UX Is Dead, Long Live UX

A clickbait title. Sigh. Another screed claiming that such and such is dead but actually, no, its not, its very much alive for this and this reason.

The shift in mindset, from UX as a deliverable and business bottom line, to something else, is disingenuous. I think this was always what UX should be, and it was our fault that we made it a speciality that practiced very narrow processes and created narrow deliverables. The whole that UX was serving should always have been the entire customer journey.

The next frontier isn’t about perfecting individual screens or workflows — it’s about orchestrating complete customer journeys that span months, channels, and technologies.

The way in which the bottom fell out of the job market was not solely focused on UX — of course it was much wider. But UX professionals made a good chunk of it about them. The fact is that AI is gunning for lots of industries and companies are experimenting with how it might accelerate processes and reduce the need to hire more and more experts. This too, will pass, though the future job market will always have to contend with AI efficiencies. I personally think that AI will plateau for most businesses who are not technology focused, and they will realize they still need humans. They are just going to be much more careful about who they hire and when.

What the article gets right, and part of what I have been feeling, is that our focus as UX practitioners has been on the micro level, an that just can’t make as much of an impact as it could. Businesses also understand they have an omnichannel experience, from social to email to websites and apps, and their customers are everywhere all at once. A UX mindset applied to these cross-channel experiences would be very valuable. It just that most organizations have a siloed structure and each department owns different parts of the experience. Business models will need more UX applied before UX can start to move the needle for the customer experience.

They close with that idea wrapped in a metaphor about operating systems:

AI will be instrumental for companies that successfully manage this shift [from micro to macro]. But AI applied to an outdated operating system will bring shallow returns and plateau. […] Upgrading the business operating system gives us more power to utilize AI. That, combined with a human-centered value proposition, will maximize profitability.