In the past year, I've heard many “UX is dead” or “UX is so two years ago” pronouncements. They invariably come from people who take a very narrow view of user experience design, equating it either with GUI design or simply with visual design. 

Some of the people making such pronouncements are UX designers. If this is you and your understanding of UX is to produce perfectly groomed Figma files and design systems, then this is the moment to take not two but five steps back and look beyond the tools to the essence of what we do. 

UX design is — and has always been — about how you interact with your environment and tools (in most cases digital ones), understand them, and make the user’s connection between intent and end product as short and intuitive as can be. 

Now that we've re-established this context, let's take another look at AI and what its growing presence reveals about the nature of UX design. Here are some reflections on the relationship between UX and AI.

Same Challenge, New Interface

Thinking about how AI has evolved, even just over the past year, it’s clear that the core challenge hasn’t changed as much as it has shifted shape. We’re still trying to bridge intent and outcome, but now the interface is less visual and more conversational, more abstract. 

Our tendency to frame UX as primarily visual is really a by-product of how interfaces used to work. As those interfaces evolve from screens to voice and AI-driven systems, the underlying problem reveals itself more plainly. It’s a problem of communication. 

What It Means Today to Collaborate with AI

So what does “creativity” mean in this context? To me, it means that while AI may be the engine, the UX designer still has to be in the driver’s seat. This is not to say AI is purely about execution. On the contrary, it can be an effective collaborator and offer ideas and input that enhance the final product. 

But product design teaches us that there must be the initial vision,  even if invariably that vision evolves as part of the process. As designers, we don’t always need to come up with the vision ourselves. But we are responsible for translating it and helping shape it into what will eventually be a product (and I mean “product” in the broadest sense of the word). 

Establishing the right rhythm for collaboration is part of that responsibility. Fortunately, it’s something humans have been doing since the first tools were shaped from wood or stone millenia ago. Today, we’re simply building on that lineage — standing on the shoulders of those who came before us, whether they called themselves designers or not.

Speaking the Same Language

Recently, I was training several AI models to help me with pieces of my workflow (more on that in a future post). I was struck by how familiar much of the process felt from my time as a creative director and manager. One of the necessary skillsets, then and now, is the ability to communicate well and express in specific terms clear and concise feedback on what sometimes are abstract or arbitrary concepts. 

This communication between designers is greatly facilitated by the fact that there is a formal design language that allows us to control elements of typography or color purely by voice commands, and that we’ve been trained in that language. It’s like two people playing chess over the phone: they never see the same board, but they don’t need to because they each understand the meaning attached to each square in the board’s layout. It is pre-defined and not open for interpretation.

But as I said, some of these concepts are more abstract, tied to emotion and subtleties of human experience. They don’t always translate cleanly or need to be codified like in a lot of other industries.

Choices around fonts, colors, negative spaces and interaction types all have cultural and emotional meaning, whether we have a name for it or we experience it in a more emotional way. If I tell you that something has a "Miami Vice aesthetic" or "Art Deco vibe" you will probably know exactly what I am talking about, even if you may not be able to break it down to formal design elements. 

But a designer can, and because of the way AI models are trained, they too can take in and process this data as intended. And once AI returns its version of your requested "Art Deco vibe" it’s key to know enough to be able to drive and change the elements that are clashing in a way that respects the original aesthetic and intent. 

This is what I mean by the designer being in the driver's seat: intentional, curated and predictable outcomes.

Empathy for the AI

As designers, we have empathy for our users. That’s fundamental to the practice of UX. But what about empathy for the AI? As a creative director, investing in a designer’s potential and professional growth is what gives you the patience to deal with early mistakes and lack of pace. You are literally investing in a collaborator whose growth will one day make your job easier, hopefully in the not too distant future. This cycle of mentorship, training and investment is how we’ve all grown and evolved as creative professionals. Deep into my career, it is still one of the most satisfying aspects of what I do. 

The same empathy that helps you trust a designer — and remain patient through setbacks because you see the long-term payoff — also applies to working with AI agents. You have to approach them with that same patience (there it is again), working through gaps in communication until you land on the right recipe and the right outcome.

Designers, like all humans, process information and instruction in ways that are unique to them. They see and hear through cultural, generational, regional and other biases that a good creative director will recognize and utilize to re-frame their feedback in a way that puts them on the same page with their designer. 

In this brave new world, that translates to stepping outside of your communication habits to analyze and understand how the AI attacks problems so you can frame it in a way that gives you predictability of outcomes. What models was it trained on? What are its own biases? Where does it tend to take shortcuts? Where can it offer you a valuable second opinion, and even pushback? When everything clicks and the workflow is just right, that’s the aha moment. 

We don’t usually think of an AI as needing empathy — and emotionally, it doesn’t. But on a practical level, better outcomes depend on better communication, and empathy is what makes that possible. That empathy can only come from one place — humans — so you have to bring it yourself.

The Three Cs: Creativity, Communication, Compassion

All of this ties back to the idea of communication and bridging that gap between the intent and the tool. And make no mistake, AI is a tool. If we’ve learned anything over the past few years it’s that without the ingredients of human creativity and conceptual thinking, AI typically cooks up a dish without flavor. 

Sure, AI is great for producing those in-depth slide decks so you don’t have to make them by hand anymore (you know who you are). But AI on its own doesn’t deliver the really high-value creative output our customers expect. Creativity has always been at the core of human experience and crucially growth. This is our superpower, and it cannot be taken away, only relinquished.

Compassion for the user, patience in learning and training AI models, willingness to listen, sensitivity to cultural/regional context, and understanding and empathizing with the user needs – basically things pertaining to emotional intelligence — are fundamental to the basic culture of UX. It’s part of our training and toolbox, and where we excel as human designers.

Design for Understanding, Not Your Portfolio

Many designers still design for their portfolio, sometimes without a fundamental understanding of the products they are working on. By taking this shortcut, they step out of the communication chain. Rather than acting as a pillar of product value, they reduce themselves to a one-dimensional skillset that’s easy to outsource. 

It’s exactly this kind of work that’s already been handed off to AI in the first wave, because it prioritizes polish and delivery over solving the actual problem. Design is not a deliverable, it’s a collaborative process between all product team members, not just designers. By proclaiming the victory too early, we close the door on those conversations that help us refine the problems we thought we were solving, bring entirely new problems to the surface and expose the cracks in our logic and solutions. 

By all means, AI can help greatly enhance this process, and in great organizations with strong product design culture it is already a powerful accelerator. But it is not a wholesale replacement for it. 

Designing for understanding leads to better products, plain and simple. If you’re not communicating effectively, you’re not designing effectively. Your job is to bridge that gap, whether that means using AI as part of your process and outputs or making sure clients and internal stakeholders clearly understand the implications of their design decisions. 

AI is a tool — in your browser in the narrowest sense, maybe in another tab as you read this. But also in the broader sense — like fire AI is both a tool and a potential force of massive consequence. 

As we move into questions of regulation and ethics, this will feel familiar to many of us working in usability and regulated industries. We should have an active voice in that conversation because as UX professionals we are uniquely positioned as communicators and  advocates for users and usability.

UX Remains Relevant in the AI Age

We’re living through an inflection point. It’s not just that the most important questions about collaborating with artificial intelligence haven’t been answered — many haven’t even been asked yet. As designers, it’s critical we don’t step back from this moment. We bring perspectives and instincts that are uniquely suited to shaping what comes next.

Technology only moves in one direction — forward — and  AI is its most forceful expression since the advent of personal computing. And yet, the fundamentals of UX design remain as relevant as ever, even if tomorrow it goes by a different name and relies on tools we wouldn’t recognize today.

The train is already leaving the station so grab your seat before it’s too late. I’ll see you when we get there, wherever “there” ends up.