UX Trends for 2023 and Beyond: Automation, Design Process, and UX Industry Shift

[@austinandriese]

I'm one of those considering leaving. Being into full time UX for two years now, I am planning to freelance and start an agency focusing on web design and branding. I see the ceiling of UX and feel that entrepreneurship has a lot higher ceiling. I also want to choose what projects I want to work on and be more creative (hence web design with Webflow development). I started as a freelancer and have hated the bureaucracy of full time UX in larger companies. Things take forever and everything moves too slow. I know it could just be the companies I've worked for, but I feel like I have to give myself a shot at running my own gig before I don't have the chance as my family is growing.

[@Aceofheart114]

Are you interested in investing in an agency?

[@shaun4787]

"Quitting UX altogether" has been on my mind for years. I can't speak for everyone. But in my case there’re are several factors really push me towards that direction. 

1. Lack of career growth. As I’m turning 50, I’m still stuck at the top tier IC role, never was able to break through that ceiling. More than 70% of the work I do are still centered around hard deliverables such as diagrams, flow charts, wireframes, mock ups and clickable prototypes. I excel at these, but I’m also very good at many other areas: analyzing, synthesizing, strategizing, planning, critical thinking, inspire others to think different…. But those are never exploited in all of my previous jobs and those are the areas I really want to focus as I’m turning older and older. Most of my design school classmates and previous coworkers have mostly moved onto leadership roles…similar to the situation Jeff Gothelf talked about his catalytic struggle in “Forever Employable” book. The peer pressure is enormous. 

 2. Lack of a sense of accomplishment. I actually never shipped a product/service I worked very hard on. Seems that a lot of job postings these days want to see a UXer to have “successfully shipped a product/service they designed”….There’re many factors caused this, but mostly are centered around the incompetent stakeholders(product, engineering, leadership). Projects I worked so hard on were ether downgraded, diluted, frankensteined, or simply cancelled. As more of these half baked or even total failed projects keep happening on me, they take a big toll on my morale and spirit. That really led me to think is this UX path still right for me? 3. Lack of Return of Investment. I’ve been a life long learner. Being a Gemini myself, I’m curious about a lot of things, and I invest a lot of time to get good at them, especially the hard skills. But as I acquire more and more hard skills, and my age also starts to pile on. Those skills can certainly impress coworkers and managers but not turning into bigger paychecks… Now I ask myself: Are you still going to compete your hard skills with a 20 year old straight out of design school who’s hungrier and more motivated than you, and he can even work 12~14 hours a day… So up skilling myself has very little return of investment for me at this point. I could keep learning just like people have been saying UX is learning profession. I agree 100%, but to what end? I know most of my previous UX manager, Senior manager, Director UX, Head of UX, none has the vast hards skills I have. Most of them are just great at BS…I get angry when I talk about this so I’ll stop here. You get my point. 4. I have other skills. When I was trained in design school, I was very good at traditional media such as sketching, drawing, painting and crafts. At junior/senior years I also picked digital paintings/illustrations(Wacom/Photoshop/Procreate…) and 3D modeling/animation. Friends and coworkers are amazed by my other talents. I did apply to some of that to UX field(sharpie storyboarding out an experience..). I found so much creativity and freedom in that field. I’m not saying I want to be a concept artist for Lucasfilm. Too late and too old for that. But there’s a potential I could apply those hobby skills to paid gigs. There’re markets for that. The best part is that the quality of my “product/service” is not at the mercy of an incompetent product/dev team. I have 100% control of its quality and value. I know I went off on a long rant. To sum it up, quitting UX has been on my mind for a while now. Your UX life story might be completely different from mine. I’m also curious if someone also shares the same feeling as me. VAX, this is a great conversation piece. This goes beyond just about how to do UX properly. This is about: Can UX be an addition or subtraction to the fulfillment, meaning and quality of your life.

[@safiyausman7674]

I just came across your channel today and i am really glad because I have watched 5 videos already. I just started my journey in UI/UX, i am in my 40s. I have had many years experience in administration and research. Your videos have inspired and showed me that i am on the right track to continue with this journey. Thank you

[@vaexperience]

Wonderful!

[@hellostephaniem]

You always have an interesting take; with the way the industry is shifting I understand the need for generalist designers. I'm documenting my UX journey on YT so I love hearing others opinions.

[@bigkirch1105]

I have just started my journey in UX/UI design, and you have been a huge resource. I won't lie and hearing some of this worries me since I am only just starting, but I believe in technology and the need for design will always be there. If you were to start right now, today, what advice/resources/courses/etc would you recommend? Thank you!

[@vaexperience]

Hey, check my book get into ux as it summarises most of the steps, resources etc.

[@Flajukas]

widen your spectrum of knowledge in this field as much as possible, where you not only can use figma for wireframes and hi-fi wireframes, but leave actual value after yourself, ux research, insights, human psychology, good bad practices, robots can read data, but they will NEVER understand what human wants, at least not on a level a real human to human feeling level. i am a junior designer myself, working for a huger cyber sec company, and ofc, i feel threatened aswell, so I am going to widen my scope of knowledge, tools and etc.

[@naskoterziev7384]

I am considering leaving UX. I started my career in marketing and accidentally transitioned into UX and some coding. The traffic I was driving as a marketer was not converting and I wanted to change that, so I became a "growth designer". That was a constant at all SaaS companies I worked with and all eCommerce stores I consulted since 2017. I am considering leaving because I see more and more companies looking for product designers responsible for pushing the pixels a product manager prioritizes. Now, growth design is becoming a "thing", but still PMs have most of the fun and designers just execute. instead of being involved in finding and prioritizing the user problems to be solved. As crucial as UI is, it's a shell of the experience. In the companies I worked with, PMs had all the fun out of UX - prioritizing direction and hands-on discovery and validation. Being a PM focused on usability seems to be a better fit for me moving forward.

[@tuams]

Interesting that you mention the surge of need for generalists. As a generalist, I feel actively disregarded by companies because they are looking for perfect, trendy UI skills while comparing an individual to a vague design process. But maybe that's because for many companies designers fall out of the "serious analysis" part.

[@HandMeDeals]

This is so true

[@hansulibakshi9303]

Can't agree more, " it's all about delivering some sort of outcomes and impacts for business and also how it influences the knock-on effects on the world for sustainability and other factors.."

[@funwithsarah1586]

Question that is a bit out of topic, but as a Product Designer (UX/UI), would you buy a iPhone (as the newest apps are often on iOS first) or would you buy another phone (in this case, what brand would you buy) ? Also, I love taking pictures and filming, so I know that iPhone has a built in stabilizer. Would you recommend any ?

[@GetYossedLol]

UX is more of a process than a skill. It's an efficient process that includes researchers (not designers), data scientists, UI designers and developers. There really is no point of a "UX designer". UX is more of a management role than a technical role.

[@vaexperience]

Yes and no. If you want to simplify it like that then ux would be more of a facilitation role. You can fragment a role in certain environments that can afford it

[@SherifTariq]

I've been in UX for almost 15 years, and around 2019-2020, I was severely burnt out and seriously considering leaving UX (where to? I didn't know). The problem was with development teams stonewalling any features that improve the user experience and wasting enormous amounts of time obsessing over front-end tooling (JS frameworks, build tools, TypeScript) at the expense of user and business value. The devs didn't care. They can get $150-$200K in any company. In the meantime leadership would yell at me and my team for not building better experiences, while timidly ignoring the devs. It was exhausting.

[@vaexperience]

What changed? Where are you now?

[@SherifTariq]

I changed to a new company. I stopped caring. I just did what my managers and the devs wanted. Continued to get yelled at by whoever was looking at my designs that day. I took up hobbies: painting and clay modeling. Where I could create quality products. I stopped doing side projects. It took 3 years of therapy and medication to finally feel somewhat normal. A week ago, I had a short discussion with a product manager and dev director, both of whom I’ve loved working with, and that finally reignited my desire to do great UX again. That and a leadership class have been super impactful. I’m now making a new plan to do better UX. If I do get stonewalled again, I’m just going to transfer to a different team until I find a dev team that cares 🤷‍♂️.

[@SherifTariq]

Short term, I still don’t know where I’m going to go from UX. I love it too much. But long term? Maybe going into product management. Or leaving the field entirely and going back to my first love - painting, where I’m creating custom work for individual clients instead of corporations where people can hide their lack of empathy behind processes and silos.

[@snaakie]

I am currently indeed seeing way more generalist positions than usual.

[@thoughtprocess6615]

Boring presentation!