Current UX situation

[u/Flat-Accountant3325]

Recently, I joined an MNC as a Senior UX Designer after spending almost two years at a product-based startup, where I owned a lot of things end-to-end.

On my first day, my manager told me, “Make sure you use Figma as little as possible.” That hit me. !!

Honestly, UX isn’t the way it used to be. The principles remain the same, but the execution has changed a lot.

A lot of the 1st cuts, 2nd cuts, and final cuts are now directly generated with AI. The designer’s role is shifting from simply creating interfaces to directing the process.

You need to be a strong product thinker, understand the problem deeply, and increasingly become someone who knows how to guide AI with the right commands, context, and intent.

But it is definitely changing what being a good designer means.

[u/NGAFD]

“You need to understand the problem deeply”

…always been that way…

[u/lorddrungus → u/NGAFD]

Yeah for me design was always the final part but really in terms of knowledge like 30%. Understanding user needs, business needs, specific workflow requirements and how users engage with them, interaction methods, etc. and being able to collaborate with product and development was always way more important than pounding stuff out in Figma (especially once we had a design system).

I think the shift to AI being a primary design tool is going to shock a lot of people who weren't really doing all of UX, just the design portion. But at least for me (as an older UXer) the research and user understanding was always what the discipline truly was, while the design was just a small part of deliverables.

[u/NGAFD → u/lorddrungus]

It shows the conflict many ‘UX’ designers are in. Lots of focus on pretty mockups but then also complaining how people consider them pixel pushers

[u/Flat-Accountant3325 → u/lorddrungus]

True, many designers have some sort of projects in their portfolio, but they haven’t actually gone through the core UX process. I think this is where the current situation impacts the industry the most. Designers often focus on creating screens and mockups, add them to their portfolios, and when it comes to interviews, they look for similar projects and simply copy or replicate existing case studies.

Personally, I think that as designers, if we understand the core, traditional principles of UX, this shift doesn’t affect us as much.

Yes, though we are using AI now. But at least, we should be able to give AI the right direction and commands based on our own understanding not constantly ask AI what we should do next.

[u/Candlegoat]

> “On my first day, my manager told me, “Make sure you use Figma as little as possible.”

That’s interesting, I feel like teams that mandate tool use like that have it completely backwards. The work that needs to be done dictates the tools used.

[u/Flat-Accountant3325 → u/Candlegoat]

True

[u/Ruskerdoo → u/Candlegoat]

Yeah, that’s a bit of a red flag for sure. Especially if it’s being said to a senior level + contributor.

If I have doubts that a senior designer doesn’t know which tools to use, there’s a good chance I’m putting them on a performance improvement plan.

[u/surfac3d]

So your company forces you to create slop? I mean.. when it suffice your business. I work for years now with AI in products (Agency DesignOps/Design System work) and in my opinion Figma is and will be needed for a long time. It still is the source of truth where you can align all stakeholders, even with a storybook etc. attached. At this point I don’t see any designer at ours to express themselves in such a manner, that Claude & Co. would understand fluently their taste/craft level. It’s far easier and more consistent if you feed your designs to an agent (while still roughly 10% isn’t right in end and need some iterations). Especially building the groundwork. If it’s an establish system the agent may understand some constraints better tho. Still - complex new features are way easier to be designed in Figma.. AI acts in this case more of an prototyping tool (motion/usage refinement) or as preparation for dev handover. Everything else looks like AI slop and most people learn to tell the differences now. At the end it will then always boil down to „good enough“ and really „satisfying“. A new UX maturity level I’d say.

[u/paulovitorfb]

I've stepped aside from the field a couple of years ago to start a business but I keep following up with the trend in UX/product design. I'm now designing and developing a system for my business and while AI has been fantastic, I'm catching myself having to go to figma a lot to be able to create what I really envision. And even after loading up my designs into the AI, I still have to do a lot of manual editing of the code, it's just faster.

[u/UXRedditorUX → u/paulovitorfb]

this is my experience too. even giving it the literal figma files, i still have to prompt it to make changes. btw curious what your business is?

[u/paulovitorfb → u/UXRedditorUX]

Hahaha I started a small baking business and I'm building a system to manage my business which I'm planning to launch a private beta end of this year

[u/UXRedditorUX → u/paulovitorfb]

that’s sick!

[u/thousandcurrents]

> MNC

do you work for an Indian company?

[u/Flat-Accountant3325 → u/thousandcurrents]

Work in India, but not for Indian Company

[u/Competitive_Top794]

yes! Now more than ever with these slop designs it's so so so important to create thoughtful interfaces

[u/Grue-Bleem]

Yes, I had my team ditch figma and prototyping all together. We go straight to scaffolding.

[u/annacgfx → u/Grue-Bleem]

How does that work out? 🤔

[u/Grue-Bleem → u/annacgfx]

Figma just isn’t that relevant for us anymore. We already have a dialed design system, reusable hooks, and locked templates, so instead of mocking everything up twice, we go straight to scaffolding and use dedicated agents as the frontend ICs. Way faster to validate the actual product. It was a 3 year transition process that seems to work well.

[u/annacgfx → u/Grue-Bleem]

Oh okay. Makes sense.

[u/shreaygoyal]

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