremely complex, and I was given the responsibility to review all the designs made by other designers to make sure that we are following the best practices and standards since I am well versed with the system. However, even there I am not being trusted when I raise concerns and they always have to give their incorrect opinion. They feel just because they are ex-FAANG their "personal opinion" is more valuable. It feels like they want to say something just for the sake of saying something even if it is wrong.

I am the best performer in my team with highest rating, other managers are trying to poach me to their teams so I am sure this issue is not due to my work. This is affecting me mentally and I really don't know what to do.

To start; I’m not a UX designer, I’m a PM that has runs UX agency before.

I want to hear your thoughts on this. The last two companies I’ve worked for, UX design IMO had been nothing more than rearranging some UI elements around.

Currently I’m at fortune 100 company and what we’re doing is creating a new front end and backend for legacy software that has been around for a couple of decades. The designers give me high fidelity prototypes as their deliverable. Which is great but when I ask how has the experience improved; did we reduce complexity click-to-task etc. what did we change and why? The silence I get is deafening. I’m told that ‘we don’t have access to old flows and software’ which is BS. They don’t user test nor understand the user. It appears like they churn out UI.

My expectation from UX and especially sr/principle UX is to understand the current (legacy) flow and pain points. Iterate on and test ideas and understand the flow end-to-end and then show me wireframes prototypes.

I had similar issues at my previous company. Designers gave me designs that had no thought or research or so it seemed put into it.

When I ran a UX agency everything was different. We researched and tried to understand customer needs, iterated, and were genuinely curious about the user.

Am I missing? And what can I do to change the culture?

With AI now our CEO thinks anyone can design so we have customer success in the product overwriting designs and designing full flows. Does anyone else have this issue?

The problem I see is that they are "fixing" one issue and creating 10 more because they don't understand the whole problem.

Keep calm people.

I'm a UX Designer and I already have my full time job. I always have been an employee and I never really did websites outside of organizations.

The few times I did I used Wordpress or Squarespace to design and then full-deliver: now, what's the AI alternative?

I mean: I can't just give a non-technical person a Github with tons of documentations or similar.

What's the new process to design and deliver so that the client can have full access to view, edit and manage his own website without myself anymore?

I’m looking to transition to a new team within my company. The pay is better and it would be a title promotion so already it’s a no brainer to move teams. However I suspect my manager is trying to make a case for my promotion and increased pay behind to scenes to keep me on my current team. If I receive a counter offer, I’m a little torn on what to do.

I am a well respected designer in my current sector of the business. I have a lot of great rapport. I’m in a situation where I can mostly do whatever I want because I’ve built this respect. I also work on a fairly stable product with minimal layoff risk. It’s a niche and well established product in the market. Also a HUGE money maker. But the product itself has horrible UX, which theoretically should mean I have a lot of exciting work, but the reason for the horrible UX is primarily related to the framework the product is built on. This has been the biggest challenge for our sector for the business and it’s become increasingly frustrating as I’m asked to work on projects that I know are terrible UX because the technical constraints do not support the vision we are being asked to execute.

Additionally, over the past 5 years I’ve only worked on 1 project that’s been released to customers. And the part of the project that I worked on has not been used, at all. Nobody likes it. When doing usability testing we constantly get bad feedback and discover bugs. This isn’t a design issue, it’s an engineering problem with the framework. I can only do so much with the constraints we have, and every time I raise a flag about the constraints I’m told we don’t have the engineering hours to improve it. To provide an example of limitations, we can’t even build a “select all” checkbox. The framework is not dynamic or interactive. It was not originally created to support UI and now it’s the direction the company is asking us to go. I’m ashamed that this is the only released product my name is attached to. I’ve worked on a lot of other projects that are on a slightly better framework in the system and have very positive feedback during testing, but their slated release is the end of 2027 with delays highly likely. Others are on versions for 2028+. And these were projects I did 2+ years ago.. The slow release cycle makes it difficult to know how to iterate and make improvements to my designs. I feel blind with every new feature.

The new team I’d be transition to works on a different product built with a MUCH better framework. But they definitely have higher layoff risk. They act quick and have made some mistakes that led to failed products and laid off teams to start with a fresh perspective. That said, the work actually gets released. In general, the quicker release cycle would help me grow as a designer because I’d be able to track the success of a designed feature and make iterations. The work also would be able to be presented in a portfolio because it’s actually released. In the event that I did get laid off, I feel like I’d be a much stronger candidate for new roles.

I’m just torn about leaving my current team. The increased pay is worth the layoff risk, but if my team gives me a counter offer to stay I’m just not sure if it’s the right move. I know the job market is horrible right now. So being laid off in a year or two would be terrible. But I worry my current team is not providing me growth as a designer and if things do go downhill then I’d be in a worse situation by staying.

For those who’ve been in similar situations, would you take the stable but stagnant job? Or go for a risk that would produce more tangible work and offer more growth?

Hello, I am a junior designer, just want to hear from experienced designers, how do you decide what flows are worth testing after a prototype and why? I know this is a skill acquired by experience but how do I start identifying what needs user feedback and what does not?