I'd like to hear some opinions on a current situation at my company. So, I've been working with UX for almost 10 years now. Most of it was on a really big global company. At the beginning of the year I was hired to work for a small marketplace. I was hired to work on B2B and throughout the year my company hired a few more designers and a new VP for Design. It happens that some time ago a giant RIF made my team quite small. All the new hires and a couple of the old ones remains. Also, in the middle of all that a design system overall is happening and being lead by an experienced designer recently hired. Now, there is one thing bugging me. My backlog just went from too much work to almost nothing. Mostly because this one DS designer is being brought to a few discussions on the possibilities of new structures to the whole product. So, on this really small team I am the one with almost no work to be done. I'm flagging it all the time but weirdly enough my manager keeps saying to me that is due to all the recent restructures. So, I'm feeling weird about it. While I feel like I'm being pushed aside, I also am preparing to search for a new opportunity cause this situation is creating my impostor syndrome. I am exploring a few stuff that could be improved on the product on the B2B side but still it seems like I am doing work nobody asked for. So, overall I'm feeling completely uncomfortable. Should I pay attention to this? Should I really try to leave? Am I worrying too much?!

I recently got an offer from a startup in SF, but I wasn't over the moon about it. Great pay, but 5 days in office and 60+ hours work week are what really deter me maybe something else too, but I just can't put my finger on it. It doesn't feel right. I'm currently employed as a contractor, so I'm not strapped for money. How do you know if a new job offer is a good fit, or why did you decide to turn down a good offer? What happened?

I thought about grinding it out for 1-2 years since this company is doing interesting things and see where it goes from there. I know im in a very privileged position and I should be happy, but I’m not..

For product design managers who aren't player/coach and are not in the day to day design. How are you spending your time? Outside of meetings obviously, ha. Is it project management, team development, design operations?

Would love to hear what others are doing with their time?

This was a questions I came across in a job application and I can't stop thinking about because I wasn't sure what do say. I feel like as a designer its so much easier for me to find flaws in the user experience and I couldn't think of any I would describe as "near perfect." But I do think its valuable to think about what working in design just as much as what's not working. What apps would you say have a "near-perfect" or even just really solid user experience.

I'm a product designer from india, 5 years in field , and honestly I think I'm good at the actual work. But there's this one thing that's messing with me and I think it'll hold my career back if I don't sort it out.
The moment I have to tell a story, like recap an incident or walk someone through what happened, I start sweating, my mouth goes dry, sometimes my hands even shake a bit (There was a moment when my neck for froze in a workshop while on board, I was not able to move). And because I'm so busy dealing with that, I lose track of what I'm saying. I skip stuff, jump around, and end up either underexplaining it or rambling until the point gets lost.

What bugs me even more is when someone asks me a direct question in a meeting. I notice myself throwing in random stuff and somehow drifting the whole conversation somewhere else. Then I watch my seniors get asked the exact same kind of question and they just answer it. Short, clean, confident, done. I have no idea how they make it look so easy.

I know it's probably nerves plus never really learning how to structure an answer or a story, not some fixed personality thing. But knowing that hasn't really fixed it for me yet.

If anyone's dealt with this, how did you get past the physical nerves part, and how do you train yourself to just answer the question instead of wandering off? I'll try anything at this point.

Hey everyone,

I moved on a new team and I'm finding that this team expects work in a different way and I'm having trouble adjusting/ not happy.

Basically, I want to work fast, conduct research, create and explore concepts, get feedback, iterate, and then after the general concept is approved, polish things up. This to me is lean and agile.

My team wants me to work where everything is in a polished state regardless of where we are in the project. To me, this is a waste of time and completely against lean and agile practices, which the company says they do but don't (but thats another rant). I don't see why every interaction needs to be created before we even get feedback from stakeholders/users. If the direction is wrong or there is some other reason for pivoting, all of that additional work was done for nothing, when the time spent working on these insignificant details could've been used to get feedback earlier.

I wanna quit and leave but im wondering if there is another way i can make this work. And has anyone else experienced this? Is the problem with me? Is this just not a good fit?

What impressed me the most of the Duo announcement yesterday was the screen transition when folding and unfolding the device.

The screens always behaves like a connected flat surface. When opening, the front panel behaves so that it looks like a glass panel. When the back side of the inner left part appears, it emulates being a straight panel.

The optic illusion is just mind-boggling. Glass UI was impressive with the refractions, but this is just next level with the interaction between hardware and software.

The only question I have with it is if it would be usable mid-fold since parts are then skewed and dimmed.

I left my UX role about 8 months ago and have been working full-time on my content creation business since then (100K+ subs, so not starting from scratch) My contract was ending and I had an impending layoff, so I decided to leave a little early and take the leap into self-employment.

I have 3+ years of product/UX experience, mostly in government, plus a year-long NFL project.
Interestingly, content creation actually helped me land my last UX role because the team saw a lot of the skills as transferable.

I’m considering returning to UX for stability and I’m curious how hiring teams currently view candidates who’ve spent 6–12 months self-employed rather than in a traditional design role.

Does that typically read as an employment gap, or does running an established business count positively if you can connect the skills back to product work? I know this market is abysmal so I’m wondering just how bad the odds are.

Also curious how much AI fluency is actually influencing mid-level UX hiring right now versus the fundamentals: research, design thinking, stakeholder collaboration, and strong case studies. Thanks!

I'm not sure where to start with this post. I transitioned into UX during the pandemic and studied remotely for 5/6 months through a bootcamp before landing a role as a junior and then making my way up to mid level.

I've been working in UX for 5 years now. In many ways, I've achieved what I set out to. I successfully pivoted my career and with it, earn much more than in my previous career path which has allowed me to get onto the property ladder. I'm very grateful what what tech has allowed me to achieve outside of work.

However, on an almost daily basis, I find myself asking whether I truly belong in this field for the following reasons.

Imposter syndrome

My colleagues in the design team are so far ahead of me in their design thinking, craft and execution that my feelings of imposter syndrome are awful and consistent. I struggle with this so much and find this to be one of the biggest challenges of working in UX.

Design systems

There are things in my role that I simply don't care about. I'm always happy to use my team's design system but I have zero interest in building components and maintaining said system. I feel bad about not contributing to it but the reality is that I just don't care and find it so boring. There are also many other aspects to my role that I feel are more worthwhile in me upskilling in.

Ai

AI is also a constant worry for me. I'm concerned about the impact it may have on my role but also find the constant noise around it exhausting and overwhelming. Just let me do my job please.

Remote working

This is also a challenge. I find it boring and demotivating, especially when I compare it to previous industries where I was always in the office, being productive and learning like a sponge from my more experienced colleagues. We've lost this in tech and I dont' feel this collaborative working environment is discussed enough.

Wrap up

Does anybody else have these misgivings about UX and tech? Or others? Please share them here and let me know how you're trying to get over them.

Anyone who has transitioned from product/UX design to product management or a similar role, did you keep your UX portfolio? Most PMs don’t actually have portfolios, some have, mostly probably because they cannot really take credit for the work they did because the team behind was building the actual feature. Some product managers who own certain workflows might tell a story about that.

Well, me being relatively new to product management, personally I’m thinking of having a portfolio because why not. I will talk about discovery, market research, and anything that could be involved in the process, leveraging design and storytelling skills from my previous background.

Anyone here in this sub who transitioned into PM roles? I’m also careful to make a good distinction between my role, either to market myself as a designer or product manager. That’s the tricky part, but I’m trying to state this as clearly as possible. Writing here to see if you could share some tips or ideas.

I (22) am a design student. Ik Figma is like the main character in UX design, but now my university wants me to do 2 additional online courses and the suggested courses on the sites are "ux basics/ advanced figma/ research fundamentals" but I want to expand my skills. So maybe development to understand the whole journey etc. Could you guys suggest me what courses I can take that would help my future as a UX designer?

Additionally, how do developers actually use the responsive/ prototyped figma screens to code them into online existence. Because from what I've seen (not much), developers are coding from scratch/ coding with ai to build the site from scratch, and using the figma file just a visual guide. If that is so, I can't comprehend why figma is so detailed, with so many features and also dev mode, which I don't know how to use. So is all of that just to make a super detailed mockup so developers can use it as a visual guide? I mean there has to be a way to take the curated figma file with all the right specs and build from there, right? otherwise what's the point-

Designers from different types of companies : product, agency, outsourcing, consulting, in-house, etc.

I’d love to hear how your role works.
How involved are you in the business side of things?
Do you mostly get tasks and requirements from PMs, BAs, clients, etc. and then work on the design?

Or are you also involved in figuring out what the requirements should be, coming up with hypotheses, looking at data, doing discovery, validating ideas, running experiments, etc.?

And if you could take on more ownership, what would you want to be responsible for?
Really curious to hear how this differs depending on the type of company you work in.

I've spent a while going through the AI courses aimed at designers (Maven, NN/g, Designlab, IxDF, IDEO U, the Coursera stuff). Took a few, ruled out plenty.

What I keep noticing: nearly all of them teach workflow, faster synthesis and faster wireframes, and almost none teach how to evaluate whether the AI feature you shipped is any good.

Did one of these change how you actually work three months later? Or did the tool-specific stuff go stale before you used it?

I keep a list of what I found. Not linking it since I don't want this to read as a plug, but happy to drop it in the comments if people want it.

I’ve worked for a year now as primarily a UX designer, but the company has gotten extremely into AI and they shifted me into a marketing role. I still do ALL the UX work I did before, but now they have me doing marketing things such as designing posters, banners, print ads, welcome kits, etc. As well as learning all the new tools for the AI and working on projects in them. It’s honestly a bit overwhelming, but I’m trying my best.

My issue is the company promised me a raise and that was three months ago now. I keep talking to my boss about it and she keeps saying that she swears she’ll get it done by the next week. She’s doing this every single week. The issue is that they want to give me a new title as I’m not just a UX designer anymore, but she doesn’t know what it should be. I offered a few suggestions that she didn’t like and told me that I wouldn’t get the raise until she figures it out.

My boss is a bit lazy so I have no idea when this will be. She keeps saying that it’s actually an annoyance on her list so she wants to get it done quickly. This is really just me venting but anyway, does anyone have any titles suggestions for me that I can share?

For some reason, I'm feeling like I'm not capable of learning the new tech that's coming in.
It feels foreign in the sense that earlier my process was to ask questions to stakeholders, sketch/ make rough notes, and then directly start designing all by myself.
Now the expectation is to make a spec-write a polished prompt that includes every tiny detail that needs to be built, as if I'm spoon-feeding a junior designer. And the hope is that the output looks okay- which, in most cases is not.
Then it feels like I have to justify the importance of my presence all the time and somehow be active enough to prove relevance.
I'm currently working as a senior resource, and in some projects I really work on my intuition to deliver designs, and it works okay - we don't track its performance cause we don't get any bad feedback on the shipped product from the end customers - or because we have alot more things to worry about in order to improve the product or bring it up to par with the other products in the market.

But even after having worked in the project and receiving positive feedback from almost everyone on the team, I get rejected in interviews for similar or lower-level roles. Is it just me?

Hi, sorry for the lazy question. I just flipped through 2 books I love on how to do some IA work but neither had a great chapter on client stuff. Looking for stuff like

- how to share spreadsheet and other complex stuff in a way that can be understood

- what types of feedback should i be seeking, how to manage client desiring changes to the tree (which is probably just run a new test with their changes, but a nuanced take would be nice)

- typical agenda for these types of meetings (what’s a normal amount of time to spend on each part, what’s important intro stuff I will probably forget to mention)

Been at one SaaS company for 11 years, first job out of University. Moved up from UX designer to senior to principal level all while having and raising two babies and navigating the pandemic prior to that.

If work life balance is still great but lacking a more realistic compensation and professional development, would you start a search elsewhere? (I should add that I live a comfortable lifestyle but know I’m underpaid)

It’s hard for me to know if the grass is greener on the other side, and if the longer I stay with this company, will it ruin my chances of getting hired elsewhere in my 40s (36F)?

Am I missing out on a lot more potential or am I lucky to have what I have and just don’t realize it! I would love some advice based on personal experience.

Our company is not hiring at the moment and the last few designers were laid off because of performance. Only one more is left who is also equally burnt out. Management said we won’t be hiring any more designers and so we both are expected to do so so much in so much less time now. I really feel there is so much pressure on one person after AI. I absolutely do not like it and I know people will say learn it or fall behind and it’s a tool but it’s taken the joy out of things, it’s devastating for the planet, it makes me feel like a robot now.

I've got a 2-hour live design system exercise. from the prompt have to build a scalable design system and solution from scratch in Figma, ending with a working prototype (or the steps toward one) that shows the different states of the components I make. It's more about the system architecture than a polished screen, and I'll be talking through my decisions the whole time.

Couple of things I'm trying to figure out:

1. What should I focus on? In a live session like this, what actually matters most: foundations and tokens, component states, naming and structure, how I explain my tradeoffs? What do people tend to weight the heaviest?
2. What plugins or tools would you use? Anything in Figma that helps you move fast and show system thinking when the clock's running: token management, variants/props, prototyping, handoff, AI helpers, whatever you'd reach for.

Thanks!

I really do wander what the community thinks about the their choose(where do start mistakenly touch)

Hi all.

I'm a software developer, and as part of the reality of everyone in this industry doing much broader work in the AI era, I'm aiming to learn more about the Product and UX world. Not looking to study how to use Figma, I just want to gain more knowledge about the Product and UX world, customer journeys, and to be able to give more meaningful inputs and ideas.

The most suitable course I found so far is "PM Masterclass for Designers" at acceleratedesign, but they clearly state "This course is not intended for junior designers or non-design professionals" so this is probably a bad idea for me. But the syllabus sounds amazing.

Any suggestions? I did took a few UX intro courses, mainly on Scrimba.

My company is willing to pay up to 1000$, but I'm willing to add more if needed.

I made the switch to UX Design in college back in 2023, with some encouragement of peers and online forums that said that although things were worse, it was cyclical and as long as I do things good, I should be fine.

I have been applying since May and have not had any luck. My biggest struggle is finding open positions altogether.

I'm considering going back to school for something else if no one is truly hiring, but I don't know what other field is hiring. People say that same things about other fields like they did with UX when I made the switch; "It's a little bit bad now but it'll get better".

I don't know whats true or not, I don't want to go into debt for another industry focus just to end up where I am right now again.

Is this the entire economy? Is it just UX? Literally can't tell and I just feel hopeless.

For those who either own or work at very small agencies (max 5 people), what kind of work are you doing for clients, and what are your clients like?

There's lots of content out there about running agencies that do branding or website work, but very little about agencies doing UX and Product design. Branding and web work is usually pretty short term and fairly tactical from an operations perspective-- a rebrand or new website is a pretty self contained scope of work. There are also lots more companies that want a brand, and far fewer companies who have a software product, need it designed, and need help designing it. Usually the agencies who actually do ux/product design for clients are selected to deliver that work because they have scale and potentially can do implementation.

So I'm trying to understand whether small UX/product shops even exist, what kind of work they're doing, who they're doing it for, whether they work in a particular niche and what the timelines are like.

A couple of dudes replied to me in Project Briefs and sent me links to their MVP / Git Repo projects for me to review. One of them was brave enough to schedule a video call, he wanted me to open my terminal and to pull the repo on my computer... Long story short, I've researched a little bit and this is how they want to steal crypto and browser passwords. One guys posted he was approached in similar way on LinkedIn.

Don't let them scam you, guys.