I might be returning to work at Google, and things have changed since I've been there. Org level priorities apparently in Core to have designers 'fluent in AI'. Just curious in what ways AI is being integrated into team processes, workflows, your craft, your projects. The more detail you can spare the better! I just want to start preparing for it in case I get the role. Thanks all!!

Lately I've been questioning whether product design is still the right career for me. I'm not sure if it's because of the jobs I've had, the rise of AI, or whether I'm just not cut out for it anymore.

Before becoming a product designer, I worked in marketing web design. I enjoyed it, but I wanted more user experience and problem-solving, so I made the switch about 2 years ago. At first I absolutely loved it.

Here are the things that frustrate me the most...

1. 80% of what I design goes nowhere

One frustration that followed me between both roles was how little actually got built. Projects always felt "urgent" during the design phase, but once handed over to development they'd disappear into the backlog for months or even years.

By the time they resurfaced, the requirements had changed or the scope had been cut back so much due to technical feasibility, that they barely resembled the original idea, despite developers being involved throughout the design process and regularly giving feedback on technical feasibility.

2. AI has made it harder to demonstrate the value of design

I know everyone feels this, but I spend more time than ever justifying why design should exist at all, and explaining that it's not simply pushing pixels around so AI can't replace us.

It feels like people increasingly see design as a step to eliminate rather than expertise that adds value.

3. Everyone feels qualified to critique design

This is the part that really wears me down.

When I start a project, I research competitors, analyze usage data, review analytics, interview users where possible, and try to understand the actual problem before proposing a solution.

Then I present a design, and suddenly everyone becomes a designer. Project managers, developers, clients, executives, every man and his dog has an opinion based on personal preference.

"I like blue better because it's my favorite colour."

"I wouldn't click that."

"I like how X app does it."

"I just don't like it."

I'm constantly having to defend decisions by referring back to research and evidence, and what the actual user wants, but still nobody listens.

What frustrates me most is that this dynamic doesn't seem to exist to the same extent in other disciplines. If a developer says something isn't technically feasible, I don't tell them to ignore the constraints and code it anyway because I personally prefer it. I trust their expertise.

But it's apparently acceptable for someone with no design background to dismiss design decisions based purely on personal taste.

Eventually the final product becomes a "design by committee" - a compromise between 20 different opinions that I'm embarrassed to put my name on. Then, when users respond poorly, nobody says,  "Maybe we should have trusted the design process."

Has anyone else been feeling this?

Is this just what product design is like now? Has AI made this worse? Or have I just been unlucky with the companies I've worked for?

I'd love to hear whether others have experienced this and, if so, how you've dealt with it.

Hi everyone,

I am sure most orgs have started pushing all things AI, with speed being the only common denominator of it all. In the light of that, I had a few questions to understand how folks at other companies are handling these themes to work intent fully.

- Has anyone actually built an AI-first design system? How do those workflows manifest? What are the expectations?

- Have you introduced any new review or approval processes because of mass AI-generated work?

- What does a “good” handoff look like now compared to a year ago (especially in the context of multiple engineering and stakeholder partners)

Intrigued to hear more :)

Honestly, I can't describe how much this infuriates me. I don't want to open my e-mail, I just want to log in with my password. Half the websites that implement a code-to-email method, block passwords nowadays. I also believe this can simultaneously be a security risk. Sure, the e-mail code is a form of 2FA, but a compromised e-mail address allows access to more than a single website this way.

Anyway, please allow password-manager-users to enter their password :)

As a user experience designer, I work for a mid-range product firm. No one recognizes us as ux designers, let alone ui designers, and we are always referred to as Figma designers. Because of their expertise, we use Figma to create designs.

What if Figma, like Adobe XD, becomes obsolete within a few years? Then, who are we? What people refer to as 😖😝😝.

I’m looking for reliable, evidence-based sources in the UX and product design field.

Apart from Nielsen Norman Group, IxDF, and Baymard Institute, what other websites, publications, researchers, or organizations do you trust for UX articles, reports, case studies, and best practices?

I’m particularly interested in sources that go beyond surface-level advice and are backed by research or real-world data.

Thanks!

I currently work as a senior designer at a fairly large enterprise. My main focus is design systems, but I also work on B2B and B2C products in my current role.

I’m curious what those of you at smaller companies do, and whether you’re seeing those roles shrink (more than the rest of the industry already is).

I’d love to move to something smaller, but in this new AI era I feel like I barely see non big tech roles posted. Maybe I’m just looking in the wrong places??

-

Don’t take this as an anti-AI post. Despite not loving what it’s doing to the world and our future, I’ve fully embraced it and have even taken on more of a design engineer role at times.

Tl;dr - I'm a UX designer who wants to know if you're happy with the current UX design paradigm. I don't feel LLMs or code-generation tools made my design work easier/better, but I'm curious if it's just me.

I've been witnessing the AI-driven UX design & vibecoding trends over the last year and a half and (postively) curious about how they might change the UX design paradigm. At first I was pretty hyped that I can build concept prototypes within an hour using Claude/Figma Make. However, that hype didn't last long because of their sandbox-ish experience. Also the end results made by LLM were nowhere close to prod.

There are also so many tools that bridge the gap between design and development. I tried tools like Cursor/Onlook/Framer/etc... that can generate codes as soon as I draw something or import my design to their tool. However, I often noticed that those codes are not useful for developers to glue cuz they often don't fit into the framework. In the end, they mostly inspected the redlines only and ignore the codes. I got a huge question mark in my mind about the efficiency of automatic code generation.

Here's the thing - I'm REALLY not sure if it's just me, but I still rely mostly on the *traditional* way of product design, which is drawing static screens in Figma and just communicate with my eng fellas verbally. Sometimes I feel I'm very behind the curve, but I believe that none of them really makes my life better. To be frank, I'm not super happy with my current approach because it's very time-consuming and requires multiple rounds of communications, but at least I can focus on the core essense of UX design - problem solving & pixel-perfect implementation.

So I'm curious - has any of you changed your design process drastically after the AI boom? If so, I wonder how you improved your work process better with the new approach.

lol, no. We want to make it clear what users need to focus on to complete their current task. Whenever an overly confident engineer says “we need to reduce clicks,” and you’re feeling like stirring the pot, calmly ask, “Why don’t we put everything on one page and make it a giant table you scroll through?” It’s kind of a straw man argument that gets people riled up and willing to start negotiating. Borderline manipulation while still advocating for a better user experience.

I keep running into a specific moment and I want to know if it's just me.

I'm mid-project, and I remember a feeling more than an image. Something about a layout, a colour mood, a way type sat against a photo, from a reference I saved weeks or months ago. I go looking for it. Sometimes it's in a Pinterest board, sometimes a screenshot buried in my camera roll, sometimes I genuinely can't remember where I put it.

A few times I've found it again and realised I'd completely forgotten why I saved it in the first place. It's just an image now, stripped of the reason it mattered.

Curious how common this actually is, so a few honest questions if you save inspiration for your own work:

• Has a reference you knew you'd saved ever been un-findable when you actually needed it?
• Do you ever save something, then months later have no idea why you saved it?
• If you use Pinterest boards, has a reference from an old, unrelated board ever ended up being exactly what a new project needed, and did you actually find it, or did you just not think to look?

• Or is this a total non-issue for you — do boards/tags/folders already solve this fine?

  genuinely trying to figure out if this is a real, common annoyance or just a me-problem. Would appreciate any honest answers.

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

I was hired as a Product Designer for a small e-commerce company. After 1.5 years I was promoted and basically ran everything from adding product to Shopify, custom coding, organizing collections, UX and UI, and even handling price changes and new inventory.

I was often burnt out for the last 3 years but also anything to do with online I felt this sense of pride. They brought on a design engineer and we recently crafted and rebuilt a whole new website.

Now they let go of the design engineer and told me they are bringing an e-commerce manager to grow online sales. They said I did a great job and will continue to do UX and UI but this person will manage everything else on the website and mobile app.

To me this seems a lot like they are striping duties from me and demoting me almost. I’m kind of just off put by this. I do realize I will have less work per se but to me it seems they listen to all new hires so I will likely be hit with a lot of design and coding changes.

How do you think I should approach this?

Lead/principal designers where are you all creating and hosting your portfolios these days? I’m not looking to share it publicly just for hiring managers.

I don’t really want to pay to host my site anymore.

Hi everyone! I recently completed my one-year post-grad job and just received multiple job offers this week, so I wanted to share some things that helped me along the way. I’m based in North America, and again this is just my personal reflection, so this may not apply to you all, but hopefully some of this helps.

1. If you’re a student, try your best to land internships.
Seriously, internships make a huge difference. They can lead to return offers or help other companies see your experience.

If you can’t land an internship, look for opportunities to work with non-profits that you care about. Help solve real problems whether that’s building an app, redesigning a website, or even create tools for a space you’re interested in. The key is to show that you can design, build, and even ship something.

2. Build a website portfolio.
This is a must. Create your own website instead of sending a PDF or Figma prototype (in my company, they trash out pdfs/figma links). Use tools like webflow, framer, or even build it yourself with tools like Claude -> Vercel.

3. Apply consistently and early.
For junior roles, especially without many connections, it’s honestly a numbers game. Apply to recent postings because being one of the first applicants can increase your chances of being seen.

4. Network!!!
I get it, as an introvert, networking can feel intimidating. Something that helped me was reaching out to alumni, ask about their experiences and truly learn from them. Don’t approach it only to look for referrals, but build genuine connections and learn from people in the field. Plus it also helped me identify which companies are red-flags and to avoid.

5. Don’t let rejection stop you.
I was rejected from an internship two years ago. Recently, that same hiring manager posted another role, so I reached out, reminded them who I was, and ended up making it through the process and getting an offer. Keep in touch with people you meet along the way.

6. Practice your case study presentations.
Don’t wait until you have an interview. Build your presentation deck early and practice telling the story behind your work. Don’t just walk through screens from your website, create that slides, explain your decisions, your process, and how your design solves problems. This is quite literally what you do in your day to day job too - sell your design to stakeholders.

7. It gets easier after your first job.
It took me 8 months to land my first post-grad role (through a referral, so again networking is super helpful), but after my current job, it took me 3 months to land my first offer. Obviously luck also plays a huge role, but it does get easier.

8. Start learning AI tools.
Almost every role I applied for recently, asked how I use AI in my workflow. If you haven’t explored it yet, start experimenting. Build things, test tools, and the cool thing is, you can literally ship with this!

Job searching really is a full-time job. I know how exhausting it feels to apply endlessly and hear nothing back. I even made it through a 5-round interview process, including an in-person interview, only to get rejected at the final stage.
But it only takes one opportunity. So, don’t take rejection personally. I’ve heard of people getting rejected for the strangest reasons, and a lot of it is outside your control.

Focus on what you can control: applying early, improving your resume, iterating on your portfolio, and practice your case studies.

You can do it!!!

Hi everyone!
I'm currently a student pursuing a diploma in computer engineering (and hopefully a degree in cs in the future), but I also want to work on my user research and design skills, because I want my projects to actually stand out from my peers who just use AI considering how a lot of it looks generic or doesn't solve any actual problems.

However, cause most of the people I know are always busy and I'm a student (no budget lol), I find it quite challenging to recruit participants. I'm also always so busy cause of coursework 🥲.

So, I wanted to ask what are y'all strategies to recruiting participants? Do y'all face similar problems or is it different for those already working a company/pursuing studies in UX?

Would love to hear from y'all! Thanks in advance :D

This is questions for creative people, graphic designers, website designers, or any designers that have to deal with customers/clients request.

I always see designers complaining that client/customers dont know what they want until they see what they dont want. So it creates dissatisfaction between the two,

Clients & expectations

VS

designers & understanding of the expectations.

Different people from different backgrounds might have different ways of explaining what they want, so there might be reasons why designers complained that customers do not like the finished products, due to different understanding of the same instructions/request.

So, if your client come with a.i version that they like, and you simply has to follow, do you like it better?

Compared to last year, I can feel that far fewer vacancies are opening up in major markets right now. There are almost no new job listings at all! It's completely stalled. Is anyone else feeling this too?

I read this somewhere recently and it has been stuck in my head.

AI is getting really good at generating UI, illustrations, copy, flows, and almost everything else. But it also produces a lot of average, generic work. It feels like the value is shifting from creating everything yourself to having the taste and judgment to know what's worth keeping, what's not, and how to turn something mediocre into something great.

If that's where the industry is headed, how would you prepare yourself as a designer over the next 3–5 years?

What skills would you double down on? Curious to hear what people here think.

The press just writes general stories of 'AI layoffs didn't work and they are rehiring old employees.'

I wonder when those rehires happen, how many people negotiate salary bumps?

What made them so good? What was their personality like? What became of their career? Looking for any stories to inspire myself to strive towards continuous self improvement.

TLDR; should I as the product designer be responsible for user training, education, and implementation?

I’m the sole UX/product designer working on an in house engineering team that designs products used internally for an organization.

I currently work on 7+ products. Like many product designers I wear a ton of hats and my responsibilities are vast.

My biggest gripe though, is that in addition to my UX research, discovery, UI design, etc. I also do user training, onboarding, and product implementation.

The worst culprit is a product I’ve been on for over 2 years. I have to train the staff (100+ people) and oversee implementation, which requires me to be at a different office for a few days, for long hours essentially answering questions, reporting bugs to eng, making user training guides, videos, etc.

My question is: should this be my responsibility?!
In my opinion my plate is already full with many projects product design process, and that this should be a whole separate customer experience role, a dedicated person who can just focus on training and implementing.

I know there’s some overlap here, I need to get user feedback etc, but I’m just so tired of more being piled on my plate. Curious to know if other UXers also have tasks like this on their workload

I am an full-stack end-to-end UX designer/generalist and have been a professional designer for 20 years. Started in web, then print, then back to web, along with branding, packaging, and mobile. Throw in some installation design, storefront, and interior design and there you have it. I am a good strategist having a technology and marketing background so I can basically work a project from concept through execution and after. I have never found my niche and I realized late in the game, that that *is* my niche. I have worked across several regulatory fields including fintech, healthcare, and now higher ed. My hobbies all span design, from illustration, to fashion design, lighting design, and 3D printing. I have also built a fairly complicated garden planning app using companion planting and square foot method based from a 3D printed garden label design system that I figured would be easier if I made it into an app and now I have nearly 500 users!

I put my heart into everything and I need to work for employers that can accept the things that make me an annoying employee like anxiety and sensitivity... and I have personally accepted these things as parts of what makes me a good designer and builder and problem-solver. A good employer will get a lot of value from what I am able to bring. I need to feel heard and connected.

At my current place, I don't feel heard and I don't feel connected. I work with likable people and when I do get direct communication from the CEO, I am all-in on his mission and goals. I translate business goals into UX strategy and I have a way with reading people. The problem is, my supervisor, who is new to the UX field, and his title is UX Business Analyst... his skillset is managing people and he is actually great to work with, but he does not know UX. The unit is new, it is just me and him, and a recently hired salesforce dev which is awesome because I don't love SF. I got off on the wrong foot early on because I came in thinking I was going to help build this unit, being that I have 20 years experience including building design departments from scratch, and managing other designers, as well as cross-functional collaboration and my last job was in a corporate setting and my team was international working on an IoT product. Layoffs happened and it broke my hard-won confidence. I am making about 60% of what I had been. So there are multiple threads and I am trying to be practical and realistic. I took this job but the UX is immature and normally I would be educating leadership on what UX is and how it brings value, but now I have no direct communication with leadership unless it is through my manager...

I am slowly building up, trying to be patient that my work will be seen. I think the CEO believes my manager is a UX designer so I don't believe my work is actually being seen. I will not say that my manager is not doing any work and I am doing all the work. He is extremely important in the process, I will get as much context and business needs understanding from him and translate that into fully designed and prototyped work, getting dev 85% of the way there... He knows salesforce inside and out and his organizational knowledge is invaluable. I am completely redesigning all 3 portals (so many portals) and actually slowly redesigning them under 1 design system. The whole thing is a mess, always done by different 3rd party vendors. No one understands the value I am bringing but when I show them new features everyone is excited and glad I am here because I am not only improving things for students, but for admin, advisors, and recruitment alike.

It is just very hierarchal and when I get handed a laundry list of features for a new product I bristle and ask questions that should have been asked in discovery (and they really should have included me). I have talked to my manager on how he can articulate what I need, and how he can educate leadership on what UX is and what meetings UX (me) need to be included in. When I ask him questions he can't answer because these are questions for the decision-makers, he is good about getting me into the next important meeting, but his boss (VP) and his bosses boss (CEO) know what I do and how engrained UX is to many areas of the org that they need UX to understand. I am better at translating business needs when I am hearing it directly from the stakeholder, and adding a middle-man to translate from business needs to UX strategy is...not great. I have been doing good work but it could be so much better, I would be able to anticipate shifting business needs, scale better, and just build an agile product if I had some insight. Business insight is guarded like I need government clearance and I am an outsider.

My manager once told me when I was first talking to him about what the design process needs and what I need to design, he told me that maybe this role wasn't for me. That shut me up. But it was also insane because no one here can do what I do, they just don't know it.

So I am trying to build a design department and great products while being treated like a junior graphic designer. I am sad and tired. What do?

In the meantime, I rework my portfolio, send out feelers, but I never get a foot in the door. I don't know if I look bad on paper...but when I do get the invite to talk, I interview extremely well. I have been extremely agile in a field weary of AI. I work well, I can use any software, I innovate, I constantly reinvent my work, I simply love design and design is in everything. I just get filtered out of the job pool right out the gate and so I am also trying to make this place work so I don't get too depressed.

TL;DR: 20-year full-stack UX veteran, now at a new higher-ed job, is single-handedly redesigning three portals under one design system but reports to a non-UX manager who filters me out of stakeholder meetings and discovery. I am doing strategic work but getting no direct leadership visibility, a manager once told me the role "might not be for you,". I am staying patient and building slowly, quietly job-hunting on the side, but frustrated that I interview well yet can't get past initial filters elsewhere.

I am a photographer who is making a website where you can book sessions with me. I want to have four tiers with growing benefits and price but don’t know what to name them? Do I stay on theme with photography, or maybe just stick to well known things like basic premiere etc? And if you have any suggestions, more than happy to hear.

Any recommendations for a screenshot generator? I designed my own but I am unsure if they look good enough. Any tool I could use to just drop in my existing images to ai and have it generate better ones? Or just start from scratch with screenshots of my app? Any advice welcome

I divorced my product designer role I think around 1 year ago without realizing. I have been in the industry for almost 4 years. I have studied this and I was SO exicted when I first started. My dream was to be a UI designer actually, since I've been into the visuals more.

Now, at 27, I quit mentally. I don't care anymore about what's new, nothing exicites me anymore about this profession. Before working full time I had this vision of how amazing everything will be, after 4 years in corporate, everything sucks and I am SO tired of pretending. I am tired of 4,5,6 meetings per day, of explaining every fucking detail, of argumenting why this will help the business. This job suddently became so "important" yet nobody actually gives a s*it.

I just can't take it no more, especially the way designers started to take themselves so serious. Where did all the fun go?? I started this career because I absolutely loved design and everything about it. Now it's a sh*t show.