UX is not over (and won’t be by 2025).
Is the UX design industry really over? Should we all look for new careers? If you want to learn why I think it won’t happen, stick around and let me explain.
In the past few months I’ve noticed growing numbers of videos & articles predicting the end of the UX Design Industry.
Recently I watched and read Michał’s great video & article on the subject, which stirred quite a panic in all of the online forums where people from the industry tend to hang out.
Number one question I’m getting, especially from people learning UX and UI is “Is he right?”.
Well, there are things that I’m agreeing with and things which I’m not. So maybe let’s start from why I don’t believe the UX will be over, especially so soon.
As any respectable UX designer should, let’s start from research and look at the available data on the subject.
According to a report published by “Market Research Intellect” quite recently, we can see a global outlook & projection from 2022 to 2030 in the area of UX Design Services Market.
Report in itself is quite pricey, and the real numbers are hidden but on the summary page we can see the graph which clearly shows an ongoing, growing trend from the end of 2023.
Then, we have another report published by “Industry Research” regarding the global UI and UX Design Software Market which also is projected to constantly grow up to 2029.
You may now say that it’s not really an indicator of job security, but think about it. If the software market for design tools is projected to grow, someone needs to operate it, right?
Finally we have the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics from which we can learn that demand for UX designers is expected to grow by 23% from 2021 to 2031 which is much faster than average.
Apart from that we have the argument that demand for designers will shrink because of the progress and abundance of available tools.
Do you know when the first version of Material Design from Google was published? Or since when the concept of design systems exist, or when services like Envato, Freepik or Flat Icon were published?
All the mentioned exist for many many years now, and they didn’t lead to the collapse of the UI & UX Design Market. On the contrary!
Because they offer templates & tools that most of the time — still require skilled people to adapt to specific situations, be it branding, specific products or populating them with original content.
Those tools & templates save a lot of time, and I personally use them in my work quite often.
Same applies to frameworks for developers, like Bootstrap and others — those exist for many years, and they didn’t lead to collapse of developers careers.
Didn’t CEOs like Elon Musk exist before? Where quality & originality were sacrificed over time & money?
I get that Elon has a huge following, but he didn’t create this trend where companies & businesses want to achieve the biggest returns in the shortest time possible with the least amount of investment.
This process even has a name — “Lean Startup Method” which was popularized by Erik Ries in his book of the same name.
Not only that, but those principles can be and should be applied to the UX process in something called “Lean UX”.
And what about the A.I.? Influencers are bombarding us from left and right that everything will soon be replaced by it.
Unless someone will come out with A.I. that can think and operate like a human — you can sleep easy!
UX is just too complicated, it encapsulates and connects many areas, requires research, data analysis, critical thinking and strategic planning — yeah, good luck with that.
Ok, but as every industry, UX and UI design evolves and changes over time. So let me move to the things that I’m agreeing with.
It’s true that currently it’s harder than ever to enter the field of UX, and there are 2 primary reasons for that.
First — there are more and more people wanting to enter the field — so there is a higher competition, especially at the junior level.
And then there is the aftermath of the mass layoffs affecting Big Tech from the beginning of this year. The tech sector shed nearly 150,000 employees in the last couple of months alone.
But, designers encapsulated less than 4% of that number, and the layoffs themselves were a result of overestimation of growth — not shrinking markets!
Many organizations went through restructurations and adjustments and I’m slowly seeing them going back to their usual recruitment patterns.
In a competitive labor market, firms are often reluctant to bring on novice designers due to the resources required for their training.
Beginner designers benefit from mentorship by seasoned professionals, a luxury that some smaller companies might not afford.
Many emerging designers haven’t yet tackled real-world assignments, partnered with fellow designers, or navigated the challenges of deadlines, budgets, and technical limitations, necessitating extended training periods.
So in order to find a job as a junior designer you need to stand out. But also, as Michał and the others said — you need to focus on design itself, not being a “rectangle mover”.
