4 April 2025
(I don’t like dunking on articles as a rule, but this one struck me as particularly stupid.)
Greg Nudelman writing in UX Magazine:
AI is turning UX upside down, and traditional design tools like Figma may not survive the shift. As AI-first systems reduce the need for UI, the role of designers must evolve beyond pixels and layouts. The real challenge? Understanding how AI reshapes user experiences and redefining what it means to be a UX designer in this new era.
True. We do need to understand what AI means for user experience and how to make the best use of it. Was the role of a UX designer ever just pixels and layouts though? I’d argue not.
When you look at what the majority of startups in the tech space are making with AI, you see minimal interface. Because the best interface for AI is (virtually) no interface. Think about it: No interface. (Well, there will always be some interface, but I love this hyperbole because it helps us escape the curse of our expertise and think past the status quo.)
When you need extreme hyperbole to make a point maybe you have haven’t got a point? There’s no such thing as no interface. Even the most basic terminal shell is still an interface. Something that beamed directly into your skull would still be an interface.
All that UI “stuff,” all those traditional aspects of what makes up the “design,” are just not that important anymore. It’s like deciding whether the dancing robot should be blue or red. Who cares? The robot is dancing! Come see the dancing robot! (Like Model T Ford — AI comes in “Any color the customer wants, as long as it’s black.”) So if all you care about in your day-to-day design job is what you can show in Figma, you’re gonna be wasting your time. It does not matter if the dancing robot is blue or red. Or purple.
What? Really don’t get what he’s trying to say here. Of course UX is more than just creating designs, but what things look like is also very important.
Let me give you a real-world example: let’s say you are creating an AI-first application that will quickly summarize a document. How that summary is presented in the UI almost does not matter.
- Background color? Nope. Not a chance.
- Font sizes? Don’t make me laugh.
- Where is it on the page? Does not matter. Pick a spot. Any spot. Release the feature, move it post-Beta if you find a better spot.
‘Almost’ is doing a lot of work here. It ‘almost does not matter’ in the same way that it matters very much. If the UI is unusable then there’s a real problem.
AI-first interfaces are just not that UI-sensitive.
Says who? I’d argue that AI-first experiences are extremely UI sensitive. The flexibility and unpredictability of AI makes the interface considerations more complex not less. ChatGPT is by far the most popular AI service and its dead simple UI makes the experience easy and fun. That didn’t happen by accident.
If you, as a UX designer, are seen as somebody who is continuously slowing down the release process in favor of adding decoration, instead of speeding up and streamlining delivery of value, you are going to be seen as a bottleneck and your position will be eliminated. It’s just that simple. AI is moving fast and turning things topsy-turvy all over the place. So you need to get on board and completely rethink your contribution to the team.
If that applies to you, you’re a terrible UX designer. AI has nothing to do with it.
Now, ask yourself this: How often do you talk to your customers? How about your data scientists? If the answer is “seldom,” you need to rethink how you contribute to the team because AI is moving your cheese in a huge way. Your mad mastery of the Figma auto-layouts will not be there as your crutch for drawing gargoyle rectangles for that much longer.
We’ll always need some kind of design and layout tool, even if Figma itself goes away at some point. But I’ve never met a single UX designer who ever thought that creating designs was 100% of the job.
I think what makes this article so frustrating is that beneath the tortured metaphors, Figma-bashing, hyperbole, confusion between UX and UI and straw man arguments there are actually a few good points:
Yes, UX is more than UI. Anyone who focuses on superficial details without understanding user and busines needs is going to run into trouble. Yes, AI is a fundamental shift in how we interact with computers and digital services. Does that mean UI no longer matters? Not at all.
Our job as designers is to find ways to integrate AI into the experiences we create – how do we make them smarter, faster and more fluid? This is going to take time. We’re currently at the stage where it’s new enough that ‘AI’ can be the selling point, without really thinking through what benefit it actually brings. Sticking a chatbot in the corner of the screen and calling it innvation.
However, that’s not nearly enough. What would human-machine interaction look like and how would it work when AI is integrated seamlessly into the fabric of our lives, like electricity is today? Not a layer on the top like it is now, but a complete rewiring of how things work.
How can we as designers help ensure that this new world is humane, inclusive, accessible and usable for everyone?