UX Design is still UX Design
“Click, tap, or talk, we still have to make technology feel more human.”
More and more, I hear that AI is upending UX design—so much so that the term itself might not even mean anything anymore… if it ever did. Some say we’re now designing invisible agentic workflows, focused more on backstage automation than front-end interactions. Others argue that, with all these new human-machine touchpoints, UI needs us more than ever—especially since click and touch still beat voice as the primary interface.
These views pull us in different directions. We’re still figuring out how to move forward in a way that delivers value, both to users and to the business. So naturally, we’re left wondering: what should we actually be doing now? Where should we focus? Are we still even UX designers?
Spoiler: yes, we are. But the job is changing.
A lot of us got into UX because it blended creativity, challenge, and real-world impact. Some of us came from art, others from PM or dev roles. Some of us were just building weird stuff on the early web, when “UX” wasn’t even a job title. But what united us was the drive to make things better for people — more usable, more useful, more human.
And now, here comes AI — exciting, sure, but also deeply disruptive. Suddenly, your SVP is asking for agent diagrams instead of screens. Wireframes are being replaced with flows. The UI? Optional. Maybe even disposable. And we’re over here thinking, “Wait, wasn’t that the PM’s job? The engineer’s? What happened to my beautiful UI?”
