Why Everyone's Wrong About UX Design "Dying" (And What's Really Happening)
The eternal cycle of UX evolution that every designer needs to understand
The UX design industry is in full panic mode. “UX is dead!” I hear people cry on my LinkedIn and elsewhere. “AI will replace us all!” Don’t buy into the fear-mongering panic mode that has swept your online newsfeeds. It’s the oldest engagement trick in the world. Take something dear to you and kill it with words. But this is missing the point. UX isn’t really dying. It’s having a bit of a Jesus moment. Blasphemy, I know. But it’s being reborn. And frankly, it’s about time.
As a UX professor, I’ve graduated hundreds of UX designers from our programs into industry. So, after watching this cycle repeat for over a decade, I’ve come to the simple conclusion that every few years, the industry declares UX dead, only to discover it was just evolving. So, bear with me when I declare that the current crisis isn’t a wholesale death but a much-needed purge of imposters who never understood what UX actually meant in the first place. Cleanse your souls, my friends. It’s about to get dark.
The great UX identity crisis
Let’s be brutally honest about what happened to UX design. Somewhere along the way, it became the trendy job title that every visual designer, graphic artist, and UI specialist slapped onto their LinkedIn profile. You know photoshop? Just called yourself a UX/UI designer then. Insanity. The result? A complete dilution of what UX actually represents. Don Norman’s teapots have been smashed.
UX was never about making things look pretty. It was never about choosing the right shade of blue or perfecting button animations. Yet that’s exactly what it became in the minds of hiring managers, bootcamp graduates, and even some self-proclaimed “UX designers.” I would go as far as saying they are the reason for the big UX layoffs in the last years.
The market fundamentally misunderstood what UX is because we let visual designers redefine it. We stood on the sidelines while our field was being changed by clueless people. They turned a user-centric, research-driven practice into a top-down aesthetic exercise. That’s not UX — that’s just (mostly graphic) design with a fancy new title. And it’s doing more harm than good, so it needs to stop.
Why UX can never actually die
Here’s the thing about UX that the doomsayers don’t fully understand: UX is eternal. It’s not a job title or a trendy methodology — it’s a fundamental reality of how humans interact with anything created by other humans. And as long as we’re humans, that’s not going away.
User experience happens whether you acknowledge it or not. Every time someone picks up your product, visits your website, or tries to complete a task, they’re having a user experience. The only question is whether it’s intentional or accidental. And your job as a UX designer is to make it intentional. Based on as much data as you can get your hands on.
You can fire every “UX designer” in Silicon Valley, and users will still experience frustration with poorly designed interfaces. You can replace every design team with AI, and people will still struggle with products that don’t understand their needs. The experience exists independently of whether anyone is actively designing it.
An evolution nobody saw coming
What’s actually happening isn’t the death of UX—it’s the distribution of UX responsibilities across product teams, exactly as it should be. The fantasy of the “unicorn UX’er” who could research, strategize, wireframe, and pixel-push was always unrealistic for most organizations. And the dark reality was—especially in smaller companies—that people were pushed into these multi-responsibility gigs that set them up to fail.
Modern UX is becoming what it should have been all along: A specialized practice split between researchers who understand users and designers who create solutions. Add product managers who prioritize user needs, and you have a UX dream team that’s far more powerful than any individual contributor ever could be.
This distributed approach is actually strengthening UX, not weakening it. When user research informs product strategy, when designers create solutions based on real user needs, and when the entire team is accountable for the experience, that’s when we have real user-centred product development.
The imposter purge is necessary
I’ll say something controversial: I want all the visual designers to stop calling themselves UX’ers. It’s not your tree. Stop barking up on it.
There, I said it.
If you’re primarily focused on visual hierarchy, colour theory, and making interfaces look polished, you’re a visual designer. And that’s cool. We need people like you. It’s an incredibly valuable skill! But it’s not UX design. Own your actual expertise instead of hiding behind a trendy acronym.
The same goes for UI specialists, interaction designers, and graphic artists who migrated to digital. You have legitimate, important skills. Stop diluting them by pretending they’re something else.
When everyone claims to be a UX designer, the title becomes meaningless. When the title becomes meaningless, organizations can’t properly staff for actual user experience work. This hurts everyone — real UX’ers can’t find appropriate roles, and companies can’t solve their actual UX problems. Everyone is in deep sh*t and it’s starting to smell bad.
What real UX looks like in 2025
Authentic UX practice today is more powerful than ever because it’s finally freed from the burden of being everything to everyone. Real UX’ers are focused on what they do best: understanding users, translating insights into product requirements, and getting business goals aligned with user needs. We need more of that.
The best UX practitioners I know aren’t worried about Figma skills or visual design trends. They’re obsessed with user research, behavioural psychology, and business strategy. They speak the language of product managers and engineers. They measure success in user outcomes, not design deliverables. And maybe they even taken our Masterclass on how to level up their UX skills with generative AI. Either way, they’re thinking big.
This is what UX was supposed to be before it got hijacked by the design community. It’s research-driven, hypothesis-testing, user-centric problem solving. It’s less about the design craft and more about the user impact.
The future belongs to true UX practitioners
So, that brings us to my one prediction here. As AI is handling more routine design tasks and the market becomes more sophisticated about what different roles actually do, we’ll likely see a return to specialized, properly labeled positions.
Visual designers will go back to being visual designers—and they’ll be better for it and crushing it at their jobs. UX researchers will be recognized as the specialized professionals they are. Product designers will own the intersection of user needs and business goals. And true UX practitioners will finally be able to focus on what they do best without being expected to be ephemeral unicorns that know everything.
The companies that understand this distinction first will have a massive competitive advantage in the changing market. While their competitors are still trying to find “full-stack UX designers,” these organizations will be building focused teams of specialists who actually understand their domains.
Your role in the UX renaissance
Whether you’re a hiring manager, a practicing designer, or someone trying to break into the field, you have a role to play in this evolution.
If you’re hiring: Stop looking for unicorns. Define what you actually need— research, visual design, interaction design, or product strategy—and hire accordingly.
If you’re a designer: Be honest about your actual skills and interests. There’s no shame in being just a visual designer or just a UX researcher. Specialization is your strength. Own it.
If you’re breaking into the field: Choose a lane and get really good at it. The market doesn’t need more generalists calling themselves UX’ers. It needs specialists who can solve specific problems exceptionally well.
And stop saying it. UX isn’t dying. It’s growing up. And we’ll be better for it. The question is whether you’ll grow with it or cling to outdated definitions that never served anyone well in the first place.
The future of UX is bright, specialized, and more impactful than ever. But only if we’re brave enough to let go of the comfortable confusion that got us here.
BTW: Are you watching other designers land $150K+ roles while you're stuck doing the same old UX process? The truth is brutal: In 2025, there are only two types of UX designers...
Those who've mastered AI and charge premium rates.
And those who haven't and compete on price.