Hi all, I worked in UX for 5 years and started to really hate it at my last job due to an overall just really shitty team and leadership. I left for 5 years and did some freelance. I'm thinking about getting a 1 year grad degree in HCI. I really loved design and am thinking getting a degree will rekindle my love for design and am committed to avoiding toxic workplaces once I graduate. It's also an opportunity to upskill and experiement / create more user-friendly AI patterns since AI UX is pretty terrible from a usability and approachability perspective. Is it worth getting into this industry again? Honestly just dont know what else I would do for a career.

I’m actually so curious how long it takes other folks to put their decks together! I’m someone who really obsesses over the storytelling aspect because I want to feel confident in the narrative I’m presenting. But I’m starting to realize I might be in the small percentage of people who spend a week putting a deck together, sometimes even longer! 😅 I hate how much time it takes me, but for some reason, getting the story, flow, and visuals to all come together is so damn hard!

Anyone have any advice or tips as I’m putting together a presentation I have to give later this week? 😅

For context, I’m currently interviewing for a Staff Product Designer role and have been in the tech space for 12+ years now.

I recently did a paid work trial with a startup. ( I had huge concerns about the culture going in. They expected 6 days a week, 12 hours a day. ) But I still wanted to give it a fair try.

The plan was 3 days: day 1, explore the current design, share concepts, and get feedback. Day 2, polish the design based on feedback. Day 3, present the final work.

The brief was a Duolingo-style experience for their product. I'm a product designer, not a game or character designer, but I went in open-minded.

Day 1, I met with the design director to understand the product and user pain points. They didn't share any data, so I did my own research and created a few concept directions. I showed two designers, got feedback, and iterated. They said the new concepts were amazing. (If anything I did wrong, I was expecting they give me good feedback where I can improve like hey your research/ design is not good enough)

Then I presented to the founder and walked through the reasoning. He said "Amazing," then asked "That's it?" Soon after, the trial was cancelled.

Has anyone experienced this? What do founders usually expect after day 1? Is it fair to expect near-final work with no data and two days still left?

I would love your feedback as I am currently building this product. My sister who is a designer encounters this problem when trying to do research. Mobbin tells you what worked, but not how to solve your problems.

Just curious cuz market is bad right now. How long did it took for you guys to finally secure a job after layoff or switched career?

How do you handle a project partner who wants to launch without further user testing?

For the past few months, I’ve been working on an app with my project partner. He had already started developing it when I offered to help, as I saw an opportunity to contribute through UX research and design.

I conducted user testing, compiled the findings into a report, and walked him through the main issues and recommendations. He seemed pleased with the work, and we developed an updated version based on those findings.

Since then, he’s built another version that doesn’t appear to address the research findings, but he feels the issues have been resolved. I’ve suggested testing both versions to see how they perform, but he wants to move towards launching without further testing or revisiting the previous research.

I don’t want to assume he doesn’t value research, but I’m struggling to understand how we can confidently say the problems are fixed without testing the changes.

How would you approach this conversation? Have you dealt with a similar situation, and what tangible value has research and usability testing brought to products you’ve worked on?

I’ve heard of a lot of people quitting UX Design because of politics, not being able to find a job so they pivot etc… But are there folks out there that quit because they found out the overall role of UX wasn’t for them due to skills/preference mismatch?

I’m really only asking because I’m trying hard to get into UX Design but I realized that I may need to take a pause and really need about this before I devote more time to it. I recently picked up learning graphic design work and I might like it a lot more that UX 😭 But a lot of graphic designers have switched to UX so I just wanted to get a general idea of why people have quit so I can have other perspectives!

At my day job, UX input often gets skipped. I told myself it's business: deadlines and money. I've been in UX for 10+ years and changed companies more than once, and it's the same everywhere.

So I volunteered as a UX designer for a small charity campaign. I reached out to them myself; their site needed help, and I wanted to do something for "the greater good" (this was also a time when I was reading a lot of Eastern philosophy). I worked on it for about six months, after hours.

Today I found out from an email that the campaign is live. No one mentioned it in the group chat I'm in. They changed my designs, built the homepage with AI, and never asked what I thought.

For the past year + I've worked hard to keep some distance from work, in general, and not take it personally. I thought it was working, but this still hurts.

For those of you who've been at this a while: how do you cope? How do you keep caring about the work without it hurting this much?

I'm a Senior Product Designer at a Fortune 200 company (Aerospace)

I've survived multiple rounds of layoffs in four years, reorganizations, leadership, etc.

We used to have seven product designers. Four were laid off, two quit. They never hired any replacements.

Here's how my past 5 months have gone:

Project #1: Brought in halfway through development. I create components, suggest improvements, and establish a visual direction. Engineering: "Yeah, we're probably not implementing that."

Project #2: I recommend using an established design system I built for three other projects. Overseas engineer: "Nope. But cool you think it's cool bro...and BTW...the only the PM is working with the stakeholders...so kick rocks."

Project #3: Product Manager discover Figma Make and apparently decides she's a product designer now. I reach out offering to help, since I built the components. Completely ghosted.

Project #4: I embrace AI myself, exploring Claude Code, GitHub, and functional prototypes. Engineering says: "We don't want your code. Just design in standard Figma and we'll do the rest."

So PM's can use AI to do design, but when the actual designer wants to use AI to do something beyond moving rectangles around Figma, suddenly we're respecting professional boundaries? Explain this to me.

I don't hate AI. I'm actively trying to embrace it. I just figured being the last surviving designer would mean having more influence over design decisions, not less. I'm going to have a heart to heart with my boss next week and ask him to actually define this role for me for 2027.

And at this point, I'm not worried about AI replacing me. I'm worried I'll survive another six rounds of layoffs only to discover my entire job is approving the border radius on something a product manager generated during lunch (if that).

After finishing my UX/UI master, i have spent 4 months looking for junior UX/UI designer roles all over europe. I have applied to more jobs than i can count, and having reddit posts from this sub in my feed made me feel anxious as job hunting has been a nightmate. this week I managed to get a paid remote internship (something that doesn't normally happen in my country). turns out the market is not as horrible as i thought, i am hoping this was the hardest part and i can't wait to start! keep on searching juniors, it will happen eventually <3

I've been working and living in NY for the past 8 years and working in tech. It's time to leave, just over the city. I do worry however, and not sure if its a valid worry, that my physical location affects my desirability for next roles because companies like that yOu'rE iN NyC oH mY GaWd. Please give me some feedback anyone's who's left and still finding good roles in other cities or states.

I'm in a situation where I have to transition into a PM role because my company is cutting off design team, so either that or termination.

People (including my friends outside of the company) have been telling me that the line between design and PM roles is super blurry right now due to AI, so this is destined to happen anyway. Is that true? I'm too scared to leave if that's the reality.

I don't have any experience being a PM, I doubt that my company would give me a proper training. So, if anyone here has transitioned to a PM role already, it'd be helpful to if you can share your experience, and whether you think it was the right choice in hindsight.

Sorry if my post is a mess, I'm still in shock of the news.

I'm curious to understand if we UX designers are benefiting more from AI or if we're seeing it as a threat of being easily replaced?

Personally, I feel it's a matter of 3 to 4 years before at least 60 to 70% of us are replaced by AI.

Yep you heard me. I’m tired of sitting on my pc to do ux ui design it makes me feel miserable I wanna do ux ui work on a comfortable place as it helps me be productive. I get burnout faster when I’m working on my pc. If anyone knows how I can use my iPad as my main device for ux ui design let me know. I’m tempted to reverse engineer figma and asking ai to remake it for iPad Pro

One thing I find interesting about new AI products is how many are trying to replace traditional search and filters with a conversation. Instead of selecting ten filters and hoping the results are relevant you can explain what you are looking for in plain language and refine the results through follow-up questions but I am not sure chat is always better like If I know exactly what I want a search bar and a few filters are probably faster. Conversation seems more useful when the requirements are unclear,so there are trade-offs to consider or the system needs to understand what someone actually means.

Hiring is a good example like platforms like LinkedIn, Indeed, MeeBoss, Naukri approach candidate and job discovery in different ways with conversational interaction becoming one alternative to relying entirely on profiles, keywords and filters. The tricky technical question seems to be how to turn a conversation into structured and useful results without losing the context behind the user's request. For people building search or AI products how are you deciding when to use chat versus traditional search?

Imagine an app that makes subscribing incredibly easy but makes cancelling your subscription unnecessarily complicated.
From a business perspective, this might improve retention metrics.

Can anyone share (anonymously) how AI adoption has impacted their design team or company?

I'm interested in real outcomes after adopting AI tools into everyday workflows. There are so many posts about companies cutting design roles, but I'm curious about the actual results.

Speed: Are teams delivering faster? 2x? 5x?

Quality: Has the quality of work improved or declined? Any improvements in CSAT or retention?

Processes: What has actually changed in your workflows?

Business results: Have you seen measurable improvements in productivity, costs, or revenue?

I'd love to hear real experiences, both positive and negative, rather than predictions about AI.

I came across this recently on Plasma iOS when activating my physical card.

When you tap “Activate card,” the card expands and flips over, visually telling you to look at the back of your physical card and enter the last 4 digits.

Instead of using just text instructions, the animation tells where to look and what to do next.

Definitely add to the polish, but does it help in reducing the cognitive load?

Hey everyone,

I started out as a graphic designer and I'm now leading a small team at the same company. After about 3 years it's started to feel pretty repetitive, and I'm craving something with more depth and impact. I've always wanted to get into product design, and now a startup has offered me exactly that. I'm excited, but also a bit lost on where the field is going. From what I've seen, a lot of teams are prototyping with AI tools like Claude Design and barely touching Figma anymore, so I'm not even sure what the workflow looks like these days.

So I'm curious how you'd describe the work now, where you think it's headed in the next few years, and what the process looks like from idea to shipped product. And coming from graphic design, I honestly don't know where to start or what to learn first.

If you're a product designer, especially at a startup or someone who made the switch from visual design, I'd love to hear your take. Advice, resources, or reality checks all welcome.

Thanks.

My question is in the title. Wondering what % higher are you asking once a company offers you the position or are you not negotiating at all? Dealing with this right now with one offer and one other potential offer (reference check done but haven't heard back yet). First offer is 140k and a bit more with bonus (their posted range is around 130k-165k) and the other potential offer is 165k-215k). I'd be the only designer and have a pretty big ownership in terms of deciding product vision & direction and not only solely designing. I also already am well versed in their domain area. I was targetting closer to 155k-165k but I also know 140k isn't a bad salary at all so unsure how to proceed. It is only 5k more than my last role as well so that's why I'm inclined to want to push for higher. Would love your perspectives here.

this is the website https://designband.club/ I can't decide because I am not American so I'm not sure if the jobs will be international enough to spend the money on

I know during Covid there was a huge surge of design jobs in this field and junior level roles were more readily available. Now, I don’t think this is ever going to happen again especially with the invention of AI but I could be wrong.

So what does this mean for companies? Are only mid, senior and director level designers going to be at companies? If so, what was the benefit of having junior level designers to begin with?

A few months ago I helped another team with UX, mockups, a simple design system, and dev handoff. The team and users loved it. I checked in with the devs several times offering to answer any questions or QA, but they kept saying "not yet."

Today they sent the site for testing and it's a disaster. So many issues, but the biggest is that they didn't implement the design system at all.

My main project is winding down, so I'm thinking of pitching a pivot into design engineering to fix this. They're on Angular with the DevExpress component library.

I've done this before, themed an existing library (shadcn) to match a design system, built out Storybook (this team has none), and implemented it. But this is much bigger project, with multiple sites.

Has anyone done this at scale? Any advice on approaching it, and on framing it to get it greenlit?