Over the last month, my job has basically turned into polishing and providing feedback on the "AI slop" created by stakeholders.

They get to decide whether or not to accept my recommendations, even down to the component level (for example, advising them not to use Component X and to use Component Y instead because it’s a better fit for this use case).

Are you guys in the same situation? Are we all just polishing AI slop now? If so, it feels like this career is dying, as this type of workflow isn't sustainable. Nobody is going to pay thousands of dollars a month for a job like this.

Saw this in Family iOS App

You tap Continue the same button area expands into Cancel and Continue.

The motion helps explain the UX that this isn’t a totally new screen or decision, it’s the next step of the same action.

Feels a lot more connected, no?

This person just wants to sign off on everything, even to the point of approving after validation is complete. We have product managers for that.

Apparently, user research is just a suggestion until they personally weigh in. Their personal opinion or “I like it this way” is what often dictates the outcome. And their own designs look rough….. they reject peer feedback. And forget accessibility standards. Anyone else work for a person like this?

I’m at the lead level, so at what point when can I ask: how many cooks does it take to make it work? And why are we inviting the chef back after the food has already been served?

The kicker is…I work in a medium maturity org, and I can’t believe this is going on. The designers on my team are so talented, and this manager is just…. Not…. We all question their credibility because this is how it is. But somehow they survive?

How do I deal without cashing out? Advice please…. 🙃

Lots of negativity on this sub about the job market and state of industry but very little UX or design discussion. I’d like to know what people are working on? If you are out of work what are latest projects? What problems are you solving for yourself or others?

Now is definitely the best time for us to build our own things.

I use Lucide icons in my designs, but I keep running into icons the library doesn't have. I want to create new ones that look like they belong to the set (24px grid, 2px stroke, rounded caps and joins). I've tried using AI agents several times, including sharing reference images, but the results have been poor. The proportions and stroke consistency are off, and they don't look like Lucide.

How do you handle this in Pen.dev or other tools?

Specifically: - Do you draw them manually with the pen tool, or is there a better workflow? - Is there a way to get agents to produce usable, on-style icons? - Any tips for keeping new icons consistent with an existing set?

Any help is appreciated, thanks!

I have been out of the corporate world for a while now due to some health reasons. I work as a facility manager at the moment but am trying to get my foot back in eventually. I still do freelance gigs to keep my skills up to date. Issue is that i kind of dont really fit in with the UX-Designer crowd . I was employed as one for a couple of months though until i eventually had to leave because of my health (not related to the job but personal life). Thing is, i didnt really do the classic UX work. Since my strenghts were always technical abilities and just a good eye for structuring and layouting and also motion graphics from my long background as a graphic- and webdesigner. I also understand frontend really well and write my own code since before AI and now mainly use AI for JavaScript stuff. I even started just designing in code directly and kind of skipping the whole figma process since its easier for me. I still feel like i am lacking in frontend development though, specifically with JavaScript. So i just feel like i wouldnt have a chance applying as a straight up developer.

I tried to figure out what the best job to apply for would be, since i am kind of introverted and feel like doing typical UX work like stakeholder meetings and all that would eventually throw me back into crisis. I am very skilled when it comes to actually being hands on, but not the most talkative eventhough i can defend my design decisions. Dont get me wrong i can talk to clients and all that, but i just dont like talking weeks about why we should place a button on the left instead of right (for example). And i never had to do case studies or all that other stuff like user research and personas or what they are called eventhough i worked for a pretty big company as a UX-Designer.

I tried researching it and eventually found something called "Design Engineer"? But i have no idea if thats a real thing here in Germany. Since most jobs are either UX/UI-Designer or Frontend Developer. I am kind of inbetween Design and Development since i can do both. And sometimes i have a feeling that most companies dont even really know what a UX/UI-Designer does and just think its a classic webdesigner or design allrounder (from what i noticed in interviews)

I dont even know if this is the right board to ask this.

Everyone keeps saying AI is going to replace designers, or at least cut our workload in half. Honestly? I feel like my workload has actually increased—at least mentally.

Last week I was working on an onboarding flow. I gave the AI a solid brief, clear direction, and context. To its credit, it followed my direction and spat out a solution in seconds.

The problem? Within that single direction, there were at least 10 different ways to execute it.
Suddenly, my job wasn't designing the screens—it was auditing them. I had to sit there and constantly think through the why, what, and where to pick the actual best option for the company and our specific target audience. I was stuck in an exhausting loop of evaluating technical constraints, hidden assumptions, and business tradeoffs. AI executes in seconds, which is cool, but it has zero clue what to execute, what to leave out, and why.

Plus, it got me thinking: if non-design stakeholders start using AI to bypass us and push features straight to production, aren't they just going to tank their metrics and need designers to come back and fix the mess anyway?

Idk, am I missing something here? I only have about 1.5 years of experience, so I could easily be looking at this the wrong way. For those of you who have been in the industry longer—what is actually going on? Are you guys feeling this too, or am I just using AI wrong?

Hi, I’m fairly new to automotive/infotainment design and I was wondering if anyone had advice on where I can view current infotainment across brands and even internationally. I was previously a web designer so I know of dribble and other sources but I would really like to see more automotive specs.

Also welcome to any tips, on how to better understand infotainment trends and anything relevant.

Cheers!

I know people travelling and spending huge amounts of money for flights and hotels just for this conference. Crazy

Are they useful in y'alls experience and how do you guys write them?

I use two paragraphs, one explaining my background and then the final one what I can contribute because of said established background. THis is coupled with applying to places with hires similar to me or who do applications that I've worked on (such as b2b saas as an example)

I'd love to hear what you guys have done / think

On my morning walk this morning I had my daily thought about the state of the industry, state of the world, etc.

For the first time I had a real thought of “If I get let go from my job do I really want to do this again?” I went from being someone who was excited about AI to hating it. I know product management is the logical step but I really don’t think I want to.

Honestly I’d love to move away from super tech centric companies and do more with smaller business, non profits, etc.

Curious what those of you who made a jump are doing and if you have any regrets.

Or are the happily employed ones not on Reddit🤣

I beat up myself a lot for this - for not thinking or digging deep about why I was the one who got the offer among all the other applicants when I got a job offer 2 years ago. The economy was not as bad sure, but it was not the best either. So my question is:

For those of you that managed to get a job offer in this economy/market what do you think you did right or different than other candidates? And I’m not talking about years of experience, sure but I know people who have 5-10 years of experience and are struggling. For sure it’s could be something specific in your experience, specific tool or how you handled the design assignment. Or something else! Please share. Sharing is caring!

I genuinely need some advice here.

I’ve been applying for remote product designer roles and international contract opportunities for a while now, but I’m barely getting replies.

Before people suggest the usual things, I already do these:

• tailor my resume based on the role
• apply only when the role is actually relevant
• reach out to founders / hiring managers directly
• send cold emails and follow-ups
• keep my portfolio and case studies updated
• search beyond LinkedIn too
• try to apply as early as possible

Still, the response is almost nothing.

So I’m trying to understand what I’m actually missing here.

If you’re a product designer who landed a remote role recently, or someone who hires designers, what actually helped?

I’m not looking for the usual “improve your resume / portfolio / LinkedIn” advice because I’m already doing that.

I really want to know what worked for you when you were in this situation.

Hi, This is an on going Project, i would like to hear your feedback on the layout and overall design... Thank you in advance.

For some context:

1. This website will have an arabic version that will serve a decent some of user so i had to keep that in mind when doing the design to make sure that the overall composition, typography, and layout adapts well between English and Arabic.

2. For this landing page, I will be relying a lot on storytelling. We are not to sell a list of services, ask for donations, or anything else, We are trying to sell the idea, the problem, and how we approach it or aim to fix it. "I mentioned sell a lot but this is actually non profit there is no actual selling"

3. To support the storytelling, i'm not relying on super complicated graphics, and instead, simple animation and scroll behaviours between the screens that feel intentional and could actually help communicate our vision.

4. This is far from being done, The landing page alone has around 12 distinct sections and 23+ screens. I'm just trying to test the layout and overall design direction we are going for.

We're about to redo a frontend and keep arguing about whether the design language has to be locked first or if you can revamp screens in parallel and extract the system as you go. Product has chat/messaging plus some denser dashboard-adjacent UI, so consistency starts breaking fast once a few flows diverge.

Curious how people have sequenced this in practice. Did you start with tokens/components and freeze them early, or ship a few key flows first and only formalize the language after patterns settled? Also what usually bites you later - type/spacing drift, component variants exploding, or states that never got designed?

Not fishing for free work, just trying to avoid the classic "pretty screens, no system" trap before we commit more time.

Seven months ago I posted about the spoofed recruiter emails I was receiving. Real recruiters, highly personalized and tempting opportunities.

The only tell was that they used gmail accounts.

But today I received my first InMail on LinkedIn doing the same thing.

I recognized the language right away. The tell is harder to discern because instead of spoofing a real user but using the telltale gmail account, it comes from a real LinkedIn profile. Impossible to prove as fake.

Here are the tells:

1. "I came across your work [summary of positions]." They all start with this.
2. "Your ability to [summary of accomplishments] really stood out." The "really stood out" line is frequently used
3. "Would you be open to a brief confidential conversation?" They always like to say confidential to hide the fact that it's a fake job. Sometimes they'll say confidential conversation. Sometimes confidential (unlisted) job.

There are a variety of reasons they're doing this. From the other thread someone said it was to install takeover software on their computer. Others think it's a check in the mail scam.

Have you seen these? Been scammed? Share you stories.

Apologies for maybe yet another AI post. I've looked all through the backlog of AI + design system posts here but can't find anything asking this specifically.

My org already has a robust and mature design system and a great design system manager. The issue is that the designers, as well as often PMs and sometimes devs, want to get a quick answer about a guideline/pattern/rule within that design system, and it can take quite a while of hunting. For example "which style of destructive button is the right one to use in a warning dialog?" or "when do I use the Notes component vs the Comments component?"

I've been looking at Zeroheight, which promises to do some of this, but am hoping I could put something together myself for less, though if not, will gladly pitch Zeroheight to my boss. Has anyone used this tool, or anything else, for getting answers about your design system? I've been finding plenty of tools that do this sort of knowledge referencing for straight up documents, but nothing tailored to ingesting a design system and being able to give you answers from that. Any advice is appreciated!

I’ve been working in UI/UX design for around 16 years, and lately I’ve been thinking quite a bit about where all of this might be heading.
Not just how AI changes our workflows in Figma, but what happens to the interfaces we’re designing in the first place.

We’re already seeing early examples of generative UI. ChatGPT can create small, functional interfaces directly within a conversation. Calculators, interactive charts, selection controls, and so on.

Now imagine taking that a few steps further.

Instead of opening a railway company’s website to book a ticket, I ask my personal AI agent to find a connection. It gathers information from different providers and generates an interface tailored to my needs. Maybe I make the final decision myself. Maybe the agent handles the entire booking.
The interesting part is that I might never interact with the railway company’s actual interface.
And this is where I think things get interesting for UX design.

Today, companies invest heavily in their own digital experiences. Their websites, applications, design systems, interaction patterns, and brand identities are all part of how they differentiate themselves.
But what happens when the primary interface belongs to the user’s AI agent rather than the company providing the service?

I’ve also been experimenting with building interfaces on top of existing systems and data sources. That already makes me question how tightly the experience really needs to be coupled to the underlying application.
If we take this further, perhaps companies increasingly provide capabilities, data, and rules, while personal agents determine how those capabilities are presented and used.

That raises a few questions I’ve been thinking about:
- Do company-specific interfaces eventually become less relevant as a competitive differentiator?
- Do design systems evolve from defining visual components toward defining behavior, constraints, and principles that AI systems can interpret?
- If personal agents orchestrate experiences across multiple providers, where does UX design actually happen?
- And if AI eventually becomes capable of researching user needs, generating interfaces, and evaluating them, how much of that process will still require human designers?

I’m not suggesting traditional interfaces will disappear anytime soon. There are plenty of reasons why dedicated applications will remain useful.
But I do wonder whether we’re looking at more than just another evolution of design tools.
Maybe the bigger shift isn’t that AI helps us design interfaces.

Maybe it’s that users eventually stop interacting with many of the interfaces we’re designing today.

Curious how others in UX think about this. Are we heading toward a fundamentally different model of digital experiences, or are we overestimating how much people will actually delegate to AI agents?

Over the past few months, it feels like more of my time would go into reviewing AI-generated code than actually building things myself.

The AI produces something that looks fine at first glance, but then someone has to check the logic, fix weird edge cases, clean up the code, and make sure it actually fits the project. Sometimes, explaining why the generated code is wrong takes longer than writing it from scratch.

I'm not against using AI tools, but I do wonder where this leaves us in the long run.

Are other developers experiencing the same thing? Do you feel AI is making your work more productive, or are you spending more time cleaning up after it than doing actual engineering?

I’m anxious about AI so I need some clarity on what to look out for if my job is at risk. Other roles, especially PMs now have the tools to “design” high fidelity screens. I don’t think that is a red flag in itself, but what can I look out for that my company expects PMs to take on my role? Where is the line between adapting to these new ways of working with AI vs preparing for my role to be absorbed by product managers?

Side/weekend project, a fitness app. First version was a quick POC with Claude and got a few testers, kept iterating with feedback.

While functional, the design had a ton of: tiny monospace everywhere, uppercase labels on every section, lots of containers, copy that read like a status report. It was a nightmare to update, undoing all the small bad design decisions Claude made, so I redesigned it.

What I changed over ~4 months with a small test group: changed the IA, fonts to one sans, sentence case, gray ground with a red accent and a seal mark, rewrote every verdict line to say what the log shows instead of judging it, addressed a ton of usability issues.

The video is showing the Today page, how the logging loop works, how the experience changes based on your fitness goals, also lots of insights based on your lift behavior. I spent a lot of time refining the data vis to make sure the language was clear and showed what people cared about.

What do you think or the visual design overall? Interaction design? Is it clear what the pages are saying? Also does it feel easy to use? Open to any feedback...

Not going to sugar coat it. Wife and I are nearing the end of our ability to sustain ourselves. She’s been looking for work since her entire branch of her team at prior firm got axed randomly one day in favor of a “Company Restructure”. AKA max profits and replace as much work as possible with A.I

This woman did everything right and worked her ass off. •College + Working same time to pay off debts
•internships in the field during college
•Graduating and working in solid paying positions for the past 4 years.
Im sure many of you can relate.

I come home from work everyday and see how defeated and stressed she is. No matter how many applications she fills and recruiters she manages to speak with or previous colleagues or connections she speaks with… none of them have work for her. It fucking kills me man. I feel like she’s embodying an entire generations current battle right before my eyes and theres little to nothing we can do besides “just pray something comes along…”

things today like the IMF rallying the warning cries of what a.i is projected to do to pretty much anyone who works behind a computer screen by 2035. The stories from this reddit thread. How A.I went from within the year of not being able to count the number of “R’s” in a sentence to “oh btw a.i is solving decades long unsolved mathematical equations and causing industry mathematicians poo and young researcher to all go “we’re fucked” over night.”

I feel so defeated. The overall world and landscape is changing and a whole generation of people who did everything right like they were told to do. And now this. The entire script and rules of engagement being flipped on its ass by clueless techno ceo’s rubbing elbows with oligarchs.

Im sorry this is a nothing burger of a rant post. I’m just so tired and emotional that i needed somewhere to brain dump to people i felt like would understand. You guys can never be replaced. Nothing will ever fucking be able to replicate the things you guys create. All i can do is keep hope for the future. I’ve lost hope with everyone in control currently. But i hope the future with us can mend everything 😔

The problem that I'm experiencing:

Within my work with clients, stakeholders place an enormous amount of importance on speed and conversion, wanting to lower clicks and making it faster. The main user problem that we uncovered through research is lack of trust, not speed. Users are hesitant, double check. They drop off because they don't trust, not because the experience takes too long.

Whenever I attempt to bring trust into the journey map, trust feels intangible when compared to something that can be measured, such as speed.

What I've already tried:

I've included a lane for Trust signals and anxieties as well as Emotions, yet it gets ignored within reviews.

I've attempted to link trust touchpoints to UI components including reassuring copy, proof points and clear pricing within our vision wheel.

I've scoured the subreddit. I've read some threads about journey mapping - yet they all revolve around emotion or pain points, rather than the issue of trust.

My question to you:

If any of you are working on things like trust, confidence, or security on your maps - how are you documenting these in a way that they actually affect the design process and the conversations between stakeholders? Do