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Does UX design work feel meaningless lately? Youre notalone.Artwork by @JPdoodlingThe bigemptyIf youre a UX Designer and you dont live under a rock, youve probably caught wind of the sense that things in the industry are a little gloomy. What I hear from friends and colleagues is echoed through linkedIn posts, medium articles, and industry forecasts abound: the work just feels a bit meaningless at themoment.Maybe youve found yourself asking why you got into UX in the first place? Maybe you like problem-solving. Maybe you were led here by a passion for design. Maybe youre interested in people, or technology. Maybe it was so you had something to write clever articles about. Maybe you wanted to make a positive impact on a widescale.But what parts of your job feel true to that today? Instead youre burnt out,doing work youre not proud of for reasons that youre not passionate about, and feeling like youre pushing pixels instead of doing stimulating work. When will this all change? Should you get a betterjob?What if there is no betterjob?Do you work for one of a shrinking number of very large corporations, and execute whims that aim to inflate shareholder prices and/or enrich weird billionaires? The compensation is good, and you might enjoy some stability, at least until the company restructures to spend more money onAI.Alternatively, you could roll the dice at a startup, work in a maybe-fun (beer!) but maybe-toxic (sexual harassment!) environment, creating window dressing for some fin-bros half-baked disruptive idea that likely cant achieve profitability without exploiting a subset of people or breaking a law. Maybe itll work out and youll get some stocks. Maybe itwont.If you want the moral high ground, you can go work for a non-profit, maybe a cause that you really believe in, or an arts institution. Youll be poorly paid, but if your six roommates arent too loud you can sleep at night. That is until you realize that your NGOs board is made up of the families and friends of the same aforementioned weird billionaires (who individually could probably afford to solve whatever problem your NGO attempts to fix), and that the non-profits dependance on major donors means that they fundamentally decide what you do and dontdo.What if theres no job atall?Employment circumstances have changed. The labour market generally has slackened, and tech companies across the board have introduced cuts in the past few years. Maybe thats affected you, maybe your LinkedIn page is filling up with folks who are #OpenToWork.In either case, youre either frantically learning about or conveniently ignoring the loudening drumbeat of AI, watching companies pour money into what they wont say but you know is the hope that the technology will advance enough to replace people replace you maybe and thus savemoney.You still need to work to live, what do youdo?Panic? Maybe periodically, when you need to be up early the next morning. But most of the time youre just going to go to work, do what you have to, and then go home and binge-watch yourself into oblivion. La dolcevita!Im paraphrasing these sentiments of course, and obviously drawing on some hyperbolic examples to make my point. But designers arent feeling challenged right now, and thats a concern for both designers and the people who employthem.2023: Designs really badyearDesigners, but for 2023. Artwork by JimDavisIf youre a non-designer reading this, no need to feel too left out. Stuff sucks! The malaise, that feeling that your work doesnt matter? Thats kind of par for the course at the moment if you work in tech. Or maybe anywhere. Maybe not if you make cheese or shoes or something cool likethat.But designers might be feeling the pain rather acutely at the moment. Theres been a dark cloud following design around for the past few years, and well its got an amplifying effect on the bad vibes. At the start of 2024, UX Collectives annual state of UX coined the term late-stage UX,which:is characterized by its market saturation, heavy focus on financial growth, commoditization, automation, and increased financialization. Corporations exert significant influence over the economy and society, and designers can only push so far when advocating for user needs.(Braga & Teixeira)Late-stage UX (what comes after the late stage?) laments the end of the party for UX, and maybe design at large, where a function that once loomed large now had to contend with its own decline in influence.Fast Company writer Robert Fabricant called 2023 The closing of a chapter, for Design. In his article the big design freak-out, he details what amounts to Design losing its seat at thetable.After almost two decades of Apple-inspired upswing that saw design roles elevated into the boardroom, the rise of the Design Thinking practice, and massive demand for talent, the design bubble started to wobble, and then burst fully by the end of 2023. In 2024, Design continued its downward slide.(Fabricant)Today, CDO roles have faded. The design thinking era has ended (good riddance, IMO). Designers are in less demand, and under increasing threat of replacement. More than anything else, businesses have, on the whole, changed their attitude towards design, its value, and the type of work that designers shoulddo.UX Collectives annual State of UX for 2025, leaned further into themalaise:Were handing our design systems to growth teams so they can squeeze every last penny out of customers. Were optimizing our flows for clicks, not clarity. We stopped building tools and started building engagement traps. While in the past UX had a certain aura of care for users, in 2024 we are bluntly following the numbers. In many companies, the pursuit of growth is overshadowing the pursuit of meaning. (Braga & Teixeira)Things were going so well. What happened?From innovators to optimizers tomachinesUX veterans might speak of good old days where design was more free, before the tyranny of the MVP sucked the soul out of the work, and discarded the time and space designers so desperately want to be able to think, reflect, andplay.This photo of Jonathan Ive and David Rubenstein posing with the iMac in 1999 harkens back to an age where companies looked to design to innovate. (AP Photo/Susan Ragan)This occurred in a very specific context, a technological paradigm shift. The explosion of mobile, social, and cloud technologies reshaped the way we all live. The modern tech company emerged. In the innovation stage, design offered immense value to companies looking to distinguish their products and services. Businesses had technology they didnt know how to wield, and so the designer acted as sense-maker, helping to translate capability into tangible, useful, and desirable products and experiences.In an environment where capturing users was competitive, designers became oracles for the voice of the user, protectors of all that was good and right in the world, and confident that they were the ones negotiating business goals with humanneeds.In 2004, Bill Breen (employee #1 at Fast Company)wrote:Most companies understand that a product must be more than the sum total of its functioning partsbecause todays customer first experiences a product through its design. Whether its Jonathan Ives iPod or Tom Fords final collection for Gucci, a product must speak to a customers emotionsand emotions are sparked by design. And so design, when it is done well, is deeply rooted in a corporations culture. It reflects the real idea behind a product and, by extension, behind the company that created it. Design shapes a companys reason for being; it has become an undeniably transformative force in business and society.(Breen)Over the course of time the paradigm aged, and the space for innovation within it shrank. Theres some organic cyclical aspect to this through human history of course. The companies that found success in the space became massive, publicly traded companies (Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, and Microsoft make up 5 of the top ten most valuable companies in the world at the time of writing. Three more in the top ten make semiconductors), and hoovered up smaller companies with great ideas or strong patents. (Daly,2025)Tech CEOs might have chosen hooded sweatshirts over tailored suits, but just like every other company, turning a profit and delivering year-on-year shareholder value was now a must. The seed money, once seemingly being pumped into offices via a pipe in the ceiling, now had to come from things like sales, streams, subscriptions, ads,etc.Designs value has always been less tangible than other disciplines. Theres good evidence that companies that invest in design perform better and deliver more value for investors, but the exact how is still elusive. Looking at design as a line on a spreadsheet, you cant expect that companies who didnt have their own iPhone moments to fully understand what they were payingfor.In a cost conscious environment, with less opportunity for innovation to occur, there was a phase shift towards optimization. Make fewer things, and more money from those things. Spend less time on big ideas (the kind that designers tend to relish). It also demanded speed. Designs double diamond process, once proudly championed in design thinking workshops everywhere, was just too slow. A drawn out discovery process could lose out to a gamble. A few high profile good guesses, and going with your gut, big bets, and (cringe) founder mode started to be thought of as a viable alternative (which it is, provided you ignore all the times it goeswrong).Design Council.orgs Double Diamond. Discover, Define, Develop, Deliver.Defunct?Unsurprisingly, what came along with this change was an ugly side, one where a product gets optimized for monetary gain at the expense of product quality (a process termed Enshittification by journalist Cory Doctorow). Note that the same tech companies that were once progressive, transformative innovators have been increasingly thought of as villainistic for reasons ranging from competition laws, to mental health, to privacy, to worker exploitation, to plain old price-gouging.Enshittification? A Google search for basketball tickets doesnt put an organic result on thescreen.Design always said no. Design always said itll take longer to do well. Design became an impediment to progress, to making more money! Maybe the engineers could just design the thing? The role of designers changed.The COVID-19 Pandemic may have been the last nail in the coffin for designs elevated place in the world. For one, the sudden, widespread, change into remote work may have had accelerationist effects on designs demise by literally taking designers out of the room. Designs work as connective tissue within organizations evaporated. Digitally mediating workshops, getting anywhere with whiteboarding, or simply explaining the full round of a problem became more challenging. Second, if you werent making masks, vaccines, or ventilators, you were in full optimization mode. Companies were either massively surging (like food delivery services), or massively failing (like movie theatres), and regardless everyone found themselves scrambling to simply execute quickly. Design held up its end, and did less discovery, less validation, and ultimately less thinking to feed impatient engineering teams. Thats been the new expectation from that point forward todate.If you got into design because you like thinking, this change has made your work deeply understimulating. Designers used to talk about changing the world: dedicating your best years to increasing conversion on an ecommerce checkout is not exactly aspirational. Its no wonder some folks think an AI could do the job (with fewer eye-rolls, too). The stunned silence in the crowd when Figma demoed its first draft feature at CONFIG 2024 (Where Figmas AI could compose high fidelity wireframes based on a prompt) spoke volumes. For some, AI feels like an existential threat to their work, precisely because it fits into the optimization mode so well for companies.- YouTubeDesigners might be partly to blame in all of this. We might have been too busy taking big jobs, expanding our teams, nodding knowingly in Design Thinking workshops, and congratulating ourselves for making yet another set of icons. Did we save the worldyet?Designing ourselves out of complacencyI sat on writing about this issue for months, because while I could see the problem quite clearly, I didnt have much in the way of a solution (and Im trying to be less negative as a person). Theres no magic bullet here, but perhaps there are a few things we cantry.One of the things designers dont currently do well (not on the whole, anyways) is quantifying the time and effort of our work in terms of the value it brings to an organization. Can you truly say that in six weeks, you delivered something more valuable than you could have in four? How do you actually know? This is something thats going to be crucial for designs future, and it IS going to be uncomfortable. Would you ask Michelangelo to quantify the value of the Sistine Chapel? Maybe not, but Pope Julius DID reportedly threaten to have him thrown off the scaffolding if he didnt finish it ontime.Aligning design time and effort to business metrics and hypotheses might not be what you got into UX for, but it might be what keeps you there. Designers might have to swallow some pride here and sincerely ask themselves if the effort spent designing new components vs. reusing existing ones is actually worth it to the user, and thus to the business. Getting more agile and metric-centred and communicating that value well back to your business iscrucial.Second, there are fields in which the paradigms and patterns are less established. AI is obviously one of them (someone please come up with something better than a chatbot). Id put biotech, robotics, and cybersecurity in the same category. These are spaces that are innovating, not optimizing, and theyll need smart designers to help guide how users can effectively interact with these new tools. Thats a potential pathway to meaningful work, and design ethics are both valuable and necessary to determine how these powerful technologies arewielded.Last, design can still lead from below. Its not unusual for a designer to come to understand a solution to a problem, or even a valuable opportunity via their work. Finding ways to bring those ideas to life in a manner that doesnt require taking weeks at a time away from other priorities IS possible, and its something all design leaders should be carving out space for folks to do. Here design is uniquely equipped to bring good ideas to life (a good idea trapped in a hacked powerpoint slide just doesnt pack the same punch), and to propose and communicate a more cohesive direction for where products can go. Getting back in the room with whoever responds yes to a meeting is a great way of developing a shared vision, and one that brings design back to the table with something ofvalue.The absolute worst thing, in my opinion, is to settle into complacency. Nothing is unchangeable, and if designers treat things as such, then theyre truly just accelerating the demise of their own discipline. The more designers act like lifeless automatons, the easier it is to replace them with lifeless automatons. The issues designers face today cant solve themselves, and if youre waiting around for someone to ask you about all your good ideas, youre going to be waiting a long time. Trying and failing is worth it, if other people are at least considering the value design canbring.For design and company leaders, take note. Design needs a certain degree of idealism to function well. If youre wise, youll do what you can to prevent complacency from infecting your teams, organization, and ultimately your products.Complacency all but guarantees that opportunities will be missed. Innovation and complacency dont work well together. Bored talent leaves, or works on their own thing after hours. Were not even talking about the next big thing maybe rare, and not of much concern if youre a company that just acquires innovation but just the next good idea. John Maeda is right when he says the route of greatest efficiency is rarely the most impactful. It might prevent us from reaching a more creatively meaningful destination. Allowing designers space to do what they do best maximizes their value, making sure the best idea ships, not just the first one. But it also keeps them happy and engaged. If you dont let dogs run off leash sometimes, you get a bunch of sad dogs (no one likes a sad dog). A designers evangelism can be just as contagious as theirapathy.Through the process of writing this I spiralled more than a few times (UX feels meaningless what if everything is meaningless?, etc), because I realized that I really do take meaning from the work that I do. I truly believe that design can positively impact the world, but on the days that it doesnt, I think its important to remember that theres meaning to be found outside of your job. Spend time with loved ones, look at the ocean, pet a cat. Whateverworks.Thanks for reading. Find me on LinkedIn.SourcesBraga & Teixeira. Enter Late Stage UX, UX Trends, 2024. (https://trends.uxdesign.cc/2024)Fabricant, Robert. The big design freak out: A generation of design leaders grapples with their future, Fast Company, 2024. (https://www.fastcompany.com/91027996/the-big-design-freak-out-a-generation-of-design-leaders-grapple-with-their-future)Braga & Teixeira. A love letter about change, UX Trends, 2025. (https://trends.uxdesign.cc/2025_)Breen, Bill. Masters of Design, Fast Company, 2004. (https://www.fastcompany.com/49167/masters-of-design-2004)Daly, Lyle. The largest companies by market cap, February 2024, The Motley Fool, 2024. (https://www.fool.com/research/largest-companies-by-market-cap/#:~:text=Apple%20is%20the%20largest%20company,and%20Amazon%20($2.36%20trillion)._)Sheppard, Sarrazin, Kouyoumjian, & Dore. The Business Value of Design, McKinsey Quarterly, 2018. (https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/the-business-value-of-design)Design Council. The Double Diamond. (https://www.designcouncil.org.uk/our-resources/the-double-diamond/)Doctorow, Cory. Tiktoks enshittification, Pluralistic, 2023. (Tiktoks enshittification_)Config 2024: Figma product launch keynote, Youtube, 2024 (Config 2024: Figma product launch keynote_)Clement, Clara. Painters, Sculptors, Artists, Engravers and their works, 1873. (https://www.google.ca/books/edition/Painters_Sculptors_Architects_Engravers/bBNJAAAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=julius%20scaffolding%20throw&pg=PA149&printsec=frontcover)Monteiro, Mike. A designers Code of Ethics, Dear Design Student, 2017. (https://deardesignstudent.com/a-designers-code-of-ethics-f4a88aca9e95)A crisis of meaning in UX Design was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
