Why learning UX is not worth it in 2024

I’m a Senior UX Designer at a global company, and I can confirm that what this guy is saying is unfortunately true. I’ve grown frustrated as my role shifted from hands-on research to simply dragging and dropping elements on the screen. The monotony has made me lose interest in design, and I’m now exploring more exciting opportunities, like game development. I wish luck to those pursuing a career in design today.

haha great and true video!!!

Ugh, it seems like every job that was once prestigious is becoming a terrible idea thanks to corporate greed and "optimization."

Of course, something finally interests me enough and got me contemplating to switch careers, and... it's already dead :<

I would like to know what directions for people who want to leave UX like me can go for? Could you prepare some information in one video to discuss this with us?

Hey Malericz, I recently got laid off and I pretty much agree with all the points you mentioned here! Everything you said already happened in my last position. That's why I hope everyone knows the truth about working as a designer in 2024!

Sensei you really are telling the truth for the most part, which is encouraging as a designer and not a Figma drag And dropper!

I've started last year to learn UX/UI design 😭. What can I do now??

Well...i will have to learn ftont end then. 3rd year, 3rd bootcamp and still not even 1 interview.

Keep making these videos so I have less competition 🤣🤣

Great insights, thanks for sharing! For everybody reading the comments remember that there is always need for good UX in enterprise level softwares, what is mentioned in the video is mostly true but depends on the industry and type of projects you specialize in, if all you do are landing pages or 5 pages website then yes a UI Kit does the trick and there is not such a need for an expensive designer.

Stop calling it UI/UX it just shows how little you know about the industry. UX is the umbrella term for the industry. UI is a specific skill set like research. It’s like saying Bread/Sandwich. Redundant.

energy and enthusiasm draining video, don't watch it.

I work as a ux/ui designer since 5 years ago, and yes haha sometime you are moving the same components BUT it¿s not just moving, in mt case I'm always thinking many ways to solve problems, ux and UI have stages, sometime you will research a lot, and sometime you will work a lot with component, and also this depend on the company's culture and the designer, in my company I have freedom to carry out research (when it is necessary) and some designer has the possibility to make research but the don't want to, I love ux/ui 💚💚

damn thats depressing

992 likes

Nice video. What do you think regarding UX researchers? Are they also at risk?

I graduated in summer 2023, right after the majors layoffs in a program that teached many multimedia skills. I wanted to work as a UX/UI designer. I pretty much gave up.

The requirements are very, very high. One job even required 7 to 10 years of experience.

On the other side, I started to work on projects with AI to optimize my work pace. It's at that very moment I realised these jobs will be doomed or at the least very rare in the future.

maybe you should talk about alternatives too

I respect @MalewiczHype as a great designer but I really think a lot of the points in this video chose to be biased toward the difficulties designers are facing right now in 2024 rather than the tremendous possibilities that have been made available also as a result of all these trends.

For example, you said AI is replacing frontend developers and I'm yet to see a clear use case for this in a production environment. What I've seen are junior / beginner frontend developers who learned how to take advantage of AI in their development 10x their learning, delivery, and as a result their income.

But I'm yet to see a non-technical founder or product manager get rid of all or some of their front-end developers and replace them entirely with AI.

If what you mean by 'front-end developer' is a beginner or junior front-end developer that refuses to take advantage of AI in their development, then maybe you might be right in a few cases but to cast a blanket on all front-end developers being replaceable by AI is a massive stretch that I don't see happening even in a decade.

Everyone is afraid of AI. Should embrace it as it means products will be shipped faster. Like for example when email replaced trad mail. Mail would take days to reach the person, now it takes seconds. Mail is still there just in a different form. Im a dev too and AI is pretty bad at alot of things especially at coding, alot of bugs. Design too i did something in photoshop the other day, used generative AI and it was way off. Look people appreciate convenience and how you make their lives easier so to ship products quicker with the help of AI is a game changer. Plus robots dont pay tax so the governments would have a huge say in the future of AI.

AI is trained on data, existing data. Now will it come up with something groundbreaking? Hell no, it will only use algorithms based on existing data to generate whatever, and sometimes its completely detached from reaility as well. Everything we see today was created and designed by us. AI can do it faster but not better. You need pschycology in everything. AI is based on precison.

Also with the introduction AR VR will be a game changer for UI/UX.


thats my 2cents

I disagree that it’s difficult to find work in UX design. I got certification and landed my first role a month after completing the program. How I did it? I network through my environment and offer my learned skills to help build my portfolio so it does look good for businesses that want to pay for entry level work.
If you want to learn UX skills and apply them in the job market, go for it! Maybe that’s your calling. It will be more difficult to land a job if your personality sucks…no matter how good you are at what you do.

I totally agree with you, this was my life for many years, and probably you can wake up from this nightmare when you reach maturity to learn how to win your battles, which will be a lot of battles, and you may get depressed and frustrated, but with a lot of study, strength, and determination you can go far in this field. So yeah, design is not for the lazy ones.

dark patterns are the worst in business

Bro everything I think about doing seems doomed. Wanna be a web designer? It's not worth it anymore. What about being a developer? Don't even bother, AI will replace you soon, there's no time anymore. Came up with the idea of being a designer? There's no place anymore. How can one decide what career path to follow if everything will be soon replaced by AI?

The need for conversion is so compelling that it often overshadows design ethics. Every day, I encounter more landing pages optimized for conversion, regardless of the ethical implications of their methods. These tactics include clocks with artificial deadlines, creating a false sense of urgency for purchases, and the use of subpar typography paired with generic designs.

This video broke my heart but I still want it so much. 💔

I've been in UX/CX for the past 2 years, can definitely agree that for commercial sector this tends to be the case and you're often tweaking as opposed to innovating. But I will say though the industries where there's been a lot of opps for more impact (in my case) have been public sector, healthcare, energy, transport and education. I've found that there's still a lot of work happening in these since their UX maturity isn't as strong as something like e-commerce or banking, and there is more reception towards avoiding dark patterns. Plus having some Service Design skills can help making you a more well-rounded designer :)

Why this video was not availabe 2 years ago? Im tired of looking for a job and NO ONE is asking for an interview... ALL job descriptions are INSANE, tired of finding "5+ or 8+ years of experience", I mean what in the world???? plus, its is more common now employers ask UX/UI Designers to know how to code!!! WHY do I have to know everything????

It's a career you gotta roll with the punches or your not gonna make it out with your sanity that's for sure. I had a very respected professor in design school tell me he didn't think he would make it in the real design world. After 15 years in I understand what he was talking about now. But I doubt the grass is greener in most other jobs.

Let me do a prediction for designers in the next years:
UX Design won't be the same like today but it can't be removed

I think the current situation is mainly happening, because we got lazy the past years. Back in time before flat design you needed to have much more understanding to craft components since they where not flat. You had to put more effort into creating something outstanding. But the last couple of years where flat design made it, everyone (even non designers) were able to create simple designs and even with mordern technologys everyone is able to change that design into a real webdesign project. The second thing is the fact that companys all over the world save broken theirselfs by ditching bigger researches and more complex designs going into a direction which leads to using more automated and easier to maintenance tools like net promoter scores for example. And yes even ai will get better and provide even more possabilitys to kick some progresses we have to do as ux designers.

But should you stop learning UX design nowadays or beeing scared to get kicked out? Definetely not. There is a change happening right now and what youre doing today as a UX Designer won't be what your'e doing in the future. We need to see what companys will need from us in future.

So from the design part: Since 2024 we are jumping out from the flat design train back to more complicated components which are aiming for more uniqueness, there is a change already happening, so from today all the various tools and possabilitys may wont be used in the future since we are aiming for more stunning and unique components. Same goes for companys. They may want to work cost effective but there are always the big players who start changing directions and tell what's the new way. No company will stay at the same level they are today. And also AI never will be that creative to completely removes our skills.

And from the technical part: Every year in tech niche is providing new chances, new tools, new software, new technology and new mindblowing possibilitys. So in development when Chatgpt was launched, every developer was scared about their jobs to get replaced. Now in 2024 we can say even if AI is getting better it will assist developers and do boilerplate for us so that we can focus on the real interesting parts in development. It kicks out old tasks and brings in new opportunitys.
Mayber in the next years it wont be called "Developer" rather than something like "Code Engineer" and AI like chatgpt will be our tool to do our daily busines. And the exact same thing will happen for UX Design. it will be called different in future maybe and there will be a different frame we get used to, but its definetely not wrong to learn the principles and ask yourself what the pain points are from today and how this future frame will look like.

So what’s plan B for Ux designers, is it the time to shift career to product management or what ?!

100% right. 0% wrong

I work as a UX Designer for a big tech company, and I can confirm that 100% of what you said is true. I love my job and the company, but I am very concerned about reason number 4. I am pretty sure that Figma will present something related to that at Config this year. This one is hard to solve. I am in a good position just by having 5+ years of experience and working for a big tech company that is very hard to get into, but I am afraid even that won’t be enough. It hurts to say this, but if you are thinking of starting in this area, please think again. There are better opportunities out there.

So I guess you're giving up your job and starting a new career in a different field? Just to be consistent with what you said in this video right?

XD tylko Polak mógł zrobić taki filmik. Super, że mówisz jak to jest naprawdę, pozdro!

Bad implementation is so true. Big reason why I’m soft pivoting to design & front end, my vision is never represented 😤

You are not getting a good posture in that screen my friend, put some books below it!

I've been a designer since 2010. Websites, apps, UX, UI, front-end, back-end... I did them all. Every couple of years I save some money and take a break from the industry thinking this was it. But I always come back to it, because it's what I love doing the most. I'm now running a small UX consultancy company and it does well, the secret is to be a bit multi-disciplinary and be a likeable person... and you'll get projects.

Everything is evolution. Ai is coming. New tools come. But none of this replaces us as designers. If it is so UI/UX and many creative jobs already should gone by now. But now...Industry is changing and we need to adapt to new changes. When everybody using photoshop to design ..Then Canva comes offer as a template ready mate..But Photoshop never been replaced...so are designers.... There is many website builder without code comes before...but still programmer are needed in the market now. Stop the predict the future..Instead do the job because you want it...because you love. Become an expert of it...Because there is someone always need that expertise from you....

I will not sleep tonight after this video haha but I appreciate the honesty. We need urgently another video about what hard work to do this 2024

This is the fear I have with a lot of professional careers. The reality is you need to work extremely hard and you're competing with so many others who are putting the same if not more effort than you. Is there even a career where you can actually have a chance of succeeding in without spending years to become knowledgeable at?

100% right. 0% wrong.... on all counts. I've been working with smaller companies where there is reluctance to sink money and time into testing. This dovetails into what you were saying about dark patterns, especially if you come into a company and the dark patterns are already there and the CEO loves it even when they understand the issues with it. And since there isn't time for testing, we can't get the data that very likely would sway them. (very likely in my particular case, there are definitely a lot where there the likelihood is zero).

Also, when you're in a job that has little to no time for testing, it makes it that much harder interviewing with people that are looking for that asset. Even the testing you've managed to do doesn't seem to be enough.

what did you think about designership micheal wong

I started learning UI/UX Design for about 4-5 months ago. I don't have any design background, or any IT background. I had my degree in commerce and It wasn't a field I wanted to work in. So I wanted to change my career and I came to know about UI UX. And as I started learning about it, I Find it very interesting and now I know that this is exactly the field I want to build my Career in. What is your advice for me and people like me. Do I need to go after a degree in order to become a UX designer or Is it better if I Study my own. Since I'm now 25 years old. If i was to be a self taught designer, where should I start and what are the basics things you suggest that I should learn ?

Kinda exaggerated but there's a grain of truth - a designer here with 8 yrs' experience in the industry.